
How they revised Srila
Prabhupada's books
a letter from Visoka prabhu
Haribol Locanananda Prabhu,
If some Devotees think that they only change grammatical errors and typos, they're sorely wrong. I was there in Detroit around 1980 when
the whole GBC came to the Fisher Mansion and they were really living it up, all excited about their plush rooms and banquets every day,
heck, 2 or 3 times a day. They all sat around this big huge table in the dining room and all of us were cooking and running back and forth
with exotic preps.
I was a bozo on the bus, I admit. I commend those who saw through the farce earlier than I did. Perhaps they were exposed to atrocities
before I was. Most of us did not wake up until they started to fall down. We were trained up to always follow the authority, and we
thought they were the chosen, and there was no evidence at the time to say otherwise.
So we were running back and forth from the kitchen like anything, thinking we were serving the pure devotees. I remember Ramesvara's
exact words, "What? These Jalabis are not hot!!, now bring some HOT Jalabis!!" And we'd race off like fools to the kitchen for a fresh
batch. They were dishing out the sauce for our clumsy service and we were blissfully taking it, and they were stuffing their gullets to
the max and making merry, it was like some Medieval orge banquet, nothing resembling Vaisnava honoring of Prasad.
And in bettween the feasts they were busy voting on the verses of Srila Prabhupada's Bhagavad-gita. Jayavaita would go through each
verse and read his "improvement" and they would make a show of hands to "thumbs down" or "thumbs up." I exaggerate not! They had the
audacity to make a popular vote out of changing Srila Prabhupada's words!
For most karmis, this would be highly unethical, to say the least. An author works with his editor very closely and carefully chooses each
sentence and word, and the author has the last say, and this can be a long and tedious process (as I have been doing this with
Dasarathasuta for about a year on the Jayananda book) and when the author agrees on the final edit, that is it. The book is finished the
way the author wants it to be. Nobody has the right to change it after he's gone. And for the publishing house to wait until he leaves
the planet and then to change his book all around is most reprehensible.
If any publishing house tried to do this with Dickens or Tolstoy, or anybody, you could imagine the reprecussions and outrage. So why are
we doing this to the greatest spiritual acharya this world has ever seen? Why are we letting this go on unchecked? ESPECIALLY when he
said, "Don't change my books! (don't change anything for that matter)" What gives them the right to do this? Does Jayadvaita have
any quotes to justify this?
What we need to do (I'm great at suggesting what others need to do) is to discuss this with some English professor (if I knew one, I
would) who is an authority on the fine lines of legality in regards to changing the works of an author. One who knows the difference
between correction of typos and grammar and spelling as opposed to structural rearrangement. This is probably unprecedented because
probably no person has ever been so audacious as to try to change the works of a famous author before, its probably unheard of in literary
history. Decent people just don't do these kind of things. So we should try to do this, perhaps some devotee has looked into this, I
don't know. Then we can see the legal options in the matter and either do something or threaten to do it.
Ys Visoka Dasa
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