In 2005, at the request of the GBC, the Śāstric Advisory Council wrote a paper titled “Female Diksa-gurus in ISKCON.” Since then, its conclusions were the basis of several GBC resolutions. However, the SAC paper has unsubstantiated false claims, nullification of Prabhupāda’s instructions, speculation, and manufactured religious injunctions.
For example,
- Unsubstantiated and false claims:
- The 2005 paper says, “Under the . . . pancaratrika system, however, qualified women can accept and offer initiation.” In a second paper in 2013, they also said that smṛti-śāstra restriction on women is “obviously overridden by the pāñcarātrika-vidhi followed by Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas” and that there are no rules different between men and women.
- But it has been shown that Nārada-pāñcarātra (Bhāradvāja-saṁhitā) disqualifies women generally (na jātu mantra-dā nārī) and admits only very exceptional cases. This has also been quoted by Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa.
- Nullified Prabhupāda’s statement in Bhāgavatam 12.32, that Sunīti could not become Dhrūva’s dīkṣā-guru because she was a woman.
- The SAC
- gave two alternative, incompatible interpretations of Prabhupāda’s statement.
- said that Prabhupāda “is referring to an incident at a specific time in the distant past.”
- said that Prabhupāda’s statements in his letters and conversations, being more recent, “are more valuable as pramāṇas in this discussion.”
- But Prabhupāda’s statement in the Bhāgavatam is directly supported by the above statement from Nārada-pāñcarātra. The same śāstra also supports the exceptional cases.
- The SAC
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- The SAC on the basis of the Mādhurya Kaḍambinī (chapter 4) says that the stage of niṣṭha is almost as good as the stage of bhāva and concludes that “the symptoms of niṣṭha should be seen in dīkṣā-guru candidates, whether male or female.”
- But regardless of having brahminical status, women are never fit for independence.
- Women, śūdras and antyajas must therefore be at the stage of bhāva, when varṇāśrama-dharma is no longer required.
- The recent falldown of Trivikrama Dāsa shows that even in the advanced stage of niṣṭha, varṇāśrama rules cannot be transgressed.
- Male śūdras and antyajas who become brāhmaṇas by dīkṣā-vidhāna do not violate varṇāśrama
- Manufactured religious injunctions.
- Following the SAC’s recommendations for “relative prerequisites”, the GBC in 2019 MGM (Tirupati) says women are eligible to give dīkṣā if they “are at least 55 years of age and in a stable family situation, living under the protection of a husband, elder son or son-in-law, qualified householder couple or senior Vaisnava or Vaisnavi sanga;”
- The GBC’s new rule for “relative prerequites” opens the door for women in ISKCON to take sannyāsa.
- “A woman is not supposed to take sannyāsa. So-called spiritual societies concocted in modern times give sannyāsa even to women, although there is no sanction in the Vedic literature for a woman’s accepting sannyāsa. Otherwise, if it were sanctioned, Kardama Muni could have taken his wife and given her sannyāsa. The woman must remain at home. She has only three stages of life: dependency on the father in childhood, dependency on the husband in youth and, in old age, dependency on the grown-up son, such as Kapila. In old age the progress of woman depends on the grown-up son.” (SB 3.24.40)
- The lack of sanction in śāstra is prohibitive. But the GBC has created a way around this prohibition that works equally for women who want to take sannyāsa.
The SAC and GBC have nullified some of Prabhupāda’s instructions and created new vidhis not sanctioned in śāstra. Their manufactured religious principles will also allow women to take sannyāsa. As with Mahārāja Vena, who also made rules against the Vedas, no one in ISKCON is obliged to follow adharma.