Did Kirtanananda Swami Bhaktipada promote the Rittvik System of Initiations?

Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Kirtanananda Swami and other disciples at New Vrindaban (June 26, 1976)

July 13, 2025: I happened to stumble upon a pro-Rittvik webpage with this photo of Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Kirtanananda Swami, and others, during Prabhupada’s June/July 1976 visit to New Vrindaban. The caption under the photo explained, “Kirtananda [sic.] Swami was one of the so-called gurus who attempted to imitate Srila Prabhupada.” Above the image appeared the text: “KIRTANANANDA SWAMI [said] (about the fall down of the various ISKCON gurus): This is why I suggested so strongly that ISKCON should adopt the rittvik process of initiation for the new Gurus.”

Advocates of the Rittvik System of Initiations posit that a novice doesn’t have to seek out and find a living spiritual master and take initiation (diksa) from him; the aspiring disciple can simply accept diksa from Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, who passed away in November 1977. This is also known as the Rittvik-In-Absentia System, or Posthumous Rittvik System.

I will not give any more background (except to say that I devote an entire chapter about the Rittvik System in my 2020 book Eleven Naked Emperors), but merely mention that the Rittvik-In-Absentia System of Initiation is condemned by ISKCON, and others. But did Kirtanananda Swami Bhaktipada really advocate the Rittvik Theory, as it seems above?

I did a little research on the matter, and discovered that it was Hansadutta (Hans Jürgen Kary—one of the original eleven rittvik priests whom Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada had appointed in the July 9, 1977 letter by Tamal Krishna Goswami) who claimed that Kirtanananda Swami had once told him: “This is why I suggested so strongly that ISKCON should adopt the rtvik process of initiation for the new gurus.”

Hansadutta wrote this in an October 2, 1993 letter to Kirtanananda Swami. I once had a copy of that letter, which I discovered in the Swami Bhaktipada Archives. I quote part of that letter in Gold, Guns and God, Vol. 9. For the last several years, the letter has been housed in the Swami Bhaktipada Archive at the West Virginia and Regional History Center at West Virginia University in Morgantown. Let’s look at Hansadutta’s letter in its entirety, which I found online in the Hansadutta das Archives:1

When this letter was written, Hansadutta and Kirtanananda had known each other for 27 years. Both joined ISKCON in 1966, Kirtanananda in July and Hansadutta a few months later. Both served at the Montreal ISKCON temple in the Spring and Summer of 1967. Hansadutta respected his older godbrother, and followed his orders. Having previously served in the United States Navy, Hansadutta understood the necessity of following the hierarchical chain of command which existed in ISKCON from the very beginning. Hansadutta became an important member of ISKCON, noted for his preaching and enlivening kirtans. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada appointed him as a founding member of the GBC in 1970. Four years later Prabhupada appointed him as a lifetime trustee of the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust. In 1976 Hansadutta became Hansadutta Swami.

In February/March 1978, both Hansadutta Swami and Kirtanananda Swami were recognized by the ISKCON Governing Body Commissioners as duly-appointed ISKCON diksa gurus. Kirtanananda Swami took the name Bhaktipada, and Hansadutta became known as Krishna Kirtan Thakur. Both names were honorary titles normally bestowed upon only the most advanced devotees, in imitation of Bhaktivedanta Swami Maharaja, who adopted the title Prabhupada as early as 1967.

Bhaktipada was recognized throughout ISKCON (as early as 1967) for his renunciation, but Hansadutta was not known for his austerities. He was known, however, for not appearing to chant all his daily rounds. Soon after accepting the position of guru, Hansadutta began breaking his vows regarding sex and intoxication. Gradually, Hansadutta lost his self respect, although his disciples and followers still regarded him as a pure saint. Hansadutta also amassed a large stock of guns and once accidentally shot a boy at the ISKCON Mount Kailasa farm. Law enforcement agents raided Mount Kailasa and confiscated illegally acquired weapons, some military-grade. This was very bad publicity for ISKCON and on July 8, 1983, the GBC stripped Hansadutta of his sannyasa title and his guru status.

Hansadutta was devastated and became addicted to pain pills and alcohol. One of his godbrothers, Puranjana, claims he met Hansadutta near Mount Shasta in the winter of 1984 (probably January) and Hansadutta was sleeping maybe 23 hours daily, as he was addicted to pain pills and alcohol. Puranjana concluded Hansadutta was near death.

In an effort to cleanse himself of the demons which had infected his soul, Hansadutta came to New Vrindaban in January or February 1984 with some disciples and followers to seek shelter from the “pure devotee” Kirtanananda Swami Bhaktipada. Hansadutta became more strict in his sadhana and began following the regulative principles again. After a few months, he moved back to California and his first child was born to one of his disciples, Laksmi devi dasi. They got married.

When Bhaktipada was nearly-fatally attacked by a deranged godbrother in October 1985, Hansadutta became depressed. He again asked his disciples and followers to move with him to New Vrindaban. I remember sometime in the Autumn of 1985, I saw dozens of new faces at New Vrindaban. I worked closely with one Hansadutta follower, Chakravarti dasa. Together we established the New Vrindaban book publishing department, called Bhaktipada Books. Later the name was changed to Palace Publishing.

After recovering much of his spiritual strength at New Vrindaban, Hansadutta began leading kirtan parties in the southern United States in the winter of 1985-1986. Eventually he returned to California and lived in a trailer park with his wife and children.

In 1993, Hansadutta published a collection of essays, letters and articles, “Srila Prabhupada, His Movement, and You,” which present arguments and evidence in support of the continuation of the disciplic succession as a rittvik, or representative, of Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. At this time, Hansadutta directed all his former “disciples” to regard Bhaktivedanta Swami as their spiritual master.

Later that year, in September 1993, Bhaktipada was observed by the driver of his Winnebago van engaging in sexual activities with a dark-skinned male teenage disciple from Malaysia. This was a shocking event in the history of the New Vrindaban Community, and it became known as The Winnebago Incident. The news of this incident spread throughout the Hare Krishna world. Hansadutta, currently in Singapore, heard about the Winnebago Incident, and wrote a letter to Bhaktipada, as a younger sibling might give advice to an older sibling.

However, I see a discrepancy. Hansadutta claims in this letter:

If Bhaktipada had advocated the Rittvik System of Initiations to Hansadutta, it would have been in 1984 or 1985. However, at that time, Bhaktipada always insisted that the guru must be a self-realized uttama adhikari living person. We residents of New Vrindaban thought that Bhaktipada was that self-effulgent acharya. It is extremely improbable that Bhaktipada would have recommended that ISKCON follow the rittvik system. Bhaktipada envisioned himself as the supreme leader, the Acharya of ISKCON. He even said that “I am ISKCON.”

Bhaktipada wrote a paper, “On My Order,” defining the position of guru which was published for the September 1985 GBC Meetings at New Vrindaban. This paper was later expanded and published as a book with the same title. No where in the book does he mention anything about rittvik initiation. Just the opposite. He admonishes, “The idea that there is only one jagad guru is a material idea. . . . We have to develop the qualities of jagad guru. That’s all. Then we can be jagad guru.”

I heard Bhaktipada thunder from his vyasasana a number of times, “We can all become perfect! We can all become like Prabhupada!”

We should also note that the Rittvik System was simply not talked about in ISKCON until maybe 1986, when the first published article about the "Monitor Guru" appeared in The Vaisnava Journal. Yet Hansadutta claims Bhaktipada mentioned the Rittvik System to him a year or two earlier.

In my opinion, I think Bhaktipada might have possibly become a little favorable towards the Rittvik System after his prison term ended in 2004, perhaps in New York City, or perhaps in India, as he was humbled by his years in prison and even admitted that he was not perfect. But in his Last Will and Testament dated December 24, 2010, Bhaktipada appointed a successor by name: his Pakistani disciple Madhusudana dasa Bapuji who had established Anand Vrndavan Dhama in Ulhasnagar, India. Bhaktipada didn’t say to follow the Rittvik System. He said new bhaktas should take initiation from Bapuji.

It is certainly possible that Bhaktipada mentioned the Rittvik System in conversation with Hansadutta in 1984 or 1985 when Hansadutta came to New Vrindaban, but it is more probable that Hansadutta’s memory might have been a bit cloudy when he remembered the 1984 conversation nearly a decade later in Singapore in 1993. That is my opinion.

Henry Doktorski

Update: July 14, 2025: George Smith posits a third possible scenario (see letter below) that Bhaktipada actually said to Hansadutta, "This is why I suggested so strongly that ISKCON should adopt the rittvik process of initiation for the new Gurus,” but as Bhaktipada did not approve of the rittvik theory, he said that to Hansadutta merely to ingratiate Hansadutta to him. In essense, he told Hansadutta what Hansadutta wanted to hear: that ISKCON had screwed up the initiation process, and therefore Hansadutta was not at fault for all his fall downs. Years later, as we all know, Hansadutta adopted and advocated the Rittvik System, although Bhaktipada never did.

Endnote:

1. https://theharekrishnamovement.com/2025/04/1613/#more-1613

About the photo: Here we see Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Kirtanananda Swami, and others on their way from the barn—the white building behind the large willow tree (the silo appears in the distance)—to the Bahulaban temple. To the right is McCreary Ridge Road and the hill on the north side of the road. The two Porta-John portable latrines were not a regular fixture when I came two years later; perhaps they were relics from the hepatitis quarrantine from a few months earlier, when the West Virginia State Department of Health insisted New Vrindaban install approved toilets.

I joined the New Vrindaban Community in August 1978, and I recognize quite a few faces in this photo. From left to right I think they are: unknown, Adwaita, Bhavisyat, looks like Srutadeva, Aravinda, Kibajaya (the boy, son of Syamakunda and Girindra Mohini), Gopinath, Uttamauja, Radhanath, Taru, Prabhupada and behind him his servant Hari Sauri (face hidden), Bimbadhara's wife Amritaprada dd (the tall woman in the back), Kirtanananda Swami, Sudhanu (in white behind Kirtanananda), Sobhavati dd, Somadas, Ambarish, and Dvijapriya and her son with Ganendra (she later married Dharmatma).

Readers’ Letters

Yeah, so Hansadutta claims KS said this, and it would have been 84 or 85, and in a private conversation. No confirmation from KS. And in 84-85 the ritvik word was only known to a few, but that included KS and Hans, who both received letters about being ritviks that were separate from the July 9 letter. So although there was no use of the ritvik word in the general society in 84-85, it is very feasible that KS and Hans both were very familiar with the ritvik instructions they had received, and could be discussing that in 84-85. If KS said something in 2004 after he got out of prison, it would not end up in Hans' 1993 letter. Myself, I would say the chances that KS DID say this in 84-85 are better than 50-50.

Anonymous Prabhupada disciple

Bhaktipada was just wondering if he could exploit Hansadutta’s fantasies to his own advantage and Hansadutta had his guard down because of that older godbrother thing.

Hansadutta took Bhaktipada to be sincere, the one thing he was not, or else he could have aced it, who could not when Krsna had set such an exceptionally low bar bar in the path of attaining to self perfection? Hansadutta quoted Prabhupada as having said that Maya’s greatest pitfalls were us thinking we were God and Guru so you’d have to be an idiot not to be think either of those things about yourself, and if those were the two greatest pitfalls then the path to self perfection must have been a cake walk, unless you were a pretty big idiot like the two zonal acaryas talking to each other here in this wonderful look into these two zonal acaryas’ communication with each other from which Henry Doktorski clears the dust and the cobwebs from history’s mirror with his great research and wonderful reporting.

I believe that Bhaktipada was giving himself an out, trying to make sure whatever doors that his godbrother Hansadutta might hold open for him would be easy to access, if he needed them opened. Rtvik offered him a way out AND a way back in. He could blame all the time since Prabhupada’s disappearance during which he was worshipped as good as God as simply everyone being mistaken, not a deliberate fraud by intention. He wouldn’t get it so bad if he had just been mistaken and if he could swing it that way, then now, with correct understanding, he could hop back into the movement and qualify to the position of a bonafide guru real quick.

When a guru falls it’s a real big thing, a ritvik falls and no one gives a crap, you just replace them. But if your already pretending you’re a guru and you get exposed as fallen there’s a lot of crap that hits the fan and then it’s all over the walls.

Bhaktipada admitting that now he finally understood all of that would allow him to play whatever cards Maya dealt him in that hand by her servant Hansadutta. It’s not to developed so Bhaktipada had low expectations of it and Hansadutta’s recovering his position in the movement. The Rtvik thing might turn out to be something Bhaktipada might someday be something he could use to his own advantage, so it wouldn’t hurt to blow a little smoke up Hansadutta’s wazoo to make him think that maybe Bhaktipada would be for it, once he “understood more clearly.”

Rtvik could allow Bhaktipada to claim that he and all the rest of the zonals did not go about from the outset with the intention of perpetuating a deliberate fraud on all the other cult members. Rtvik was so new, indeed it hadn’t even been around at the time in a conceptual form which mirrored the Christian practice of being accepted into the tradition through which a person could be entered into the tradition through baptism and a priest, a initiation ceremony and just a priest. Bhaktipada could claim that in his misunderstanding that he was simply mistaken to have concluded that Prabhupada’s disappearance had attained him and others to self perfection, he could say that he was just mistaken, misunderstanding about what Srila Prabhupada wanted, never actually intending to disobey Srila Prabhupada or to pretend to be something that practically ten years later after all the crimes and sins that in Krsna’s holy names he had committed against even children, it took a visit from Hansadutta to make him realize he was not? I don’t see much potential either, neither did Bhaktipada judging from his enthusiasm, but it doesn’t hurt to keep the lines of communication open and if through Hansadutta or anyone it came to anything, it wouldn’t hurt Bhaktipada to advantage himself of the opportunity that Hansadutta was offering him in which he could milk it.

Being mistaken because you were ignorant vs. your perpetuating a deliberate fraud: which garners you the more sympathy and which provokes people to throw rocks at your head?

Bhaktipada wasn’t the old Bhaktipada anymore, not since he’d got whacked in the head with some rebar and Hansadutta was an alcoholic, so the whole thing between them lacks philosophy and coherence, so it looks like Bhaktipada was just responding to existential pressure from the larger goings on and is just “in the moment” causing him to toss Hansadutta enough tidbits as to keep him on the hook and positive towards Bhaktipada while Bhaktipada was just being open to any possibility of using the Rtvik theory to his own advantage through Hansadutta. In other words I think that Bhaktipada was attempting to play Hansadutta the same way he played everyone else he ever could, even Srila Prabhupada, as fools. It worked with Srila Prabhupada, so even in his own practically brain-dead condition and considering it was just Hansadutta, it should be a cinch if he decided to exploit a belief in it to his own advantage.

Henry’s research does a pretty good job of showing how what started this misimpression that Bhaktipada was pro-Rtvik came about. It is illustrating of the dynamics between these two men, these two old godbrothers who were two of the first disciples of Prabhupada.

A few months doesn’t mean anything to most of us, because we weren’t first, second or third to be initiated, because we could count all our god brothers in the thousands. This was a time when you counted the numbers of your godbrothers on the fingers of your hand, they weren’t strangers, they weren’t beginners, not to you, they were ISKCON. So being the Godbrother of disciple No. 76,487 didn’t mean anything and never would, to any one of us but back then, but when the movement had just started in 65, it did, there wasn’t but a couple of handfuls of Srila Prabhupada’s disciples in all the whole wide world back then, so if you were senior to one of them for six months it stuck. 60 minutes even could have practically done it, Hansadutta had imprinted Bhaktipada as top dog and Bhaktipada fostered this impression by feeding him and helping Hansadutta to get back onto his feet in exchange for whatever he might be able to get from exploiting him and his Rtvik theory in the future, now or later and, if nothing came of it, no matter.

It wasn’t like Bhaktipada offered Hansadutta much besides a place to stay and a little grub to indicate that Bhaktipada was putting very much energy into the development of Rtvik philosophy. Hansadutta’s reclamation might get him back his position in ISKCON and if he could catch him with the hook of belief in pursuance of Hansadutta’s flattering his own fantasies, it was small potatoes if Hansadutta ended back up in a position that could help him either way, pro Rtvik or against.

George Smith
Overland Park, Kansas

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