On Book Changes
By Dean Dominic De Lucia/Dharmapad Das
I have been accompanying the controversy surrounding the proofreading and editing changes to the books of His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, Prabhupada, for the last few years now. Surely most of the ISKCON community has. Since I am a university trained translator and since I have worked a few years in the translation environment, I would like to make a few observations of a different feather.
First of all, Shrila Prabhupad did make a comment to the effect that if anyone could make changes, it would be Jayadwaita Swami. The question is whether or not such a comment can justify the many, many wholesale proofreading changes that have occurred to Shrila Prabhupad’s books. I have another way of defining the sheer number of changes, though. I make this comment in the sense that, of course, there have been many, many changes, but the overwhelming majority of them have been of the same category. There has mostly been one type of change: routine grammar and vocabulary changes.
For example, I recently saw a change pointed out that substituted the word “God” with “Lord”. This was decried as an absolutely unnecessary substitution, but I just had to shake my head and disagree. The term “God” is a very colloquial word, a word of everyday usage, and doesn’t have the stature of the term “Lord”. Even when one wants to curse and use foul language against another, the person can employ the word “God” and say “God damn you”. It goes without saying that “Lord damn you” is never heard because the term “Lord” is formal and has too much stature for such usage. Surely the usage of the term “Lord” is going to be more appropriate for Shrila Prabhupad’s books, which must even pass the test of university acceptance. According to the first canto of Shrimad Bhagavatam, Godhead is glorified with uttama shloka; since uttama refers to the highest, we can understand that the highest vocabulary should be found in Shrila Prabhupad's books.
And I have seen multiple changes of verb tenses. For example, changes involving the simple past tense and the present perfect tense. The simple past tense is employed when an action began and finished at a certain time or moment in the past, while the present perfect refers to an indefinite time in the past or to an action whose influence continues from the past until the present (it is also informally called the past with have). An example of the simple past would be ”I did it last Tuesday”. And example of the present perfect would be “I have eaten in that restaurante before”. There are times when the two should definitely not appear in the same sentence, or the one after, and there are times when they can. This has been quite mixed up in Shrila Prabhupad’s books, and the original BBT proofreaders didn’t catch this type of mistake. Jayadwaita Swami has corrected these mistakes and others, giving uniformity and cohesion to the texts.
By the way, as far as the simple past tense and the present perfect/past with have is concerned, the British observe the difference very well while Americans are simply oblivious to it. However, Americans do often observe the difference in written English.
Changes such as these may be many, but they are, as I have mentioned, all of the same general type; they are grammar and vocabulary changes, and do not intrude upon the meaning of a sentence. They are harmless as far as changes go, and truly should not be cause for concern.
There are other genres of change, however, which require more scrutiny. I am referring to editing changes with reference to women, homosexuality, dark races and politicians. These types of changes could have much impact on the Hare Krishna movement, specifically on ISKCON, and even have the effect of doing away with Shrila Prabhupad’s movement.
To give an example, women are referred to as less intelligent in Shrila Prabhupad’s books, and the words “alpa medhasa” from the Bhagavat Gita and Shrimad Bhagavatam are even employed as a reference. Is this a mechanical translation? I do not know Sanskrit, but I have to wonder if the reference refers to the fact that women are usually more emotional than men, and less dry and logical. This is usually true and this concept has much acceptance in general. There are women that have a masculine psyche, and men who have feminine psyches; but in general this emotional vs. logical explanation is accepted as being valid.
This concept has support in Krishna lila when we see that, on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, after Ashvattama murdered the sleeping sons of Droupadi, Shri Krishna and Arjuna wanted to kill Ashvattama as punishment. This was a totally rational and non sentimental decision. On the other hand, the mother of the murdered sons, Droupadi, decided that Ashvattama should be shown mercy on the grounds that he was the son of their spiritual master. We can easily define that her decision was a sentimental interpretation of the situation, although not without justification; so much so that hers was the decision that was finally taken! The literature doesn’t state that her sentimentalism was simply indulged against all that was right and proper; nor has it ever been written or proposed that she was unable to assess the situation because, as a female, she was simply too witless and unintelligent. There is no reason to doubt that she had as much cerebral pathways and connections as anybody. What is explained is that, as a woman with feelings, she quickly recognized a truthful facet to the situation that others did not care to emphasize.
Before we arrive at conclusions about Shrila Prabhupad’s translation of the term alpa medhasa, let us first consider what transpired from the time his books were written to the time that they published and finally read by his followers or the public. Shrila Prabhupad is an author who wrote in a language which was not his original language and which, he never mastered, especially in the beginning. Not only was he an author who penned original writings into a foreign language that he hadn’t mastered, but he was translating from Bengali culture which had certain biases about women as a class, that were passed forward to a target language and culture which was and is intolerant of those biases; in this case, into the English language and western culture.
When the original proofreaders (who have typically been referred to as editors) received Shrila Prabhupad’s writings in their hands they certainly had very little or no technical training, nor sufficient cultural understanding, to proofread translations from Sanskrit and Vedic culture into English. In order to define things, we can say that what we have is the original language and culture, Sanskrit and Vedic culture; an intermediate language and culture, Bengali; and the target language and culture, English and western civilization.
The trouble is that the intermediate Bengali language and culture will not always act as transparent mediums but sometimes as filters that distort meanings and intentions. The medieval Hindu culture had much imposed upon its perspectives towards women thanks to [I use this term loosely] the intrusions of the Islamic invaders.
Consider the following example of cultural imposition upon the ancient temples of northern India. They were scraped clean of the sculpture art which had been there upon their spires and domes. This is not so in the South because the invading Muslims did not establish themselves in the South. The original sculptural artwork upon the temple domes and spires of the ancient temples of South India and even Angor Wat in Cambodia have typically shown erotic scenes including nudity in general, prominent female breasts, external genitalia and various erotic postures. These sculptures were not hidden off to the side, but rather they were featured very visibly on the temples which were the object of family pilgrimages and surely circumambulation for all strata of society. What this tells us is that sexuality, and even the erotic side of sexuality, was not hidden under the rug in Vedic society, there seemed to be no hatred, resentment or insecurity against the affectionate and sexual side of life
And, just as day follows night and night follows day, I seriously doubt that the Vedic treatment of women was based upon the understanding that women had such insufficient cerebral connections that they had to be subordinated and that decisions had to be made for them with all the paternal goodwill and blessings that the menfolk could muster! Women did maintain a low profile in society, but we can imagine that this would be so that the wife of one man wouldn’t be contemplated by another – enough said.
More evidence of the Islamic influence upon the earlier, immediate post–Vedic culture is available, but this influence is so obvious and so widely accepted that we don't need to dwell on it. What is easily recognizable is that the middle-man, Bengali language and culture has contributed much to the misunderstandings that are currently surrounding book changes.
Thus, there is a resulting need to adjust for fidelity transmission from the original Vedic posture without the influence of more recent Hindu mores and norms; and without offending the divine status of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, Prabhupad; that is, as it is commonly understood by the devotee community.
I say “as it is commonly understood” because even pure devotees make mistakes, and this idea doesn't go over well with the devotee community. One reason why pure devotees can make mistakes is because they are not omniscient, or at least we can say that they don’t exhibit omniscience. For example, a pure devotee might reach across his desk in order to grab a pen, and let's say that he just wanted a normal pen of blue or black ink. But let's say that he picked up a pen with green ink and started writing. He might have thought "My goodness, this isn't the pen I wanted." Can we conclude from this that the Supersoul does not guide pure devotees? Akrura surely did err in Krishna lila when he backed the wrong man in the Shyamantaka Jewel incident. Another example is that Shrila Prabhupad made a comment to the effect that he misjudged when he gave sanyasa/the celibate order of life, to westerners because the West was not an appropriate place to live in as a celibate renunciate. And this awarding of the sanyas order went on for quite a while before he decided that it wasn't a good idea.
In a lecture on the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter Four, Verse Twelve, in Vrindavan on August 4, 1974, Shrila Prabhupad translated this term alpa medhasa by equating intelligence with the weight of one's brain. This implies that tall people and people with a broad build are smarter than thin or short people, but common experience tells us that this is not so. I spoke with a neuropsycologist of national repute in Brazil, and who is well-published abroad, and I was informed that intelligence is not related to the size of the brain. The brain develops neuropathways until more or less seven years of age in relation to stimuli received, and that there are other factors related to the development of these pathways such as genetics. But intelligence testing demonstrates that intelligence is not related to the size of the cranial cavity.
This truth is evidenced by an objective look at pure intelligence, which reveals that women are currently outperforming men on the university level. This is a trend that has been coming on strong for a while now, and which continues to swell.
We find in a lecture on the Shrimad Bhagavatam, Canto One, Chapter Three, Verse Twenty-one, on September 26, 1972, that Shrila Prabhupad translated alpa medhasa by referring to one's mode of thought, by stating that su medhasa refers to a pious mode of thought while alpa medhasa refers to the thought processes of rascals.
So which does alpa medhasa refer to? A slower and duller brain because of its weight and size, less able assess, synthesize or abstract; or a pious or rascal mode of thought, all depending on its weight? It can't be both ways; and we already know that weight doesn't relate to any kind of thought process anyway.
Obviously, Shrila Prabhupad was influenced by his background Hindu culture – which has been much influenced by Islamic invaders, and which isn't purely Vedic at this point in the Kaliyuga – and he simply went off on a tangent.
The incongruencies with his presented reasoning is coming to be analyzed up all over the internet on pages and in forums. For the good of the spreading of Krishna consciousness, for the good of ISKCON's membership drives and membership retention, it should simply be concluded that Shila Prabhupad, in spite of his pure intentions, adopted a mistaken posture in his translation/transmission of this alpa medhasa concept.
Now, what would be the practical result of applying the alpa medhasa, less intelligent concept? Let’s consider the hypothetical situation of a lady who, for whatever reason, has been left alone to raise her children. Let’s say that she had prepared for her life by doing most things right; she studied, has a profession, knows how to earn a living, and her folks are willing to help a bit. She is in charge of the childrearing, of course, and she makes informed decisions and sends her kids to school.
Now, in the workplace, she has to dress normally for an office worker, which means that she has to dress more or less attractively; wearing nice dress suits and a normal amount of makeup, et cetera. What else is she supposed to do? If she doesn’t dress normally, she’ll have trouble in the workplace.
If we were to suddenly transport her and her situation to Afghanistan, for example, she would be publicly referred to as a whore, a strumpet, and if she didn’t completely surrender to Middle Eastern culture right away, she would probably be stoned to death. This, of course, is easily recognized as exaggeration.
If she were to join the Hare Krishna movement, though, what would be the plan for her? Would the authorities ask her to go to a farm community and lead a traditional life, and to allow the authorities to orient her in relation to her next marriage and childrearing? Would this be a solution for society at large? And wouldn't she be more responsible, educated and informed than most ISKCON authorities in the first place? Are we going to simply put in the books that she is less intelligent, and that she needs to be led through life while having important decisions made for her by her authorities and husband?
Most of the women in the West aren’t like Indian or Chinese women; in the West they are from Kshatriya/warrior stock. They can fend for themselves quite well, and over the centuries, they have come to distrust the leadership of men and to abhor the consequences of leaving their lives in the hands of men. Experience has shown them that men (in the Kaliyuga) do not deserve to be put on such a pedestal, such that women conclude that they are not unreasonable in their desire to be able to take their lives into their own hands.
Their place in society, rights and behavior cannot be separated from their dependents, either, and being left alone to fend for their children is something that typically happens to them. So the truth be known, they need to have the option of autonomy in order to be responsible to their children, because being dependent and submissive leaves them, and their children, vulnerable and without a backup plan.
Women may be more emotional but even being more emotional, they are quite capable of accumulating knowledge and information, and practically applying it all to their lives and to the lives of their dependents. Women have shown themselves to be equally competent and responsible as men, or even more so.
An educated, proper sort of woman is usually more intelligent than most of the general masses of men in the Kaliyuga, and to present comments in the literature about their emphasis on emotional thinking, as opposed to a more rational mode of thought, as meaning that they are less intelligent is simply not appropriate, and such a presentation is becoming a very real obstacle to preaching and devotee retention.
How can it be, then, that the books are going to simply brand women as being less intelligent, and therefore, that they have to be submissive and led by others? What is the practical plan after that? Because desha, kala patra, time, place and circumstance, come into play, too. Society currently imposes certain stipulations in their favor, and the great majority of women agree with this modern way and expect it. From such a platform, how will they integrate into ISKCON society if they are branded as being less intelligent people who have to be submissive to men in a blanket way? Branded, that is, on the authority of books that have been translated in an over simplistic way according to cultural biases.
The readers should realize that the translations in the books regarding female dharma cannot just be left as they are because these comments, and the policies of the Krishna conscious movement based upon them, will be met with wholesale rejection by half of the population, if not more. Know that most of these comments haven't come to the attention of society yet, what to speak of the media. Most women are going to think that the devotees of Krishna are very ludicrous, and such an image doesn’t help anybody. Women as a class will be alienated, and newcomers will be repulsed and won’t even join. They’ll go off and practice transcendental meditation or something else besides Krishna Consciousness.
What to speak of lawsuits by women who feel that they have suffered affliction, tribulation and discrimination because of policies and practices justified by such translations. There are set laws against discrimination. It would not be farfetched at all, given the modern legal climate, to say that these comments could end up being the undoing of the Hare Krishna movement in courts of law.
Perhaps Jayadwaita Swami could help this situation by setting things right, presenting and making more careful translations as they should have been done in the first place. The implications of simply translating the ancient texts as meaning that women are less intelligent – instead of having more emotional intelligence, though perhaps less of a logical thought process – were never brought to Prabhupad’s attention; but perhaps now the proofreaders can confront this problem and craft a translation in such a way that Shrila Prabhupad’s original intention is not lost, but that the translation doesn’t offend and drive away half of the population.
A related gender problem has to do with the way in which the word "demoniac" is used in Shrila Prabhupad’s books to refer to homosexual orientation. Often when I hear Shrila Prabhupad use that word I feel that what would be more normal English in that circumstance would be to employ the word “materialistic”. The word "demoniac" is a very severe one and not appropriate to refer to sincere devotees who happen to be homosexual. I don’t imagine that this was ever brought up, explored and discussed with Shrila Prabhupad.
Now, here we are decades later, with translation issues; and this particular issue discourages otherwise sincere devotees and alienates them, if it doesn’t out-and-out drive them away. This is another comment that could be found to be discriminatory in the court systems and bring on punitive damages that could stymie and paralyze Shrila Prabhupad’s ISKCON.
The reader probably doesn't realize that a person who functions in a second language can go for a long period of time in a world of his own with an off-kilter usage of a particular word without realizing it, or without realizing the word's exact impact. This is only normal because most of the readers only know and speak their native language, the readers don't quite know what it is like to navigate through life in a second language. A person just doesn’t pick up on things in the same way as he or she would in his or her native language. And what if the native language includes an intermediate-cultural bias that the person brings over to the target language as a habit that he has never truly been confronted about?
Which brings us to the comments referring to dark races. I am not going to say that Shrila Prabhupad was wrong in any of his comments about them.
And it is also notable that the white European races are directly from Vedic stock, which has to be something in their favor when it comes to practicing dharma. There is even a comment from the second canto of the Bhagavatam referring to the unique beauty of the Mediterranean races of the time. Nowadays, these races are represented by, for example, the Macedonians, the Catalonians in Spain, or the French.
But currently, in North America and even in Europe, there is a demographic change underway such that the populations that will soon be reading Shrila Prabhupad’s books will be greatly represented by the darker Mexican-Americans, Afro-Americans, Middle Easterners and others. For this reason, the current perspectives and admiration for Europeans that seem to be woven into Shrila Prabhupad’s books may not be so appropriate or helpful to the promulgation of Krishna Consciousness. In fact, there are comments in his books that tend to strongly alienate people of darker races, and that could see ISKCON wind up as victims of discriminatory lawsuits similar to the situation with women and homosexuals.
Shrila Prabhupad wrote from the perspective of an Indian who was brought up in Victorian times, but those times are gone (or going) with the wind, as they say.
And politicians? If Shrila Prabhupad’s books don’t brand them as royal editions of dogs, hogs, camels, asses, liars, thieves, cheaters, sex maniacs and people who wouldn’t stop at eating their own children in their quest to take over the world; then some of these comments are to be found in recorded lectures, some of which get published from time to time. While more than true, there is no practical need to pull the tiger’s tail! It is my feeling that higher-echelon world powers-that-be have taken a dim view of the Hare Krishna movement, specifically ISKCON, because of such comments.
To give a more specific example, does the reader remember the admonishments that Shrila Prabhupad made against the Apollo landings? He set up a scientific institute, the Bhaktivedanta Institute, to present counter arguments, and he had the intention of publishing the institute’s conclusions and findings. Keep in mind that when I say “publish,” I am referring to a religious leader whose disciples were distributing nothing less than millions of books every year in North America and Europe!
These comments, coming from a personality with so much written penetration, could have certainly caught the attention of – and more than upset – our world leaders. If Shrila Prabhupad were poisoned, as some insist, I have no doubt that the situation brought on by such comments could have been the driving force behind his demise. It is over simplistic and too easy to just sit back and cry that his long-time disciples – with whom he had mutually fond and genuine relations – were mongering after the old man’s position such that so many agreed to and conspired to murder him by poison in order to take over. (How do you galvanize so many to conspire?) There were newcomers and others that had access, too.
This specific class of comments concerning politicians by Shrila Prabhupad was not intrinsic to his chief mission of spreading Krishna-conscious understandings and the chanting of the Holy Names around the world, and may have caused more trouble than they have been worth (especially to him).
Again, perhaps Jayadwaita Swami could present Shrila Prabhupad’s words in such a way that his intrinsic intentions are conserved, but not in such a way that political leaders feel inclined to manipulate behind the scenes in order to do away with ISKCON’s Hare Krishna movement; be it through legislation, through the courts, through the police or by misusing Shrila Prabhupad’s comments about women, dark races and about the politicians themselves!
Acceptance of proofreading changes is going to largely depend on how the members of the devotee community view their relationship with their preceptors, their gurus; and specifically with the Founder-Acharya A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, Prabhupad. He himself showed that he had to make mid-course corrections in his policies and stewardship over his ISKCON community, and made an obvious effort, in his speech and in his books, to familiiarize his followers with the concept of time, place and circumstance – desha, kala, patra. If the devotee community is going to set in stone every policy he ever had in place, every last comment he ever made, every perspective he ever espoused or any way of doing things that was in vogue while he was with us – even when the result has been observed to be detrimental – then the mission that he established to spread devotion to Krishna and the chanting of the Holy Names will develop cracks and eventually break into brittle pieces due to its rigidity. Hopefully the devotee community will come to accept the need to adjust the presentation made in Shrila Prabhupad's books by the one person that he singled out as the one who could do so – Jayadwaita Swami.
And remember not to worry about the grammar and vocabulary changes; there is nothing there to even cause concern.