An Ecstatic Beginning

So that is the background of the position of India. Prabhupada's program for coming to India revolved around a plan to immediately restore the spiritual balance in Indian culture. In America he had to present his program slowly at first because when he first came, Krsna consciousness was a science that no one knew anything about. So he started very humbly-"I opened a temple on Second Avenue, and I chanted in a park"-and gradually he became successful. When he came back to India, however, the news of his wonderful preaching in America had preceded him.

The first thing Srila Prabhupada did was to come to Bombay, to a meeting called the Sadhu Samaj, where all the big sadhus [saintly persons] in India come together once a year. At this meeting almost every sannyasi was a Mayavadi sannyasi. And then Prabhupada came on with forty disciples from ten different countries, including Sarasvati [the three-year-old daughter of an American devotee couple], and just completely overwhelmed everyone. We all sat down in the third or fourth row, behind all the big sadhus. This was up on a very elevated stage, and there were about ten thousand people sitting on chairs on the ground. The sannyasis were all giving lengthy addresses, but I could see that all the people were straining to catch a glimpse of Sarasvati, of the foreign disciples, and especially of Srila Prabhupada. They had practically no interest in these big sadhus.

Finally, after about two and a half hours of lengthy, tedious lectures, they gave us the nod, and the first thing we did was start a rip-roaring kirtana. We danced all around those big sadhus, encouraging them to join in dancing and singing the holy names of the Lord. But they were too embarrassed to do so-in fact, most of them walked right off the stage. And we just took over the whole stage, then we jumped to the ground, and everyone rose up. We didn't ask them-they just rose up and started chanting and dancing. All the guards were trying to control them, but they pushed the guards away, and the people came in and were dancing with us in ecstasy.

We had kirtana for about half an hour. Finally we stopped and asked everyone to sit down. (Everyone rushed up to the stage. They didn't even want to sit down.) Then Prabhupada just said, "I do not want to say anything. I think that this chanting has said everything I could possibly say. I am not making any claims to have performed any miracles. I do not claim to be God. I am simply the servant of the servant of the servant of God. I am spreading Lord Caitanya's message, and this is the result." He gave a very humble talk-about two minutes-but it was just more than anyone could have said. And immediately it was all over the front pages. Then he told us to go on the streets for kirtana-immediately, again, all over the front pages. Our pictures were featured in all the leading magazines. It was sensational. We were the first substantial group of Eastern-influenced Westerners to come to India; no one had ever done this before.

And that was just the beginning. It was followed by the panḍala, the first panḍala program in Bombay, which was just unbelievable. [This was a two-week-long Krsna conscious festival in a huge panḍala, or exhibition tent, in Cross Maiden, the central crossroads of Bombay.] It put us in the forefront of public attention.