Bhavananda

Shortly before the decision, The Sunday Age reported that he had been named, as a former member of ISKCON’s governing body, in the US lawsuit brought by Windle Turley over abuse in ISKCON schools; the paper said there was no suggestion in the suit that he was personally involved. It reported that he “would not claim some of the charges of child abuse were unwarranted, but suggested the case had been blown out of all proportion”, and that he called allegations about foreign children at a school he had been in charge of in Mayapur preposterous: “We did not have any foreigners.”

A GBC resolution of 31 March 1986 provided that “all of Bhavananda Goswamis GBC and initiations responsibilities can be resumed by him as of October, 1986.” In a letter of 8 September 1986 to the GBC chairman he referred to “the recommendations of the North American GBC committee that I suspend my GBC and Guru functions”, offered to resign his North American GBC duties and asked for leave. The sources do not state the age or status of the person approached in 1980, and nothing further should be inferred.

Rocana dasa, editor of The Sampradaya Sun, wrote in 2006 that around 1985 he was in the room at a large meeting at New Vrindaban on the future of the guru system when Tamal Krishna Goswami took a call from the president of the Atlanta temple. The temple president had just received a notarized statement from a young brahmachari, back from India, who said he had been “forcibly induced into a homosexual relationship with Bhavananda” there. This is the author’s recollection twenty years later. The statement itself has not been found, the account does not give the man’s age, and it is not known whether it concerns the 1980 approach Bhavananda admitted.

In August 1988 The Bulletin (Sydney) described the luxury residence kept for him at the New Govardhana farm near Murwillumbah, New South Wales, as unused since September 1985, when he was “defrocked”; its sidebar “Toll of the gurus” listed him among six gurus it said the GBC had excommunicated.

The accounts of how the clash began differ. The newspaper report read out in the July 1977 conversation said cattle had been beaten before shots hit villagers (“it is reported”). ISKCON’s statement said crop thieves attacked the temple and a licensed gun was fired. A former Mayapur gurukula headmaster, Jagadananda Das, later wrote that the attack followed Nitai Chand beating a local man. The same newspaper report said he had earlier been made to leave India when his visa expired and had returned; no case under the Foreigners Act against him has been found.

The farm devotee’s account. A devotee who managed New Gaudadesh at the time (name withheld) writes that Bhavananda telephoned him at New Gaudadesh to say he was sending “a young boy from Sydney to the farm” and that, after he “strongly objected”, Bhavananda “overruled my objections”; the boy arrived by train at Mildura, the nearest station. He does not recall the boy coming from the New Govardhana gurukula. Some time later, after a visit by Bhavananda for whom the devotees had spent months refurbishing the main homestead, he drove Bhavananda to the Adelaide temple, where they learned that the house had been “totally destroyed in a fire”; he recalls Bhavananda saying “something to the effect, ‘that little demon probably burnt down the house’”. He writes that insurance assessors told him it was “a clear case of arson”, started in the sauna with a flammable substance; that a farm resident who interviewed the boy reported that he had confessed; and that police took the boy to Wentworth. A Wentworth police detective then told him that the boy, who had repeatedly admitted and then denied lighting the fire, said he had done it because “your guru had molested him” (the detective’s words). The author says he told the detective he could not believe it, testified against the boy at his arson trial in Wentworth, and believes the boy was sentenced to “some time of detention in a facility for young people”. He now thinks the boy “probably, almost certainly” acted in retaliation for being molested and calls the case “a gross travesty of justice”. He says he approached the police years later but was told he would have to make inquiries at Wentworth, where the case was prosecuted.

The headmaster’s account. Achyuta das writes that Bhavananda telephoned him and asked him to send the boy, then about 12, from the Murwillumbah gurukula to “the Mildura farm”, a journey of some 2,000 kilometres, and that he did so. He writes that some time later “the sauna in Bhavananda’s custom built residence at the farm in Mildura burned down”; that the insurer’s investigators found it was arson and identified the boy; and that Bhavananda told him he would prosecute the boy “to the full extent of the law”. The transfer and that conversation are his own recollection. He says he did not know the details of the fire at the time, and that what he was later told about the abuse allegation came from others (“it was a long time ago so I cannot be sure”). His account that the boy came from Murwillumbah differs from the farm devotee’s (“from Sydney”).

Other accounts. Two anonymous online accounts say that police questioned the boy, that he said the owner of the house had abused him, and that he was convicted after a farm leader testified against him. One gives the year as about 1984 and names the farm as New Gaudadesh.

Not found. The matter does not appear in contemporary Australian news, in The Sunday Age’s 2000 report on Bhavananda, or in any ISKCON child-protection or GBC document that has been found. The Wentworth court file has not been obtained. The boy is not identified on this site.

Mayapur, 1975–1979. Jagadananda Das, who was headmaster of the Mayapur gurukula in those years and took sannyasa from Bhavananda in 1979, wrote to the former students’ website VOICE in January 1997: “At Mayapur, the situation became in many ways worse. As some people may already have pointed out on these pages, Bhavananda Maharaja, Nitai Chand, Tapomaya and other members of the Mayapura leadership were actively involved in sexual abuse of some of the children.” He added that he himself “was a true ignorant and it took me a long time to become aware of these activities”, and that “Bhavananda ran things by bullying”. The letter names two boys as particular targets; their names are not given here. Only VOICE’s reproduction of the letter has been seen.

1983. Achyuta das writes that in November 1983 a devotee arrived from Mayapur to warn him that Bhavananda was molesting under-age boys at the Mayapur gurukula, and that when he put this to Bhavananda, Bhavananda turned the accusation on the devotee who had brought it (see the record of the alleged retaliation that followed).

1986. Paramananda dasa wrote in an open letter to the GBC that in 1986 a 15-year-old former Mayapur gurukula student told him “how Bhavananda, Nitai Chand and Satadanya were having sex with the boys in the Gurukula”. This is a second-hand account; only a retyped copy of the letter has been seen.

Vrindavan, early 1980s (anonymous). In the same VOICE compilation, an anonymous former Vrindavan gurukula student wrote that when Bhavananda visited, his initiated disciples among the older boys were sent to his quarters and sometimes spent days there, “I presume in sexual ways as well”, and that boys had to line up in loincloths for inspections in the showers during his visits. The writer presents the first claim as a presumption, and none of it has been tested.

ISKCON’s child-protection office. Its July 2000 decision on Bhavananda found physical and psychological abuse of children. It did not rule on a fifth witness’s allegation of sexual abuse, because it was uncertain whether he had been a minor at the time; Bhavananda denied it. No response from Bhavananda to the other accounts above has been found.

His account of the meeting. Achyuta writes that Bhavananda received him cordially and described the reports as Krishna’s “direct mercy” on him for having tolerated “the sinful acts” of the devotee who brought them, and that he left “convinced by his humility, contrition … that he was wrongly accused”. He says that a senior devotee intervened so that he was not deported, and that he returned to Australia in 1986.

Later threats. In the same account he writes that in the late 1980s, after a national television interview in which he spoke about Bhavananda’s alleged sexual misconduct, “a group of his followers decided that I should be killed”, which he learned years later from the man who said he had been chosen to do it. He does not say that Bhavananda ordered or knew of this, and nothing more should be inferred.

Related record. Achyuta das’s account of the boy sent to the New Gaudadesh farm is on the record of the mid-1980s fire.

She says she wrote to Radhanath Swami asking him not to let Bhavananda address his congregation, and that when they met he asked her whether Bhavananda had abused her. The date of the Chowpatty class she refers to is not known. No response from Bhavananda to her account has been found.