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<\/center><\/p>\nAmala Prema dd: Last May a special thing happened in my life. It was Nrisimha Caturdasi, the day when ISKCON devotees around the world celebrate the appearance of Lord Nrisimhadeva and the whole pastime with Prahlada Maharaja and Hiranyakasipu. It is a day that brings reassurance again and again that the Lord is there for us to give us protection, and that we should always seek His shelter. The celebration was made even greater by extraordinary mercy I received that day. My husband and I were invited by devotees from another town, outside our country to give bhajans and class on that auspicious day. We accepted with our whole heart, full of joy to do this wonderful service for Vaishnavas. My husband sang the maha mantra while playing harmonium and afterwards I talked about the pastime. Our hosts served prasadam to a small group of guests who attended and the evening ended on a high note. Everything went well and we were overwhelmed with gratitude our hosts and local devotees expressed after the programe. We returned to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, full of joy and positive impressions.
\nSome time after this happy event, my husband met with devotee friends from abroad and relayed our happiness with that service. While they welcomed our preaching efforts one of their questions caused confusion and even disappointment when I heard of it later. \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you give the class, but your wife?\u201d my husband was asked by one male friend. He was very much surprised to hear it and I was shocked. Moreover, since preaching Krishna consciousness is a service I like to do the most and have been doing it since my early days in the movement. However, not many devotees outside our country know this and there we were faced with a question that is a part of a bigger topic that our society is discussing these days. What can female devotees do in ISKCON? What are their rights? Is it in accordance with their nature?
\nI must say that I heard before from friends that in certain ISKCON temples in different countries female devotees are not allowed to preach in public Krishna consciousness. At the time, I though that these were isolated cases. However, as more time passed it proved not to be so. With the help of internet and social media I discovered that more devotees thought public preaching and chanting was a service to be done by male devotees, not female ones.
\nOne of the most important points that Srila Prabhupada teaches us is that one should speak and act in accordance with guru, sadhu, shastra. This is meant for our personal protection, so that we do not deviate from a spiritual path. Therefore, it is even more confusing to hear such opinions when in Chaitanya Charitamrta Adi Lila ch. 7, purport of verses 32 and 38 Srila Prabhupada wrote: \u201cAn acarya who comes for the service of the Lord cannot be expected to conform to a stereotype, for he must find the ways and means by which Krishna Consciousness may be spread. Sometimes jealous persons criticize the Krishna Consciousness movement because it engages equally both boys and girls in distribution of love of Godhead. Not knowing that boys and girls in countries like Europe and America mix very freely, these fools and rascals criticize the boys and girls in Krishna Consciousness for intermingling. But these rascals should consider that one cannot suddenly change a community\u2019s social customs. However, since both boys and girls are being trained to become preachers those girls are not ordinary girls but are as good as their brothers who are preaching Krishna Consciousness. Therefore, to engage both boys and girls in fully transcendental activities is a policy intended to spread the Krishna Consciousness movement\u2026 The results of this are wonderful. Both men and women are preaching the gospel of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Lord Krishna with redoubled strength\u2026 Therefore, it is a principle that a preacher must strictly follow the rules and regulations laid down in the shastras yet at the same time devise a means by which the preaching work to reclaim the fallen may go with full force.\u201d
\nWe see that from the first day of the movement Srila Prabhupada equally engaged both men and women in spreading Krishna consciousness. Bibhavati, his disciple who had been a journalist before joining was asked by Srila Prabhupada to continue writing and thus spreading Krishna consciousness. Himavati gave public speeches, Jyotrimayi was the chief translator for the BBT, Yamuna led kirtanas, etc. etc. The examples are many. This is explained in detail in the book \u201cYamuna Devi: A Life of Unalloyed Devotion\u201d published in 2014. Since there is a lot of misunderstanding on Srila Prabhupada’s engagement of female devotees in our movement, such a book comes like a compas to point us in the right direction.
\nIn the CC A.L. comment above Srila Prabhupada explains that \u201cgirls are trained to become preachers\u201d having seen their ability and willingness to properly and expertly convey the message of Krishna consciousness to others. He himself said many times that everything can be used in service of Krishna, every skill, every qualification. Denying female devotees the opportunity to preach in public would be a direct opposition to our Founder-Acarya. Not only that, it would impoverish our society of an important contribution and discourage sincere members who honestly want to serve their guru and Srila Prabhupada. And then what about non-devotee women who are looking for Krishna, what message would we, as a society, be sending them? To forget all their previous education and training in service for Krishna? Why when utility is the principle?
\nSome devotees point out that motherhood is the most important service for female devotees and their only contribution. However, additional skills and qualifications do not have to be in contradiction with motherhood. As children grow and their dependency on mothers is reduced, devotee ladies can use their growing free time to spread Krishna consciousness in other roles as well. It is just a matter of time management. More importantly it is a proper example to children what to do with their lives. Besides feeding them, dressing them and giving them mundane education parents are supposed to give Krishna consciousness to their children. And if they do not show by their example what to do with free time, children will not take it seriously. However, if both parents engage in public harinams, preaching, prasadam distribution then children will follow. Having two teenage sons myself I write from personal experience.
\n I joined ISKCON in 1995 in Sarajevo, when I was 19, working at a local radio station as a translator for English language. My vartma pradarsaka guru, the person who gave me first information about Krishna, was a colleague of mine who worked as a sound technician at the time. As soon as I learned the basics of philosophy she had an idea that we preach together. With our combined qualifications and blessings from temple authorities we started producing a radio programme called \u201cHigher Taste.\u201d It was one hour of Krishna consciousness philosophy with bhajans and devotee guest speakers. I was so happy that I was making an active contribution to ISKCON\u2019s mission. It gave me tremendous enthusiasm and satisfaction. It solidified my decision to become a devotee. I still have the tapes of those shows. Imagine what would have happened had the local authorities opposed me from doing it? I probably would not have stayed in the movement or the process, as it would have been understood as a ban on my sincere attempt at serving devotees, Srila Prabhupada and Krishna. It would have denied many people who listened to our programme the information on Krishna consciousness. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Amala Prema dd: One of the most important points that Srila Prabhupada teaches us is that one should speak and act in accordance with guru, sadhu, shastra.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24044"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24046,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24044\/revisions\/24046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}