710728 - Letter to Tamala Krishna written from New York

Letters by Date, 1971

Tridandi Goswami
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
Founder-Acharya:
International Society for Krishna Consciousness
CENTER: 439 Henry Street,
Brooklyn, New York,
U.S.A

DATE ..........July...28,.........19.71

My Dear Tamal Krishna,

Please accept my blessings. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter of July 20, [handwritten] 1971, and I have considered the contents carefully.
So far the Book Fund in the name of ISKCON, I changed it in Bombay before leaving India and I have advised the Calcutta bank to transfer all balance to the Bombay account. So there is no anxiety about taxation as you are so much afraid.
And another thing is, I do not know how you are going to audit the accounts without making the accounts perfect. The auditing of accounts is done when the business account is made perfect by drawing trial balance and balance sheet. Have you done these things? They must be made by an experienced accountant. I do not know how Jayapataka or Rsi Kumar can draw up this trial balance and balance sheet. Anyway somehow or other you have to prepare them, then talk of auditing. Send me a copy of what you have made. According to law our Society is registered within (less than) one year, so I don't think a one year trial balance sheet is necessary, therefore there is no question of auditing the account.
Regarding our cornerstone ceremony, if Indira Gandhi is not available at any time, then forget this ceremony. But if she is so kind to you as you said in your letter then she can come at her convenience. Otherwise we don't require to have such elaborate ceremony. Because it appears that nobody is going to give us any big donations, at least for the time being it appears that there is no such prospect.
Regarding giving contract for building our temple I think it is not a good proposal. We are not so rich. The plans made by Jaju's engineer is alright. We can engage our own men to construct the temple without any contractor. Naranarayan is experienced, and there are so many experienced men in our Society and I think some of them may go to Mayapur and we will construct ourselves. Besides, in India many of our godbrothers have constructed big big temples but they have never taken the help of any contractor or engineer. The native masonry workers are very experienced so we can simply supervise.
To give the contract to Martin, BURN or BALLARDIE [handwritten] is too big a scheme, because these contractors were engaged in building the Victoria Memorial Hall. I don't think we can give them proper remuneration. So far I can understand from Giriraj's letter he thinks money is expected only from Life Members, not from big contributors. Rebatinandan does not require to go to Bombay because I have received a letter from Madhudvisa and things are going nicely there. Besides Rebatinandan is on the Mayapur Committee so why he should go to Bombay? He is doing well in conjunction with Giriraj and Giriraj writes that he is his only helper. On the other hand, some of the rich men like Bajoria, Jalan and K.K. Birla may be added to the Mayapur Committee. I think this will help our Mayapur scheme very nicely.
Have you taken deliver of the sales deed document of Mayapur land? Please send me a copy. There were some crops on the land with Rs. 4000/- worth of crops. Have they been sold and the money realized?
Regarding land purchase. There is no need of purchasing land now because their impression is that Americans will buy the land so they have increased the price by three times. We shall purchase later at our convenience at the real price. Let us utilize this eleven bhigas of land first, we shall see to more land later. We shall not artificially increase the price at the present moment by acquiring land now.
Hope this meets you in good health.

Your ever well-wisher,

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

n.b. Please reply this letter to our London address.

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