There's a distinction in historiography between the "great man" reading of history and a structural reading. Guruship naturally lends itself to the former, because so much revolves around particular personalities and their supposed spiritual qualifications. The trouble is that when things go wrong, the discussion quickly becomes moral and political, ie who was bogus, who cheated whom, who was responsible, and ultimately even whether Prabhupada should have known better.
A structural reading looks instead at the systems and circumstances that made certain kinds of leadership possible, or even necessary, at a particular time.
For instance, early Western KC was a pretty unusual cultural experiment. Although ostensibly an Indian tradition, it was largely operating according to its own novel origin story, drawing heavily on Western counterculture, missionary enthusiasm and a rather raw, inexperienced community of converts. It wasn't really functioning like anything in India, or indeed anything else in the West.
In that environment, someone like Bhavananda could rise to prominence precisely because the movement needed forceful, enterprising personalities who could organise and mobilise large numbers of devotees. Prabhupada himself often elevated these mover-and-shaker types rather than necessarily the more traditional sadhu personalities. They were, in a sense, lion tamers, dealing with a pretty wild movement.
But once Prabhupada departed, these same personalities inherited a very different kind of authority. The qualities that made someone an effective organiser weren't necessarily those required of a traditional guru. Yet the emerging zonal acharya system effectively combined the two.
Then, as that system became increasingly untenable (through guru falldowns, poorly worked out models of householder life, inflexible temple economics etc), the movement began looking elsewhere for legitimacy.
One consequence was a turn towards Indian sadhu culture as a reservoir of authenticity. The failures of the homegrown Western model created an opening for a different, more conservative, conception of what genuine Krishna consciousness should look like .... which in turn gives different authorities, cultural expectations, preaching emphases, etc. Rather than the energetic, world-transforming missionary ethos of early ISKCON, greater emphasis is now placed on something closer to traditional sadhu behaviour, orthodoxy, established lineage and conformity with Indian Vaishnava culture.
So one system, through its own contradictions, helped create the conditions for another to emerge (which in turn, has its own pre-packaged contradictions).
Rather than simply dividing the history into genuine devotees and impostors, or eras of "real" krishna consciousness and "fake" KC, or even blaming Prabhupada for not foreseeing every eventuality, we can instead look at how time, place and circumstance made certain developments possible, and how those developments subsequently created the conditions for something quite different.
It doesn't absolve anyone of responsibility, but it gives us a more interesting historical explanation than simply saying the wrong people got into power.
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A structural reading looks instead at the systems and circumstances that made certain kinds of leadership possible, or even necessary, at a particular time.
For instance, early Western KC was a pretty unusual cultural experiment. Although ostensibly an Indian tradition, it was largely operating according to its own novel origin story, drawing heavily on Western counterculture, missionary enthusiasm and a rather raw, inexperienced community of converts. It wasn't really functioning like anything in India, or indeed anything else in the West.
In that environment, someone like Bhavananda could rise to prominence precisely because the movement needed forceful, enterprising personalities who could organise and mobilise large numbers of devotees. Prabhupada himself often elevated these mover-and-shaker types rather than necessarily the more traditional sadhu personalities. They were, in a sense, lion tamers, dealing with a pretty wild movement.
But once Prabhupada departed, these same personalities inherited a very different kind of authority. The qualities that made someone an effective organiser weren't necessarily those required of a traditional guru. Yet the emerging zonal acharya system effectively combined the two.
Then, as that system became increasingly untenable (through guru falldowns, poorly worked out models of householder life, inflexible temple economics etc), the movement began looking elsewhere for legitimacy.
One consequence was a turn towards Indian sadhu culture as a reservoir of authenticity. The failures of the homegrown Western model created an opening for a different, more conservative, conception of what genuine Krishna consciousness should look like .... which in turn gives different authorities, cultural expectations, preaching emphases, etc. Rather than the energetic, world-transforming missionary ethos of early ISKCON, greater emphasis is now placed on something closer to traditional sadhu behaviour, orthodoxy, established lineage and conformity with Indian Vaishnava culture.
So one system, through its own contradictions, helped create the conditions for another to emerge (which in turn, has its own pre-packaged contradictions).
Rather than simply dividing the history into genuine devotees and impostors, or eras of "real" krishna consciousness and "fake" KC, or even blaming Prabhupada for not foreseeing every eventuality, we can instead look at how time, place and circumstance made certain developments possible, and how those developments subsequently created the conditions for something quite different.
It doesn't absolve anyone of responsibility, but it gives us a more interesting historical explanation than simply saying the wrong people got into power.