Mukunda Press Conference on Deprogramming Hare Krishnas

information regarding recent allegations concerning smuggling, allegations in which the name of this religion was repeatedly bandied about, is so revolutionary we doubt that you'll even choose to report it, even though it is distinctly your obligation to do so. The Southern California and other media have been having a field day victimizing the Hare Krishna movement, seizing every opportunity to discredit this religion and avoiding obvious opportunities to report on its true activities. This post-Jones Town dog-packed journalism and broadcasting is an example of persecution so intense and so unconscionable in this country of religious freedom that we have at last had to call a news conference just to expose the media itself. In the present indictments, the media, by its highly prejudicial reporting, is implicating an entire religion for the alleged aberrant behavior of a tiny handful of its members, almost all of whom are excommunicated or not in good standing.

For example, this banner headline, this banner headline, in 60-point type in the Santa Ana Register, Krishna hash bust, directly attacks and implicates this religion in criminal activity. This is reprehensible journalism at its very worst. If the defendants named had been Catholic or Jewish, would it have printed a headline like this? We don't read of a Jewish hash bust or a Catholic hash bust.

Moreover, when these individuals were first implicated in crime over a year ago, the Register ran a similar banner headline, an even larger type, Krishna Cult Death Mystery. In this case, all charges against former Hare Krishna members were dropped. After this first headline abuse, we warned the register not to do this and to at least contact our organization. We gave them names and phone numbers whenever they would choose to report news about us.

They agreed to do this, but they did not keep their word. When the present story broke, they did not contact our people whose names and telephone numbers we had supplied them. these headlines are defamatory inflammatory and grossly at odds with the Society for Professional Journalists Code of Ethics under accuracy and objectivity point three in the Code of Ethics it is stated newspaper headlines should be fully warranted by the contents of the articles they accompany with this headline in the evening outlook eleven Krishnas charged with drug smuggling have read differently if the accused had been Protestant would it have read Eleven Protestants Charged with Drug Smuggling? This headline in yesterday's Los Angeles Times Eleven Linked to Krishna Cult Indicted in Narcotics Case describes an indictment in which neither our religion nor even the word Krishna is once mentioned. If the defendant's name had been Catholic would the West's largest newspaper have headlined the article 11 linked to Catholic Church indicted in narcotics case.

Further, we have repeatedly requested the Times not to call our religion a cult and we have distributed this pamphlet which carefully explains why we are not a cult. We have distributed this to Times reporters. These headlines are devastating and highly inflammatory. The headlines in these three newspapers constitute a form of religious persecution so serious and so severe as to immediately bring to mind the mood of the witch hunts of Salem and the McCarthy era.

Such headlines are the parts of newspapers which are read most by the public and which carry the most impact. They shamelessly undermine the very constitution of the United States. The sad irony of this persecution is that our religion, the Hare Krishna movement, is far more successful in combating drug abuse than the drug enforcement agency itself. We attack the cause, not the symptom An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure We are an effective, practicing, and propaganda agency against drug abuse These activities should have government support For example, this article from Addictions Magazine Published by the Washington Area Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Indicates that in Washington, at the time of this publication we were almost 100% effective in curing the addictions of those who entered our program.

Further, we have a letter from the Mayor of New York commending us on our work in the field of drug abuse. This will be available for you after the conference. Presently, we have an active drug rehabilitation clinic in Melbourne, Australia, for which we are likely to soon receive government funding. These documents are also available for your inspection.

I would just like to reiterate the fact that we are not a cult more than 500 million people follow this our book of truth the Bhagavad Gita Hinduism is the world's third largest religion hardly a cult by any standards the media and federal agencies should in every way support the many benevolent activities of our religion many of which are documented in a 108-page booklet, which we'll pass around to you after the conference. They should do this instead of seizing opportunities to discredit us while ignoring our good works. In the third week of July of this year, Nancy Graham, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, spent several hours at our center here in Los Angeles, touring the entire community, taking extensive notes, and interviewing many people for a story on our Festival of the Chariots. This event, attended by more than 200,000 people annually Is one of the largest religious festivals in the West Shortly following Mrs.

Graham's visit A Times photographer came and took several pictures The story was being written for the West Side section And surely this festival was the major event In West Los Angeles on that particular weekend The article was never published Instead, the Times ran only one picture And it was placed directly opposite a long article critical of the Moonies. When we asked Mrs. Graham about the bumping of her article, she said she was, quote, not very happy about it, end quote. Further, although we have invited the Times religion writers to this festival every year, they have never attended the event, and certainly it is one of the major religious events in their city.

Whenever the city of Los Angeles has made some move to restrict our constitutional rights to distribute our religious literature, the Times has always been quick to publish the news, seldom, if ever, contacting us for our side of the story. For example, on October 5th of this year, when such a one-sided article appeared in the Times, we telephoned Times reporter Sharon Rosenhouse to request that our side be published and that she contact us in the future before reporting about us. We also wrote Times editor William F. Thomas, asking the newspaper to contact us when reporting on us in the future.

Further, we sent a letter for publication to the Letters to the Editor section of the Times. On the telephone, Mrs. Rosenhaus stated that neither she nor anyone on the editorial desk felt that it was necessary to contact us for our side of the story. To this day, we have no response from our letter to Mrs.

Rosenhaus, no response from Mr. Thomas, and our letter for publication in the Letter section was never printed. Here we have a clear-cut violation of Point 4 in the Professional Journalist Code of Ethics. News reports, quote, should be free of opinion or bias and represent all sides of an issue.

This is not one incident, but it has happened repeatedly. By contrast, you might note that yesterday's Herald Examiner headline, International Hashish Ring Smashed, deals with the indictments themselves and does not even name the defendants' alleged religious affiliations. Although several television stations carried the story Tuesday, not one of them bothered to contact us for our side of the story although we have repeatedly requested you to do so when reporting news about us we have repeatedly sent you information and news with our names and telephone numbers we were available in our offices all day Tuesday all the TV news Tuesday implicated our religion the media is obligated to print good news as well as crime but as we all know reporting on crime and violence is more profitable. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness is an organization which exists solely to improve the quality of life on this endangered planet.

Again, I will refer you to the documents in a press kit which we're about to issue you which give only a smattering of the scope and depth of this society's good works. Our work extends far beyond the bounds of religion to include health, nutrition, ecology, drug rehabilitation, social welfare, to name only a few. For the media to constantly misrepresent, implicate, and report partially and without thoroughness on our organization is a crime. Finally, repeated vicious attacks and unwarranted attacks on our religion by the media have so inflamed an innocent public against our members and practices that they have been victims of kidnap, assault, sabotage, arson, fraud, and even murder. the implication of our religion for the alleged acts of members which acts if factual would in themselves make them aberrant if in fact they were members at all is completely illogical it is like saying Mr.

Smith is a criminal Mr. Smith is a Mormon Mormons are criminals if even the president of CBS was convicted of selling prostitutes would you report that the network is a prostitution ring the media must clean up its own act before wantonly attacking a bona fide religion. Such attacks are criminal. We have not been named in this criminal indictment, but you, the media, have indicted us.

Can we turn the mics all the way around? Turn the question, please. My name is Rameshwar Singh. I'm a professor of civil engineering and applied mechanics at San Jose State University in San Jose.

I am president of California Society of Professional Engineers. Santa Clara Valley chapter. I am also president of Bharat. Bharat means India.

That's the word we use in India. Bharat Cultural Association in San Francisco Bay. I belong to many social, political, and professional groups. I have lived in America for the last 20 years.

I was born in India in this faith. 600 million people of India, plus many more all over the world, believe in this religion. Bhagavad Gita, this book he just had it, Vedas, Upanishads, and many other books are my holy scriptures. Indian president today and Indian prime minister today, he believes in Krishna and he believes in these books.

This is not a cult. It is a very major religion. It is the oldest religion on this earth. And I have come over here to see all this propaganda going on and I felt that I should come and say something.

I am shocked, appalled, and deeply hurt by the totally unjust manner by which the California media has linked my religion and the Hare Krishna temple with the drug-related criminal activities. The Hare Krishna movement cannot be put on trial for involvement in this issue. Hare Krishna strictly forbids meat-eating and intoxication. The American public is being agitated by these unfair journalistic practices and as a result the Hindu people in America and all over the world are suffering the repercussions.

I am constantly approached by my colleagues at the university and in the engineering profession to question and malign my faith based on what they read or hear on the media. This causes me great pain. When the Hare Krishna movement is prosecuted by the media, all Hindus are likewise prosecuted. This Hare Krishna movement is our religion.

So when you unfairly link our faith with criminal activities, you malign 600 million people of India. This means that you are not only guilty of religious prejudice, but massive and monstrous racial prejudice as well. For Hindus in America, the Hare Krishna temples are a great blessing. The temple is more than just a church.

It is a spiritual oasis. We frequent the Hare Krishna temples regularly just as a Christian would visit the church of his faith. The religious practices for the worship of God offered in the temples exactly parallel the worship we were taught as youths in India. In fact, the quality of the worship in the Hare Krishna temples is rarely duplicated even in India.

And this is a true word, really. When we view the profound religious dedication of the Western devotees who have embraced a timeless spirituality that has formed the basis of Indian culture for untold centuries, we feel great inspiration. The ISKCON centers are places where the Indian community has a golden opportunity to stay in intimate contact with its ancient religious tradition. In the temple we worship the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna in the company of other devout Hindus.

The temple is not merely a place of worship, however, but an active and vibrant cultural center where we can attend discourses on the ancient Hindu philosophy, enshrined in holy books such as Bhagavad Gita, join in the celebration of major Hindu holidays, accept prasadam, holy food, and attend occasional performances of classical Indian music, dance, and drama. The Hare Krishna devotees perform essentially priestly functions such as officiating at birth and marriage rites. ISKCON also supplies the Indian community with religious literature in our own vernacular tongues such as Hindi, Bengali, and Gujarati. Perhaps the greatest blessing of the Hare Krishna movement is that our children, many of whom were born and raised outside of India, and thus are in great danger of becoming totally assimilated into Western culture, can participate in the various religious and cultural programs offered in the temple, many of which are arranged for children and thus learn about their own religious heritage.

Many ISKCON centers have, in fact, established regular religious training on a weekly basis for the children of the local Hindu community. I fervently appeal to you as media representatives to immediately seize this full-scale prosecution of my faith and instead tell the true story of the Hare Krishna religion. then and only then will this climate of fear and anxiety that the Hindu and American devotees of Krishna are forced to constantly live in will be dispelled thank you so you can ask questions if you like can you give us instances where the media has inflamed the public to murder any of your members there is a case there is a case in Hawaii documentation of which we can supply you if you like in which a member of our Church in defending another member of our church against the brother of his wife, the wife of the person he was defending, was murdered.

This took place in Honolulu, Hawaii. The murder has to this day, despite our efforts to apprehend him, to get the law enforcement officials to take part in apprehending him, to try to get the media to help, have not at all been successful. And it is a fact that in Hawaii there has been a lot of inflammatory media over the years. This is known fact, which has made it very easy for law enforcement officials to escape their duty of apprehending a criminal for murder.

And if you want further details on this case, it is documented. Many of our members were there at the time. It took place with witnesses. And it is a very sad and unfortunate chapter in the religious persecution of our movement in the United States.

How long ago was Joe Davis excommunicated, if in fact he was excommunicated? Approximately a year ago, we held a news conference in Laguna Beach when he was, at the time, it may have been more than a year ago, when he was indicted. And at that time, we made it official that this person was not a member in good standing of our church. Was he still actively though running the temple in Laguna Beach?

Oh no, not at all. He had no followers? He had never, Joe Davis had never run any temple in our movement. What was the highest, forgive me for my ignorance on the...

He never rose to a high position. He's always been generally on the outside, just as kind of a lay member of some church, but he has never been in an official position in any of our temples. What about the other people named in the indictments? Well, now, you're looking at a group of individuals who essentially, some of them were involved in what we call a renegade splinter group.

This is a situation which you have in every religion. The Catholic religion or the Jewish religion or any other religion has principles which it expects its members to abide by. Now, some of these people, allegedly at least, did not abide by some of these principles. But we, as a church, as a religion, are in the same position that a priest or a rabbi would be in if some of his congregation went out and did some horrible act of crime.

The point is that you cannot impugn a religion for the acts of individuals. We've been saying this over and over and over again. But somehow or other, the media are coming to us like sharks in the water after drops of blood to point the finger and say it's Krishna, it's Krishna, it's Krishna. But these people are not priests in our religion.

They're not in the center of our religion. And just like in any other religion, we have no way of accepting any guilt. The religion cannot be impudent for these people's activities. It is their problem and that is a very serious and unfortunate thing to try to accuse a religion for the acts of individual especially for such aberrant activities.

This is what we're trying to, the point we're trying to make. So you can't say that every Hindu is a member of the Hare Krishna religion. There are millions, literally millions of Krishna temples in India. Krishna is the most prominently worshipped God, deity in India.

Okay, but you're not answering my question. Yes, I can say that. Because of the fact that they are worshipping Krishna and because of the fact that they all chant, practically every Indian chants this mantra, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare. And that makes him a member of the Hare Krishna movement.

So every Hindu is a member of the Hare Krishna temple? Of our religion. I'm using this term in a broad way to tell you what we're defining as a member. Now, let me go one step further.

We have in this little community about 500 people living right in the immediate community. But within Greater United States, we estimate there's upwards to 6 million people involved with our movement. And a Gallup poll recently was taken amongst teenagers, and that poll indicated that only in the 13 to 18 category, we had a minimum of 100,000 people who wrote in. the questionnaire by Gallup didn't even ask if they were Hare Krishnas they asked them other questions if they were involved in other religions these 100,000 chose to write in and say they were involved with the Hare Krishna movement we have millions of people out there who consider that Hare Krishna is their religion we're not the ones who are signing them up and saying we've got a register of so many people but this is a very, very widely followed religion maybe someone just follows it as far as reading books or magazines or coming to the temple once a year or eating the same kind of food that we describe how to offer in our books or attending some function of ours or in some way assisting the temple by supplying some sort of service.

These people may consider Hare Krishna as their religion but the vast majority of Hindu people we can't consider them members of our religion because they follow. 500,000 people follow this very same book. 700 verses and every Hindu can practically recite this book by heart. This is the basis of our religion.

The point is that we are a religion. This is the basis of it. And you can't find one Hindu who doesn't say that this book is the basis of his religion. But don't you interpret that book differently than the American Hindus?

There are over a hundred different editions of this book. It so happens that this book is the widest-selling book. It also so happens that we are the largest publisher of Indian spiritual classics in the world and that these books are printed in many, many Indian languages distributed widely through India. So there may be little differences of interpretation, but the basic principle, which is Krishna-bhakti, adoration of Krishna, is what you will find running through the mainstream of Hinduism.

Mr. Grant, one more question before I ask. Is it true that Mr. Davis' defense in the kidnapping charge in which he was convicted for, was that defense paid for by the very Christian temple?

I'm not aware that we paid for defense in the kidnapping charge. Did you pay for any defense for Davis at all? Not that I'm aware of, no. You say that some of the individuals named in this indictment were excommunicated.

Could you go through and sort out? I know when Joe Davis was excommunicated, there were three or four others mentioned. There were three that I know that were officially mentioned as being not in good standing or excommunicated. That was Davis, Fedorovsky, and Richard.

But now let's understand what this excommunication means. Now, we're our religion. We're not a corporation. If someone appears on the doorstep of a corporation and has a criminal record, he has no chance by the laws of the corporation.

But just as in Catholicism, a person goes to confession once a week and comes back, goes to confession, comes back. It's not to say that by excommunicating or stating someone not to be in good standing that he cannot reform. He can. If we can be convinced that someone can reform and is strictly following our principles, no taking of any form of intoxication, including coffee, tears, cigarettes, no gambling, no meat eating, no illicit sex. if we're convinced and it's up to us to decide in each individual case, like a priest or a rabbi or a member of any other church, this person would have the right to become reformed and reinstate himself.

So let's understand what this means, excommunication. We're talking about millions of people who are allying themselves with our religion on some level or other. Some are very high priests. Some have very big responsibilities all over the world.

Another one just drives a truck for the temple once a month. So this is the distinction when we talk about excommunication. Let's talk about, in terms of a religion, what it means. What does it mean?

It's not strictly excommunication. Mr. Grant, you raise some questions, really, of journalism, putting these people aside for a moment. I dare say that if the president of CBS were convicted of selling prostitutes, that would be part of the story.

Who he is is part of the story. If a mayor or a lawyer or a priest were convicted of murder, his profession, his position in life would be part of the story. Now, if I may finish, if your standards are as high as you say they are, perhaps it is highly unusual, i.e. news, and part of the story, that members or former members of your group indeed were convicted or indicted of drug-related charges. Yes, and that's exactly what I'm objecting to.

As I pointed out, if you were a Catholic or one of the so-called accepted religions, you don't write Catholic hash bust. Now, let's take another example. Let me just finish. Between a member of the Catholic Church and someone in your religion, you live it, you sleep it, you work it, you rest.

The point is there is no... My point is that there is no difference. You say there's a difference, and I say that religions are at root. They are all the same.

People do eat and sleep and live their religion. Whether they're Christian... Perhaps your standards are... No, no, I'm saying a real Christian...

You don't eat meat. A real Christian eats... There are plenty of Christian sects who are still vegetarian. The Benedictines and the Franciscans, they were vegetarian. up to 70 years ago.

The point is that a real religionist, whether he be Jew, Catholic, Christian, Mohammedan, or Krishna, if he's a real follower, if he's a deep follower of his religion, like many of us are deep followers of our religion, he will be very strict. Now, let's take your example. Suppose a policeman, for example, is convicted of a very serious crime, let's say a murder. All right, we aren't impugning the police force.

We're not trying to stop the police force, and we're not saying that the police force are all murderers. We need the police force. The police force is useful to us. religion is useful to us this religion is useful to all of you if you try to impugn this religion which is actually combating drug addiction better than the drug enforcement agency which is actually solving problems like pollution and inflation and poisoning of the food and the water and the atmosphere in so many ways we're actually not only solving it we have living microcosms of communities that are living without these forms of pollution then you're doing a great disservice to humanity so you have the obligation to say wait, these people are doing something very good Not, oh, this guy was convicted of some crime or he's alleged in some crime. Therefore, now we really know what's going on with the Christians.

They're all the same. Well, that's like saying, every time we report a plane crash, we have to talk about all the planes that landed safely, the million planes that landed safely over the airport. That's a fact. It's an interesting statistic.

But we all know about that. It's the one that we didn't know about. That's news and that's reported. But very few people knew before the statistic was made public that airplane travel was more safer than driving an automobile.

So because that was reported, because that other side of the story was mentioned, now, when there's an airplane crash, people understand that it is still a safe way to travel. But the public has not been informed yet that the Hare Krishna movement is a bona fide, serious, genuine religion followed by hundreds of millions of people and that it's a worthy, good organization. They still... Will you continue to be reported today, tonight?

I can only pray that you will do it. I can only ask for your... I think you can count. Well, I don't know.

My view is rather pessimistic, but I can certainly hope and pray that what you're saying would come true. Any other questions?