Prabhupada And Nehru’s Incarnation
June 20, 2008 by the-truth-detector
Filed under India
The incident that we are going to recount took place in mid-sixties. It took place soon after Nehru’s death when Prabhupada was still alive. I was then working in an office in downtown Broadway in New York City, not too far from Brooklyn.
There at Brooklyn, in Henry Street, Prabhupada used to preach in a small house, which served, at the time, as some kind of a head-quarters of the Hare Krishna people. I used to go and attend their services, now and then, mostly after office and before returning to my apartment in Flushing, Queens.
Prabhupada, whenever he visited New York at the time, put up there and his sermons were attended in the evenings by a big crowd. Not only were there the usual chantings and eventual prasadam but there was a serious question and answer period. And the subjects varied from Varnashram Dharma to Reincarnation and many other similar topics. They were naturally of great interest to the local boys and girls, men and women of America but for us Hindus of India too, the question & answer period was of extreme interest and enlightenment. Those who have had the good fortune of hearing, first hand, Prabhupada’s sermons could easily imagine how charged the discussions were.
Nehru had died only a few weeks ago in India. Ashes from his funeral pyre had been strewn from airplanes, all over India. Every-where in India, the dead man’s eulogy was being sung and this was the man who was at the root of India’s unpreparedness when China attacked, the Kashmir imbroglio, the minority (or Mohammedan) problems in India and so on. It was amazing that many of the American disciples of Prabhupada were better informed of problems in India, generated by Nehru and his incompetence. However, the man had died only recently and out of a sense of propriety, no one spoke ill of Nehru in that congregation at the time.
Then a youngman asked Prabhupada a question on re-imcarnation. Was it true that most dead were reborn and passed through the cycle of life and death once again, except those few good men who attained nirvaana and were not born again but blended with Brahman or the Almighty? If so, could Prabhupada (who was considered to be a reincarnation of the sage Vyasa, the writer of the Mahabharatam) throw some light on the current status of Nehru. Did he obtain nirvaana or was he reborn; if so what kind of a body did he receive on his next birth?
The question was a loaded one, I thought. In fact, I had the misgiving that Prabhupada might refuse to answer. But then, I was wrong. I had not yet known Prabhupada so well. He was undaunted by any question and his reply came forth instantly. Quite clearly Prabhupada knew Nehru like the palm of his hand; it was us who knew so little of the man, thanks to all the well executed suppression of details of Nehru’s private and personal life by the GoI and the Indian media. For instance, even today, some half a century after Nehru and his family took over the reins of Indian government, we do not know who indeed was Indira’s father-in-law!
Prabhupada started his discourse. He said that Nehru was re-born almost immediately after his death, a thing that happens only to the most sinful people. He did not even have a short-lived taste of heaven before he was born again. What was worse, is that Nehru was born this time in the form of a dog. He was a dog in a small town of Sweden. His master had another dog before the dog-Nehru was acquired by him and so the dog-Nehru had to share the love of his master with another dog.
Prabhupada explained that to be born as a dog, after having been born as a Kashmiri Brahmin in India, is a big fall. It indicated that Nehru had led a vile life, a very vile life, during his existence as a man in India. Also, Nehru’s hatred for anything vaishnava did not make things any easier for him.
That Nehru was a meat-eater, specially beef-eater, a regular wine-drinker, made things even worse for him. On top of that, Nehru was (a fact which we did not know then and learnt later, much later, only after having read M.O. Mathai’s treatises on Nehru; Mathai should know for he was the Catholic private secretary for Nehru for a decade or so) a notorious womanizer. It was not only Mrs. Mountbatten that he slept with on a regular basis while our jawans were dying on battle fields in the north-east and in Kashmir; he used to sleep with each and every woman he could lay his hands on. Thus, he had left a chain of bastards one of whom had been delivered in a Catholic nunnery in Bangalore. In the mean time, his sidekick, one Krishna Menon, became the Minister of Defense. First thing he did was dismantle the Ichhapore Gun Factory and turned it into a coffee making machine factory. He was a communist and he loved the Chinese more than he loved Indians.
Prabhupada was quite discreet; we know now, for he did not divulge to us at the time that Nehru finally died of syphilis (exactly like the communist leader Lenin of Russia) and not a bullet wound on the battle front. Prabhupada, however, told us in detail all the harms Nehru did to the Hindus of India, all the insults that he had heaped on them during his reign.
Nehru used to brag of his non-Hindu upbringing. He used to say openly that he was brought up as a Mohammedan, educated as a westerner; it was only by accident that he was born a Hindu. It is now known that he was born in a house in the red-light district of Allahabad, where his father Motilal used to ply a brothel-keeper’s trade. No one wants to talk of this dark side of Nehru’s upbringing. On the other hand, it is said openly, wrongly of course, that he was born in the Anand Bhavan, which was not even owned by Moti Lal at the time Nehru was born.
However, the few little details that we learnt from Prabhupada opened our eyes and I returned home very depressed. I was even more depressed to think that our people in India were singing all kinds of fulsome obituaries for this man who was worse than a traitor to the Hindus, the overwhelming majority of India. What was wrong? The next few years showed us all that was wrong! His daughter, in order to create differences between the Hindus and the Sikhs, the fighting arm of the Hindus since generations, attacked the sacred temple at Hari-Mandir Sahib in Amritsar. She had to pay for the crime with her life and event-ually, as we have all seen, our gods saw to it that the dynasty was totally destroyed for the sins of Nehru, now a dog in Sweden! -
I have not come across the word ‘Hindu’ in our scriptures.
As I understand, that word was used by Persians to refer to the people living beside the river Indus.
So is ‘Hinduism’ not defined in any of our scriptures. My guess is that ‘Hinduism’ was coined by some Britisher.
By accepting to label ourselves as Hindu we begin to travel in paths untrodden by our ancestors- the sages who travelled this earth before us- and thus break away from our anscestors and make of ourselves orphans.
When we accept for ourselves a label that somebody else has given us, then we have to inevitably accept the definition they give us. And the definition they have chosen for us is definitely to suit them and in no way complementary to us. In their definition Sati, Child marriages, Caste oppression, bigotry, blind beliefs, superstitions, gender inequality, erotic sex, etc., are the customs that defines this ‘religion’ they call ‘Hinduism’.
These customs, I do not find in our scriptures. What I find in our scriptures is everything opposite of what they have defined.
That being so, are we not doing a great disservice to ourself and the future generations if we call ourself by that name?
What I have come across in our scriptures is the sage calling himself as Brahma - ‘ Aham Brahmasmi’, after achieving realisation. ‘I am Brahma- the supreme universal power.’
Which is the exact opposite of what the westerner defines his religion ‘ Hinduism’.
The tendency to label and slot people is inherent in the western thought influenced by the church which views Bible/Quran as the sacrosanct word of God which implies that everything is pre-defined, labelled.
People who follow Christianity, Islam, Communism etc., have to per force label themselves because it is done so by their Church/belief system. They also have definition for those who are non-followers- kafirs/ pagans/ capitalist etc. Independent thought has no place in such system.
The thought system prevalent in India by contrast was very dynamic and self-regenerating. This thought process can never be understood by the majority of the westerner/christian/muslim/jew/communist.
But that should not stop us from appreciating the wealth that we have.
It is intellectually liberating to refuse labels pasted upon us by others to suit their needs.
To the extent that it is deliberate insult to be called that name!
If at all we need identity for communal purposes(its not such a bad word!*), let it be the identity of being Indian- a citizen of India.
That the public consciousness accepts such labels indicates the extent to which the westerner occupies the intellectual landscape of our nation and the extent to which we have made ourselves Orphans- without ancestors!
*communal
–adjective 1. used or shared in common by everyone in a group: a communal jug of wine.
2. of, by, or belonging to the people of a community; shared or participated in by the public: communal land;
Building the playground was a communal project.
3. pertaining to a commune or a community: communal life.
While I am not a particular fan of Nehru , I wanted to know that given he has reincarnated as a Dog in sweden which was decades ago and by now that dog is probably dead and gone, what has happened to his soul? Plus when people are reincarnated as Animals do they even realise as to why they have obtained that kind of status. Does the dog posses the cognitive ability to realise as to what he did in his past life to obtain the life of a dog in the first place?
There are humans in this planet that live far worse off than dogs. I have dogs at home as pets and I care for them with all my heart and treat them like they are family or my own kids or younger siblings so in my view those dogs would not be suffering at all. I think true punishment is when the perpetrator realises that he is indeed being punished for his sins or crimes although the definition of Sin is very ambigious. For example Idolatry is a sin in Islam and Christianity while meat consumption is a sin in Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism.
Please forgive me for defining what I think punishment should be when I am in no place perfect at all to define what constitutes punishment. Infact I as a human being try my best to be good and good to others but it is frustrating to be around people who are bad influences, but I guess that could be intepreted as a test to rise above all that and do the right thing.
-Muski
Hare Krishna Muski
Thank you for the thoughtful questions.
The dog that Nehru incarnated as is surely dead and gone by now, but the soul of Nehru will never die. The soul is eternal. It was in the body of Nehru and then, because the soul did not properly use the body of Nehru to become free from attachments to the material world was degraded into the body of a dog.
In one sense you are right. A dog in Sweden would probably have lead a very pampered life and Nehru in the dog’s body probably felt quite happy a lot of the time. But the problem is he is still in a material body and the real suffering in a material body is birth, old age, disease and death. So he did not escape from these sufferings, there are also three other types of sufferings that every living entity who has a material body has to suffer. That is miseries coming from the mind, miseries coming from the acts of other living entities and miseries caused by the demigods who control the world around us. So as a dog Nehru would also have to suffer these three types of miseries.
But the worst thing about going from a human body to a dog’s body is that in a dog’s body one can not think about the subtle things a human can think of. Dogs have only four motivations: eating, sleeping, mating and defending. They have no ability to ponder the bigger questions of life like, “Why am I here?” “What is the purpose of life?” and “How can I get out of the material world?”
So it is a a great problem to loose the human form of life. It means, at least for some time, our spiritual advancement is interrupted.
You have a little bit misunderstood. It is not exactly punishment which is the reason Nehru was put in the body of a dog. Nehru developed the consciousness of a dog in this life so at the time of death he was thinking like a dog, therefore his next body was a dog’s body. That is the most suitable body for him and he may feel quite “happy” in a dog’s body.
There is on story of King Indra, the king of heaven who was cursed to become a pig on this earth planet. So after some time Narada Muni came down to the earth and informed Indra in the body of the pig that he had been forgiven and now he could return to his position as the King of Heaven. But Indra, in the pig’s body, did not want to go to heaven. He said, “I am very happy here. I have my wife and my family of piglets, and I like eating all this stool…”
So in whatever type of body we are put in the material world we get attached to it and we “like” it and don’t want to leave it.
But attachment for anything in the material world is foolish for it continues the cycle of birth and death. There is actually no happiness in the material world. Everything is suffering ultimately. IT is painful to be born, to be forced to get old, to get sick and to die. And that is what we do in the material world life after life…
You say that as a human being you try to be good and to be good to others but that it is frustrating to be around people who are bad influences. Somehow we need to associate with people who will be a good influence on us. Association is very powerful. So we can associate with Srila Prabhuapda by reading his books and by hearing his audio recordings. I suggest you try doing this on a regular daily basis and that will protect you from the bad influences.
You can get Srila Prabhupada’s original books and audio recordings at http://www.KrishnaStore.com
Chant Hare Krishna and be happy!