This is Not Their Fault, This is Our Offense

Once In Gokul, quite a few maṭhavasis and others left. My job was to do the cooking in the morning and later clean the pots and pans. After maṅgala arāti one day, I saw there was a statue of Ambedkar in front of our temple. He had formed the constitution of India and had come from a lower caste and people of those castes considered him godly and almost worshiped him. They installed the statue of Ambedkar pointing his finger in the direction of the temple. They encroached on the maṭha property when they did this. 


Politicians would play their politics and later blame it on somebody else, but they also instigated them. They had planned to disfigure the deities of our temple. They had a meeting in Matura and then another in Gokul.


One day when I finished the sevā of washing vessels, I went to take bath. Sādhu Mahārāja and two brahmacārīs were doing kirtan and we found a crowd outside the temple making noise.  I woke up Rādhāpriya Prabhu (Bhakti Svarūpa  Akiñcana Mahārāja, Param Gurudev’s disciple who took sannyās from Gurujī). He was the maṭha-in-charge there. He said this was a regular occurrence in the maṭha area there and asked me to close the gate. When I tried to do that, the crowd came inside the maṭha with a spade, knives, sticks, swords, etc, and crossed the gate. I was new to that maṭha having come there less than a year before.


After they came in, some went inside the deity room and some came up to us and encircled us. If we had tried to protest, they would have even murdered us because they had swords and knives in their hands. They disfigured the deities' hands.


Guru Mahārāja was in Punjab at that time and when he got the news he came down immediately. He did kirtan and then Narasiṃha-stuti and instructed that from now on in all temples they will do Narasiṃha-stuti twice morning and evening. This happened around 1990. 


When Gurudev did kirtan, everyone present was crying. Some of the leaders said to Gurujī, "Just give us the indication and we will cut off the heads of the miscreants right away and take revenge."


But Guru Mahārāja said, "No, this is not their fault, this is our offense. I must have committed some offense towards vrajvasis and so Kṛṣṇa is angry with us and left us. "


Then there was a deity installation ceremony again later and a great feast. After the deity installation, all the miscreants passed away one by one—one person was electrocuted, one by road accident— all of them died one by one. Gurudev is the mercy incarnate form of Sri Kṛṣṇa and so if Kṛṣṇa does not come Himself, he sends Gurudev. Gurudev is very much hurt inside because of this, but he is not showing it outside. Bhagavān takes care of all these things and he does not have to do anything. 


The people present there in the maṭha were all shocked and hurt and Guru Mahārāja transferred them all to other maṭhas temporarily. He brought everyone first to Delhi maṭha with him, and it took a while for the deity installation ceremony to happen there which was 2 years later during Vraja-mandala parikramā. So during this time, Guru Mahārāja posted brahmacārīs to other places and I was then sent to Dehra Dun. 


When I was in the Dehra Dun maṭha as a brahmacārī, the maṭha-in-charge was Param Gurudev’s disciple and he was very strict. I wanted to run away and go to Gokul and stay there alone. Gurujī came to know somehow, and he wrote me a letter.


The letter said, "Service to Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī is the best of all, and association of great vaiṣṇavas is the best devotional practice. This is what you should do, and if you do this in the future, you will realize the benefit. At that time I did not realize what his teaching was, what his blessing was or what it meant, but I am getting the benefit of it now. Now I've realized and experienced what that means.


—Sri Bhakti Prasanna Tyagi Mahārāja


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