Supreme battle: Apex court to hear Iskcon dispute soon

After winning the ‘Ban Gita’ petition in a Russian court, two sets of Iskcon followers are now bracing for a turf war before the Supreme Court to determine who owns the imposing, multi-crore temple complex on Hare Krishna Hill in Bangalore.

The apex court has been asked to decide if the temple complex that came up in 1997 belongs to the Bangalore or the Mumbai branch of Iskcon.

The case, originally filed in 2001, before a local court in Bangalore, landed in the country’s apex court in May last year as a special leave petition, after going through the Karnataka high court on appeal, and is now slated for hearing on February 16.

The suit has its bearing in both theological and materialistic issues of Iskcon, founded in 1966 by AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, over the manner in which the units of the society should function and who succeeds him.

“Iskcon Bangalore is a legal entity in existence and separate from Iskcon Mumbai,” said Madhu Pandit Das,  president of Iskcon Bengaluru, who was expelled from the society in 1999 along with a few others for raising these questions.

“This is a very old case. All Iskcon trusts registered in India are affiliated to the Mumbai society,” said an Iskcon insider.

“The Mumbai trust was registered first in India in 1966 under the Societies Registration Act of 1860. The Bangalore trust followed, but under the same affiliation,” he said.

According to legal papers on the turf war, the theological debate that has been on since 1977, when Prabhupada died, found its echo during a meeting of the society’s general body at its headquarters in Mayapur near Kolkata in 1998. There, the representatives of the Bangalore Iskcon raised the theological issue, such as the succession pattern that at present rests on 20-25 members of the general body, who act as acharyas or gurus.

The question also arose on the relation between Iskcon branches and its global body.

Madhu Pandit Das supported the view that there will not be any disciple of Prabhupada to succeed him as acharya and every branch of Iskcon will be an independent entity with no administrative or organisational affiliation to the global body.

Das, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai, who has been with Iskcon since 1982, went to a local court to prevent the Mumbai branch from taking over possession of the Bangalore temple complex.

The local court gave an order in his favour.

But this has been challenged by Mumbai Iskcon, which acts like the de facto global headquarters of what is popularly called the Hare Krishna Movement with Gopal Krishna Maharaj as the India chief.

The Karnataka high court then set aside the local court’s judgment and also reversed the findings on the title to the Hare Krishna Hill temple complex in favour of Mumbai Iskcon. Now, the Bangalore branch has moved the Supreme Court.

Only in December, Iskcon had won a case in Russia where a local court in Siberia threw a petition filed by local authorities seeking a ban on a version of Bhagwad Gita written by Prabhupada as

an “extremist” literature that sought to spread sectarian hatred.