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4                                        Mothers and Masters

          1998 by Jyotirmayī Devī Dāsī in her paper “Women in ISKCON
          in Prabhupāda’s Times,”  which provided a manifesto for a
                                  1
          brand of af f irmative-action feminism within ISKCON. Therein
          she wrote:

            Authenticity of the Proposed Arguments
            Our subject here deals with the social application of Kṛṣṇa
            conscious principles, not with philosophical knowledge.
            Therefore many of the arguments given here do not come
            from Prabhupāda’s books but from conversations between
            Śrīla Prabhupāda and his disciples in daily encounters, most
            of which of course did not get recorded. Many devotees do not
            trust  these  “Prabhupāda  said,”  but  Prabhupāda  himself  gave
            his opinion about these “Prabhupāda said.” In a reunion in
            Māyāpur in 1975, the GBC told Prabhupāda: “There are so many
            ‘Prabhupāda said’; better only accept what is in the books and
            tapes.”

            Śrīla Prabhupāda answered: “No, what I say in talks also,
            many things I say are not in my books.” (From Himāvatī.)* My
            information is coming from a notebook in which, all along the
            years, I noted the anecdotes related to me by devotees who
            lived closely with Prabhupāda or by devotees who received
            these stories from these f irst disciples. My other stories, which
            are irrefutable, are from Śrīla Prabhupāda’s letters.
          There are many dif f iculties with the above-stated argument,
          but I will briefly discuss two of the most problematic. F irst,
          the social vision articulated by Jyotirmayī Mātā is not based
          on statements from Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books. Although she
          sometimes does cite Śrīla Prabhupāda, she emphasizes that her
          main argument depends primarily on anecdotes about Śrīla
          Prabhupāda recounted by other devotees; and she states that

          * Another “Prabhupāda said”!

          1. www.dandavats.com/?p=14535 (retrieved 25 Dec 2014).
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