711217 - Letter to Satsvarupa written from Bombay

Letters by Date, 1971

Tridandi Goswami
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

Date: December 17, 1971
Camp: "Akash Ganga," 7th floor, 89 B. Desai Road, Bombay-36

My dear Satsvarupa,

Please accept my blessings. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter of December 6, 1971, and I have noted the contents with great pleasure. I am especially pleased that your Gurukula project is going forward nicely. I consider that this is one of our most important projects, because people in general are only suffering due to poor fund of knowledge. So if we have facility to give them the right knowledge of how to make an end to suffering condition of life, then we shall be performing the highest type of welfare work. So you can try on this point to convince rich businessmen, educators, politicians, etc. to help us push forward this gurukul system for guiding their young children on the right path to becoming sober, upright citizens. You can inform them that if they give me proper facilities that I can save all the young people of your country from the worst danger. People are always willing to give anything for educational purpose. They think that if their children get the right knowledge then they will become very successful in life, and that is their concern, so they sacrifice everything for good educational cause. Now their children are all becoming hippies, and they do not want so much technology and knowledge which gives them no real satisfaction, so they are losing all interest in education and only they want to enjoy life, that's all. But if such children are given practical guidance on the transcendental platform, above the bodily and mental conception of life, then they will develop into perfect citizens--moral, honest, hard-working, law-abiding, clean, faithful to home and country, like that. That is the unmatched success of our Krishna Consciousness schooling system, so you introduce it nicely, so that your country's leaders will see something very nice and come to our assistance.
That is all right if Mohanananda wants to go to Sydney, provided you GBC men agree and if there is suitable replacement.
Regarding children without spiritual names, whatever name is there, if it is a boy, then add Bhakta first. Or if it is a girl, add Bhaktin before the child's name. For example, if somebody is named Robert, his new name may be Bhakta Robert. In general, if he is not initiated, a devotee adds Bhakta or Bhaktin, before the other name until they are initiated later.
Your idea for 5 different articles in BTG monthly is very nice. I like your "topical articles" also. Keep them simple and Krishna Conscious, avoiding too much bending to the public taste, but if they are appropriate to current problems, then it is nice proposal. Rayarama tried this too, but his style was not very appealing to me. Actually, people are seeking after transcendental reading matter more and more, so if we stick to our standard, as I have given you, then there is no doubt they will come to read our magazines in great numbers. You make it very attractive, with our KC subject matter as you have outlined, and our BTG will be very much in demand, without further changes. I have seen one Christian newspaper which is trying to attract the readers by resort to fashionable phrases and materialistic themes of mass public interest--simply because they have not got any real substance for attracting, they offer what they think the public might like, such as sex, crimes, amusements, like that. That is not our method. We have got such stock of real substance that alone it is sufficient to capture the readers, without such ordinary tricks and commercial formulas.
I am very pleased that you are all working so nicely for Krishna in USA, and I shall be very glad to see you all again when I come there by springtime.
I hope this will meet you in good health and enthusiastic mood,

Your ever well-wisher,

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

ACBS/sda
n.b. I'm thinking to send Saraswati there very soon--Is it all right? [handwritten]
Shyamsundar Das [handwritten]