Conversation

Meeting with Prabhudas P. Patwaria, Governor of Tamil Nadu

Prabhupāda: ...difficult to go from this room to that room. Unless one or two men help, I cannot go even to the toilet.

Governor: I see. Whose treatment is going on?

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: One local kavirāja, Āyurvedic doctor.

Governor: I see. I invite you warmly to come to Madras. Stay at Raj Bhavan. And we have the best medical team of Madras government at your disposal. We have got the best doctors in whole South Asia. The physicians are the best government doctors. And all two, three doctors are at the top. People come from Malaysia...

Prabhupāda: Medical men.

Governor: Medical men. Our government hospital. Best people in the government hospital. Best physicians. Very good physicians.

Prabhupāda: Thank you very much. But I am not very inclined for medical treatment, their injection, operation. [laughs]

Governor: No, they won't give you injections. They also... There doctors give yogic treatment also, and nature cure treatment. But... See, I have taken that Ravi Shankar Maharaj. You've heard the name in Gujarat, he was one of the very great saintly person, Ravi Shankar Maharaj from Gujarat. I have taken him there. He's stays in my Raj Bhavan, and best doctors attending him, he is improving the health. And we have very good Raj Bhavan, big Raj Bhavan.

Prabhupāda: After all, the thing is that so long we have got this body, the janma-mṛtyu-jarā-vyādhi [Bg 13.9] you have to accept.

[Humility, pridelessness, nonviolence, tolerance, simplicity, approaching a bona fide spiritual master, cleanliness, steadiness and self-control; renunciation of the objects of sense gratification, absence of false ego, the perception of the evil of birth, death, old age and disease; nonattachment to children, wife, home and the rest, and evenmindedness amid pleasant and unpleasant events; constant and unalloyed devotion to Me, resorting to solitary places, detachment from the general mass of people; accepting the importance of self-realization, and philosophical search for the Absolute Truth—all these I thus declare to be knowledge, and what is contrary to these is ignorance.]

This is the statement in the Bhagavad-gītā. So the human endeavor should be diverted how to stop this repetition of birth and death. That is the prime instruction in the Bhagavad-gītā. Tyaktvā dehaṁ punar janma naiti mām eti [Bg 4.9]. Kṛṣṅa says that,

janma karma ca me divyaṁ yo jānāti tattvataḥ tyaktvā dehaṁ punar janma naiti mām eti... [Bg 4.9]

[One who knows the transcendental nature of My appearance and activities does not, upon leaving the body, take his birth again in this material world, but attains My eternal abode, O Arjuna.]

So our movement is on that platform, how to stop. Our whole Vedic culture is based on that process. When Viśvāmitra Mahārāja went to see Daśaratha about..., Daśaratha Mahārāja inquired from Viśvāmitra, aihiṣṭaṁ yat punar-janma-jayāya: "You are great saintly person. You are trying to conquer over birth and death. Is your process going on nicely?" Viśvāmitra inquired Daśaratha Mahārāja about royal activities, government, prosperity, because he was kṣatriya and he was brāhmaṅa. So my request... This, our Gītā philosophy, that cātur-varṅyaṁ mayā sṛṣṭaṁ guṅa-karma-vibhāgaśaḥ... [Bg 4.13].

[According to the three modes of material nature and the work ascribed to them, the four divisions of human society were created by Me. And, although I am the creator of this system, you should know that I am yet the non-doer, being unchangeable.]

There must be a class of men, ideal brāhmaṅas; a class of men, ideal kṣatriyas; class of men, ideal vaiśyas; and balance, śūdras, to help. That will make the human society happy. Cooperate. Just like body. There are different departments: head department, then arms department, then the belly department and the leg department. If they are all in good condition, the health is all right. And now, at the present moment, I am suffering because my belly department is not working nicely. So we cannot neglect any department. There must be all the departments, and they must be cooperative and healthy. So this movement is meant for that purpose. It is the duty of government to give us protection. The counter movement is this communistic movement. They want to drive away God consciousness, and we want to give God con..., completely opposite. Therefore they do not like it. This Māyāpur affair has been completely...

Governor: Distorted. I know it.

Prabhupāda: Distorted. Manufactured by the Communists.

Governor: Yes.

Prabhupāda: So give us little protection. That is my request.

Governor: We'll do it, no doubt. I'm meeting the Prime Minister tomorrow, and we are going to discuss that matter. This is my daughter. She stays in Delhi.

Prabhupāda: Oh. Thank you very much. She is married?

Governor: She is married. She has a husband. She was also an advocate in... This is the husband. He's in the government of India agricultural department now.

Prabhupāda: Very good. We are very much interested in agriculture.

Governor: He's a scientist. Very, very great scientist. He is Ph.D. of California University.

Prabhupāda: Oh.

Governor: He studied in California, and he's a Ph.D. of California University.

Prabhupāda: I have got two, three Ph.D.s.

Governor: And these two daughters, my daughter's daughters.

Prabhupāda: I see.

Governor: This is..., name is Rādhikā.

Prabhupāda: Oh! Very good. [laughs]

Governor: And this is Gopikā, younger daughter. This is Gopikā.

Prabhupāda: Very good. [aside:] You have given them some prasādam? Arrange.

Governor: When she was four years old, this girl, she was telling me in Ahmedabad often, "Dādājī, you take me to Vṛndāvana." I said, "Why?" "So that we will meet Kṛṣṅa." I said, "But to..., Kṛṣṅa will not be..." "No, no, I will see. You will meet Kṛṣṅa. Kṛṣṅa is there. You must go to Vṛndāvana."

Prabhupāda: Just see. She is natural Vaiṣṅavī. Natural Vaiṣṅavī. So give them proper education. This is real education. Vedaiś ca sarvair aham eva vedyaḥ [Bg 15.15].

[I am seated in everyone's heart, and from Me come remembrance, knowledge and forgetfulness. By all the Vedas am I to be known; indeed I am the compiler of Vedānta, and I am the knower of the Vedas.]

That is the Vedic civilization—to understand Kṛṣṅa. Vedaiś ca sarvair aham eva vedyo vedānta-vid vedānta-kṛt ca aham. So at least this knowledge from India must be spread all over the world. We are making a humble attempt. We have no such thing, these... "You have got money, and I'll snatch it." The Communists take it. Just see. They have taken. "Why so big, big buildings? Take them away."

Governor: In Madras I find quite a good atmosphere for this religious character.

Prabhupāda: Oh, yes, I know that.

Governor: That Kanjarama Śaṅkarācārya, he's doing a lot for spread of Gītā and Vedānta literature. Though he's eighty-four, he's doing wonderful work. And another Śaṅkarācārya is also moving. [Hindi with Prabhupāda] [prasādam offered to guests]

Prabhupāda: This is our homemade.

Devotee: Nimbu pāni?

Governor: And there I find many good institutions working for Vedānta, Veda. The pronunciations are also...

Prabhupāda: Very nice.

Governor: Very nice there. I attend many yajñas there.

Prabhupāda: Our men, they have learned Sanskrit.

Governor: This Chinmayananda Swami is also there. He is making good propaganda about Gītā everywhere, moving...

Prabhupāda: Gītā propaganda, there are many persons. But if you don't mind, all these men, they do not understand what is real meaning of Gītā.

Governor: Once, three men that come here, back in Madras. So I arranged with our government libraries to have all your books in our libraries there.

Prabhupāda: Thank you. Gītā should be accepted as it is. It should not be interpreted. Then there will be no benefit. And that has become... [Hindi] Evaṁ paramparā-prāptam imaṁ rājarṣayo viduḥ [Bg 4.2]. That is Gītā. It is not meant for the loafer class. It is meant for the rājarṣis. Rājarṣayo.

imaṁ vivasvate yogaṁ proktavān aham avyayam vivasvān manave prāha manur ikṣvākave 'bravīt [Bg 4.1]

[The Blessed Lord said: I instructed this imperishable science of yoga to the sun-god, Vivasvān, and Vivasvān instructed it to Manu, the father of mankind, and Manu in turn instructed it to Ikṣvāku.]

evaṁ paramparā-prāptam imaṁ rājarṣayo [Bg 4.2]

[This supreme science was thus received through the chain of disciplic succession, and the saintly kings understood it in that way. But in course of time the succession was broken, and therefore the science as it is appears to be lost.]

So unless the high government officials, rājarṣis, they understand properly Bhagavad-gītā, we cannot derive any benefit from Gītā. It is not a question of interpretation.

Governor: We will do something there much better, because everything is under our control.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Governor: So I would request you to come to Madras, and we'll arrange some of your lectures also.

Prabhupāda: [to Tamāla Kṛṣṅa] If possible, take me there. Madras is not far away. It takes about two hours from Delhi.

Governor: From Delhi only one and a half hour. I came only yesterday morning. We left the plane by... Now with jet line only takes one and half hours. Otherwise they take two hours. Boeing flight. Daily.

Prabhupāda: Think over. His Excellency is inviting. It is a good opportunity.

Governor: We'll keep Mahārāja in our Raj Bhavan in very comfortable place to stay. It's like āśrama, because in our lands in my garden we have got over 1,300 deers of various type. We feel as if we are in Vālmīki-āśrama. They are all coming to us, and we give them some food also, 1,300 deer in our compound.

Prabhupāda: So accept his invitation and fix up.

Governor: Very good trees. Mango trees. There are more than two hundred mango trees in our compound. Various fruit trees. Beautiful everything. Nearly 200 acres of land is in our compound, very fine, and very cool there. The sea... There is our one small bungalow on the sea also.

Prabhupāda: So when you think it will be suitable?

Governor: I am going tomorrow to Ahmedabad with our chief minister. He has come here. Ahmedabad I stay for four days. I go to Bombay. And from Bombay I'll be in Madras on 8th back. Then I am there.

Prabhupāda: Eighth, August. So we can, if you think. So kindly submit my application to the Prime Minister.

Governor: Oh, yes.

Prabhupāda: That's it. This should not...

Governor: The difficulty because of not ours, but what happened in our Madras state, there is that Pondicherry. Pondicherry has made one Auroville. Auroville is international town. Now there are more than four to five hundred foreigners from various countries of Europe and America. Families also. Now they and those Aurobindo society people, they are going on always some disputes. And that they have developed so much that physical violence, traffic obstruction... And law and order is not there. So I receive complaints from both that "You send your police. Help us. Help us," like that. So that has come to the notice of government of India. And so they are worried, that we must have some restriction on so many foreigners living here and creating disturbance.

Prabhupāda: No, these foreigners...

Governor: Because of this, everybody, you see, is put into trouble.

Prabhupāda: But these foreigners, they will die. They will die. If I say that "You die, they will die," there is no dispute.

Governor: I know. I know all of them, how wonderful they are. But you see this government would consider all-India policy.

Prabhupāda: But you can consider our situation, that such big, big establishment and Deity... Here is a big establishment. In Māyāpur there is Deity also. They are trained up. They are helping me. So kindly... At least we have submitted some list. So give them either permanent residence or citizenship. In America I have got permanent residency, so why not here? If there is no such arrangement, give them citizenship. They have nothing...

Governor: I am meeting the Home Minister also tomorrow. I will also talk to him, Charan Singh. The meeting is. He's mainly going.

Prabhupāda: Because every year I am losing five to six lakhs of rupees for their going, again coming. Just like he's acting my secretary. Now his visa is finished. He has to go, and again he has to come back. And that means ten thousand, more than ten thousand. So in this way so many workers are...

Governor: [Hindi]

Prabhupāda: So they will never do anything harm and never take part in politics.

Governor: No, I know it. I know it.

Prabhupāda: So kindly try to help.

Governor: Oh, yes.

Prabhupāda: That is wanted.

Governor: So may I take leave? You also take rest?

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Governor: Don't take much strain...

Prabhupāda: No, I...

Governor: ...because your life is precious to... And that should not be.

Prabhupāda: No, I...