Thoughtful devotees should not accept these changed books, understanding that this is an attack on the authority of Prabhupada's books.

The Attack on Srila Prabhupada's Books

Personally I came to Krishna consciousness by reading Srila Prabhuapda's books and they have had an amazing effect on my life. I feel a great debt to Srila Prabhuapda and want others to have the same chance I did to come into contact with Srila Prabhupada, a pure devotee of Krishna, via his transcendental books.

Right now there is a great threat to Srila Prabhuapda's books. There is a very small group of people within ISKCON who for various reasons are not satisfied with Prabhuapda's books. They want to change them. Unfortunately this small group has gained control of the BBT and since 1983 have been releasing "Revised Editions" of Srila Prabhuapda's books.

The result is that books like Bhagavad Gita As It Is and KRSNA, The Supreme Personality of Godhead now distributed by ISKCON are very different in many significant ways from the books Srila Prabhuapda himself personally read daily and gave his classes from.

This is a great disaster. Introducing thousands of unauthorized changes made by editors who have the freedom to change anything they feel like changing without any reason except they think it is a good idea, without documenting anything, without any authorization from anyone at all and without revealing to anyone what has been changed completely destroys the authority of Srila Prabhuapda's books.

If I took the United States Constitution and adjusted it, making thousands of changes that I think should be made and present it to the US government and people, will they accept my new "Revised and Enlarged" edition of the US Constitution? Of course not — my changes would completely destroy the authority of the US constitution. No one would ever accept it.

Similarly these unauthorized changes made in the current ISKCON editions of Prabhupada's books destroy the authority of the books. Thoughtful devotees should not accept these changed books, understanding that this is an attack on the authority of Prabhupada's books.

I have started a new website:

www.BookChanges.com

Here you can find further information about the unauthorized changes ISKCON and BBT are making to Srila Prabhuapda's books. Please go to this website and read the articles and try to understand the significance of what is happening with Prabhuapda's books.

If you have comments or questions about the book changes, please go to www.BookChanges.com and post your question on a relevant article there, and I will attempt to answer it.

The pre-1978 editions of Srila Prabhuapda's books are available at www.KrishnaStore.com.

Chant Hare Krishna and be happy!
Madhudvisa dasa

PS: So you can get an overview of this problem... [go to History of Changes to Srila Prabhupada's Gita] by Ameyatma Prabhu (originally published on the Sampradaya Sun website), which is a first-hand experience from a devotee who used to work within the BBT Art Department in the 1970's about the history of the changes to Srila Prabhuapda's Bhagavad-gita As It Is.

Note: I have checked the story Ameyatma Prabhu gives with a very senior devotee who were present at the time and who knows the details and while the "gist" of what he says is true, there does seem to be a slight misunderstanding as to exactly what Prabhupada did. According to this other devotee Srila Prabhupada signed a contract with Macmillan that gave them the exclusive rights to print his Bhagavad-gita As It Is, however he included a clause in the contract with Macmillan which stated that if the book went out of print the copyrights would return to him. As BBT were really the main customer for this book from Macmillan at some point Srila Prabhupada told the BBT to slow down and eventually stop the Gita orders from Macmillan. And eventually Macmillan did not reprint Prabhupada's Gita so it went out of print and the copyrights returned to Srila Prabhupada. In any case the result of this is the same as the story Ameyatma Prabhu tells on his Sampradaya Sun story. So this is actually a confirmation of the incidents he mentions. One of the reasons BBT purchasing the unabridged Gita from Macmillan was unworkable was that Macmillan would charge the BBT about three times the printing cost, whereas if the BBT printed the book themselves they would only have to pay the printing cost