Racism
Hare Krishna! All glories to Srila Prabhupada! Haribol in the light of what’s happening around US, is it possible for the ISKCON primary school to have classes for students to understand what is racism and how to avoid becoming one. When we teach from youth they’ll grow up with better characteristics. Please consider having this if it’s not already openly discussed.
ASA - This reminds us of two devotees in the Berkeley Temple, Gohita Das and Ajamaila Das, who used to joke about racism all the time. Gohita was from low class white family, some brothers in prison. Ajamila was a black bodied devotee. He had been a trainer for elite military commandos in the the US Army. As solid as a rock.
They would make all kinds of clever racial jokes to each other. Eg.
G: "Hey Buddy, what you doin here. This is the white man's Hare Krsna, Temple. The Black Hare Krsna Temple is down the street".
A:"Oh, thank you, I didn't know. I'll take a quick bath and get right over there".
Even more intense: I was returning from the Saturday Pre-Rathayatra Festival in Vancouver with Jaya-govinda, Temple President, driving, Prthu Das (German) in seat next to him, myself and Bhir-krsna Das (Jewish) and one more Senior devotee in the back.
Prthu and Bir-krsna were carrying on a kind of joking banter of racial/ethnic superiority that had been obviously going on for a few days before.
Then Prhu Das with a completely smug, nose in the air attitude arrogant German attitude said, "Well I don't care what you say, I never met a Jew who wasn't a pig!".
Bhir-krsna Das broke into paroxysms of laughter and Prthu was struggling, struggling, struggling not to break character and start laughing. The rest of us were amazed at the level of play and eyes turning wet with the humor.
Devotees can be deeply involved in understanding these race, gender, age, wealth etc differences and removing the poison while finding the truth, no?
Big topic.
Maybe only topic un K.C.
