CHAKRA (Brooklyn, New York) - August 21, 1999: It was one of those confirmations that we all need on occasion to assure us that everything we are doing is indeed worthwhile. For Satyaraja Prabhu, it was an unsolicited email message from Columbia professor and leading expert on Brijbhasa poet Surdas, Jack Hawley. Satyaraj sent me a copy of the letter and I decided it was time to share him and his work with the wider devotee community.

Jack Hawley offered his heartfelt congratulations to Satyaraj for his work with the following words: "In the last several weeks I have been working on music and the Vallabh Sampraday, especially, as I wrestle the Sursagar book to the ground--or it, me. And I have found myself in the pages of the Journal of Vaishnava Studies many, many times, reading things I had not read before, but which are critical to the subjects I am trying to educate myself about. What an archive you have built over the years! You have done a wonderful thing--and its true measure will not be known, perhaps, for years or, I fear, ever, really, to you personally. It's true with books, but even more true with journals, that one rarely has a sense of how/who uses you, or how much. Here's a little feedback from one user, however. I was so pleased to find that my subscription over the years meant I had in my very own office a good chunk of what I was looking for. Congratulations on a job well done."

Steve Rosen was a seventeen-year-old hippy attending the High School of Art and Design at 57th St and Manhattan when he first met a devotee. He was riding on the subway reading a Gita written by Sri Chinmoy when Madhusudana Das sprung upon him and announced, "That is poison!" Steve was shocked and said, "But you guys are into Indian philosophy. Isn't the Gita a good thing?" "Ah yes," answered Madhusudana dramatically, "But even milk when touched by the lips of a serpent becomes poisonous!"

Though certainly a memorable introduction to the Krishna consciousness movement, it was not this which impressed Steve. Rather, Madhusudana's generosity in giving him a free copy of the complete Bhagavad-gita as it is on the simple condition that he come to the Henry Street temple in Brooklyn on Sunday convinced him to look more deeply into the movement.

That Sunday, however, Steve was not overwhelmed by the devotees. One of them had spent several hours trying to convince him about the existence of different planetary systems and had left him with the feeling that these people are a bunch of crackpots. Before he left, however, Madhusudana came to him again and said, "I know you weren't favorably impressed today. But please come back next week. My spiritual master will be here..." Steve went the next Sunday. The turning point came when Srila Prabhupada stopped directly in front of him and forcefully uttered the words, "Hare Krishna!" At that moment, Steve knew that he had found his spiritual master.

But Steve, who in 1975 was initiated and became Satyaraj Das, didn't have an altogether easy relationship with the movement. For the next few years he was both in and out. It was a cycle that kept repeating itself. On the one hand, he kept finding that, as a young man, after staying in the temple he would have difficulty with the celibacy rules; but on the other, he also he resented the feeling of what he now calls "being made into a clone." He was never ready to give up his individuality. Even so, he kept returning to the temple, and allowed himself to be convinced that the temple was the only place he could become Krishna conscous. One of the places he seemed to end up often was the Radha Damodar travelling sankirtan party with Tamal Krishna Maharaj.

In 1977, after Prabhupada's disappearance, Satyaraj left the temple for the last time. He returned to New York, seriously considering what to do with his life. He knew that he couldn't continue on like this, going in and out of the movement. "I felt intuitively," he recalls, "that I could be Krishna conscious and still be my own person. If this was the ultimate consciousness, there must be different ways of attaining it. I didn't think it was necessary to lead a clone-like life, but I kept going back because I still didn't know how to do it on my own. I kept going back for the association and the chanting and the devotees kept convincing me to join again, but I finally got fed up with the cycle."

Satyaraja continued to muse on his feelings towards ISKCON at the time he left: "Another thing that struck me was that there were so many capable devotees who were unable to achieve all that they could because they lacked space and facility. I also felt that if I had the space and the facility that I could also do something."

Not long afterward, while working in New York as a messenger, Satyaraj met his wife Vrinda Devi. After nineteen years of Krishna-conscious marriage, he considers it Krishna's arrangement that he kept on leaving. He also considers his meeting with his wife a paradigm for his personal way of serving his spiritual master. He explains: "At first I didn't tell my wife that I was a devotee. Only after going out with her for several months, preaching to her indirectly about vegetarianism and other related topics, did I break the news. It was better that she know me as a person first."

Satyaraj made his living doing freelance copy editing and proofreading while Vrinda Devi worked as a graphic designer. But his real interest was always in becoming a writer. At first, Adikeshava Das suggested he start a newsletter (Sajjana Toshani) for the East Coast. A number of devotees were favorably impressed and Satsvarupa Maharaj got him writing for BTG. An important event in his life as a writer took place on a trip to Vrindavan when he met the venerable devotee scholar O.B.L. Kapoor. Dr. Kapoor, without even knowing that Satyaraj was an aspiring author, impressed on him the necessity of writing a concise life of Caitanya and that he should take up the work.

"At first I thought, ‘Who am I to write a book like this?'" Satyaraj muses, "But Tamal Krishna and Satsvarupa both encouraged me and eventually India's Spiritual Renaissance: The Life and Times of Lord Chaitanya was published.

"Subsequently, I became more and more interested in exploring the richness of the Vaishnava tradition, which is what had attracted me about Krishna consciousness in the first place. As a result, I have been writing two kinds of books, those which deal directly with Vaishnavism such as my books on the six Gosvamis and Narottama and Srinivas Acharya, and foundational books such as those about vegetarianism, "the reincarnation controversy" and one that was recently commissioned by the BBT called The Ethics and Morals of the Four Regulative Principles. I try to aim my writing at people who were like me before I came into the movement."

Satyaraj's research led to further developments. He recounts: "While working on the book about Lord Chaitanya, I had started to make contact with scholars. I sent a copy of the book to Tony Stewart who is one of the most important new scholars on the life of Chaitanya, a student of Ed Dimock. He sent the book back saying he wanted to have nothing to do with ISKCON or the Hare Krishnas. He had a very negative idea of the movement. I sent it back again saying that I didn't want anything in return, but simply wanted him to have the book. After that we developed a friendship. I think that he came to see that devotees could be individuals. Another friendly relationship formed with David Haberman, who has written on raganuga bhakti. I like to think that my function is to serve as a bridge between scholars and devotees."

I asked Satyaraj how he came to start the Journal of Vaishnava Studies. "When in India in 1990, I met with Shrivatsa Goswami and had a long conversation with him about acintya-bhedabheda which I found very exciting. I thought that I would like to do a book based on that talk, but when I sent it in for publication to BTG it was rejected as not being sufficiently in line with Prabhupada's siddhanta. Despite the setback, that conversation inspired me to go on to meet with many of the current scholars who are doing research in Vaishnava subjects. I started making contact with many of them and though they were at first skeptical that I had a non-scholarly objective, they were ultimately won over. The conversations I had with them were published as Vaishnavism: Contemporary Scholars Discuss the Gaudiya Tradition. This book also met with fairly good success and was picked up by many university libraries."

The Journal was a natural outcome of these conversations. So many of the scholars saw the utility of a publication specializing in Vaishnava subjects that Satyaraja was inspired to give it a try. The first issue in the fall of 1992 had a focus on Vraja: Land of Krishna, and contained articles such as "Vrindavan: the highest paradise," a translation of the first chapter of Gopala Campu, and "Rasa-lila performances in Vrindavan." Over the past seven years, other issues have taken up themes such as "Women in Vaishnavism," the Madhva, Ramanuja or Radha Ballabhi sampradayas, Radharani, the Bhagavad-gita and raganuga-bhakti. Numerous scholars have given their unequivocal approval to Satyaraja's efforts. He is particularly proud of the glowing recommendation given the Journal by Klaus K. Klostermaier in one of the most widely used introductory university textbooks on Hinduism (A Survey of Hinduism). Many devotee scholars have similarly found the Journal extremely useful and among those whose articles have appeared in its pages are Hridayananda Goswami, Tamal Krishna Goswami, Rabindra Swarup Prabhu, Shukavak Das, Santosh Das, and Garuda Das.

JVS has met with wide success despite continuing financial problems. ISKCON has never subsidized the publication despite active support from several GBC members. Since its inception, several hopeful projects for permanent financing of the journal have fallen through. Satyaraj has had to cut back from four to two issues per year. "We are always ready to accept donations from anyone who sees the value of this work," Satyaraj reminds me with a smile.

I usually ask devotees about their KC politics, so I asked Satyaraj where he stands on the issues of the day. He answered, "I am apolitical. I'll tell you a funny story. Last week I went to the Brooklyn temple. Puru has his booktable on one side of the street and I go to look at his books, but he criticizes me for going into the temple. Then I go to the temple and I get criticized for having looked at Puru's booktable! I am an affectionate well-wisher of all branches of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, whether it is ISKCON, Ritvik or the Gaudiya Math. I am non-sectarian. I am interested in the Holy Name and associating with devotees, not with hearing negative things about one or the other. This is why I support Yadunandana Pada's call for cooperation between the different branches of Gaudiya Vaishnavism."

A few other comments on the Journal from scholars and devotees:

Klaus K. Klostermaier (University of Manitoba, 1994): "It gives me great pleasure to testify to the excellence of the Journal of Vaishnava Studies, now in its third year of publication... Steven J. Rosen, the publisher and editor-in-chief showed both courage and foresight when launching this scholarly enterprise. The quality and diversity of contributions which JVS has published to date are amazing and a matter of great rejoicing. Vaishnavism, the numerically largest segment of Hinduism, has not received the kind of scholarly attention it deserves until the inception of the Journal of Vaishnava Studies. In its very substantial individual issues, often devoted to a key theme, a great number of first-rate Indologists and scholarly exponents of Vaishnavism have articulated aspects of this important tradition which have never been explored before in such depth. On numerous occasions I gave the JVS to graduate students to utilize it for term papers and theses."

Tamal Krishna Goswami (ISKCON GBC, 1996): "It is my experience that our missionary work flourishes in circumstances where the public is favorably disposed to us. Our work is therefore very successful in such places as India compared to nations in the West... Srila Prabhupada envisioned that ISKCON would change the world, or, as he put it, "Go down in history for having saved the world." This will require that we broaden our vision. I do not believe it is possible for such a transformation to take place simply due to our own efforts; rather, we shall have to affect many others who share similar aims. We shall have to do a great deal of transcendental networking to fulfill Prabhupad's mandate.

"The Journal of Vaishnava Studies is helping ISKCON in just such a way by creating a forum for scholars interested in Vaishnavism. Its broad appeal is reflected in the divers fields of specialization of its contributors. The JVS is helping Vaishnavism to have an audible voice in the academic community by providing established scholars as well as those coming into the field a means to exchange scholarly research, which is the very foundation of the academy.

"While nearly every variant of Judaism and Christianity has long been represented in the Academy and its scholarly journals, the only brand of Hinduism with wide circulation has been that of Sankara's monistic Vedanta. Subsequently, even amongst educated persons, Hinduism appears to be a bewildering maze of polytheistic worshipers or impersonalists...

"Hence, the Journal of Vaishnava Studies is a unique vanguard for establishing Vaishnavism among the educated. To do so it must necessarily separate itself from any individual denominational affiliation such as ISKCON. This is its strength rather than its weakness because it establishes its neutrality. Thus its readers feel onfidence that it will not be an organ for a particular point of view. This is an essential criterion for broad acceptance by the academic community."

Shrivatsa Goswami (1996): "Jaya Sri Radhe! Since its inception over three years ago, I feel that you have filled an important gap by publishing a journal of Vaishnava studies. Up until that time, it was necessary for scholars to refer to many other publications in which there may or may not have been papers published by people interested in Vaishnavism.

"Your Journal not only publishes articles written by established professors of international standing, but also by scholars who may not have had the opportunity of having their researches published. Readers can thus keep up to date with who is involved in which aspect of Vaishnavism. Therefore the subject range is wide and varied, the topics approached of interest to many, and particularly good is the focus on one particular aspect of Vaishnavism in one volume.

"I can see that in the future it will be possible to expand the journal to include more illustrations which can only further entice people to becoming more interested in studying Vaishnavism. I therefore can only wish you every success for the future and reiterate that it is not only an important educational tool and useful for scholars of Vaishnavism as well as for Vaishnava scholars, but that it is important not only for Vaishnavism, Hinduism but for India itself that the depth of onee of the richest cultures in the world can be understood."

© CHAKRA 29-Nov-2003

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