The legal battles to establish public Harinama in America

Satsvarupa Das Goswami: “I don’t remember the exact details, but somehow I decided to go to the library to research the Supreme Court’s decisions about the type of activity we were carrying out. I discovered that almost all these decisions were made by the Supreme Court Justice Warren in the ’40s and ’50s, and almost all the cases referred to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. There was one laywer I noticed—he was himself a Jehovah’s Witness—who had gone again and again to the Supreme Court and won. In delivering the judgment, Justice Warren had made strong statements about how the First Amendment approves the right of people to share their religion in public places. The fact that they asked for donations didn’t make it any less religious. Thus I discovered that the Supreme Court had clearly defended ISKCON’s right to witness our religion on the streets and to collect money for our tracts.

“After that, whenever we would be stopped by the police, I would explain that to them. I even carried photocopies of the judgments. The average policeman on his beat, however, did not care about the Supreme Court decisions, and eventually, I went to see an ACLU lawyer. The lawyers were interested in us because they knew about the Supreme Court decisions and that the police were defying them. One young lawyer, in particular, took an interest in our case. He met people behind the scenes, and because he was a lawyer they couldn’t brush him off. He had lunch with the city attorney, who told him the police should leave us alone. Then he told me to call him if anything else happened.

“A number of incidents occurred, either on the Boston Commons or in the park or in the street. Sometimes these incidents were caused by the devotees’ bad behavior. On one harinama we had stopped in front of a particular store. The store was closed so we felt it was a safe place to chant. The devotees were out distributing pamphlets when a policeman came by and arrested some of the devotees. The devotees had to remain in jail overnight waiting for the hearing.

“I remember Giriraja and Jayadvaita going to court with me. Our judge was a nefarious person, and later it came out that he was a tyrant. Whatever decisions he made after reviewing a case were given no appeal. He was a crass-talking little Caesar.

“Quite a few devotees went to court to listen to the hearing. The case that was being heard before ours involved a man who had been pilfering mailboxes and taking peoples’ checks. He was a crazy fellow. The judge asked him, ‘Do you have anything to say for yourself?’ The man said, ‘I just want to say, Your Honor, that it should be noted that I never committed a violent crime in my life.” The judge laughed and said, ‘Six months. Next!’

“The devotees approached the bench. Just before we did so, however, the patrolman who arrested us (a crude fellow) went up to the judge and showed him a copy of Back to Godhead with a ‘Just look at this!’ attitude. Then he pointed to the line where Prabhupada was quoting his spiritual master as saying he would have sex one hundred times if he could beget a Krishna conscious child. ‘These are the kind of people these guys are,’ the cop said. The patrolman then lied that we had a large quantity of Back to Godheads stored in the alley. That was one of the charges—that we were blocking the area. People couldn’t pass because there were so many boxes of magazines blocking the sidewalk. He listed other charges too. Of course, the judge declared us guilty and sentenced the devotees who had already been arrested to pay a fine and spend more time in the city jail. His main point, however, was that the devotees had to stop going out on sankirtana. He said we were no longer allowed to go out and chant in public and collect money.

“We appealed his decision. I was the one who had to decide in the end whether or not to appeal. Devotees came by my office all day with opinions. Then I looked at the poor devotees through the little jail window and thought that we should simply plead guilty, pay the fine and get them out. Otherwise, they would have to wait in jail for the appeal to go through. I knew the city couldn’t stop us forever.

“None of the devotees opposed my decision much, but I do remember Jayadvaita burning with the injustice of it all. We informed our assigned lawyer that we would plead guilty in to get our people out of jail. The lawyer informed the judge, and the judge suddenly withdrew the punitive charges. The devotees were acting as love-and-peace people in the court, as we often did when we dealt with nondevotees—it often helped us win them over, despite what they saw as our bizarre appearance—and that was the end of it.

“But it wasn’t the end of our harinama. We continued to go out onto the street or in other public areas to chant and distribute magazines. On the same way that the man on the beat didn’t know about Justice Warren and the Supreme Court decisions, he also didn’t seem to understand that the judge had ruled that we weren’t allowed to chant on the streets anymore. I remember some patrolmen walking by when someone yelled out, ‘I wonder what Elijah would say if he saw you out here?’ So our harinamas were up and down; sometimes the devotees would go out and be gone all day, and sometimes they would be back within half an hour, crestfallen, being forced to quit.
“In the end the ACLU got us a letter from the police commissioner, acknowledging our constitutional right to perform harinama and ask for donations. After that, whenever the police stopped us we showed them this letter, and they would have to acquiesce. ‘Well, all right, don’t make so much noise about it.’ That was the letter I sent to Prabhupada. He thought our getting such a letter could inspire other centers. We then copied the letter and sent it around the Movement.”