Director: But it would be very difficult for the people who start out with us. Would be possible with the kids that start out with us.
Prabhupāda: No, they will live, just like they are living. They are coming from the same group. But they are now saintly. It is a question of training them. I have no facility. Whatever I have done, by personal endeavor and their cooperation. Neither your government, I mean the Western government, they helped me, neither my government helped me, although we are struggling to make class of men ideal. They appreciate, but they do not give us. . . Now, just like we have purchased this house by our endeavor, with great difficulty, because we have no income. We write our books, then we sell, we get some income. So somehow or other we expand. But no government is helping us. They are increasing brothels, drinking. At least in India there was no drinking propaganda. Now the government is making that. They are opening wine shop. India, even in the British period, drinking was very, very restricted. Very, very restricted. First of all socially if anyone drinks, he is rejected as gentleman. A drunkard was never respected. Similarly meat-eaters. He was considered third-class man. In our childhood we have seen, when people learned to eat meat, very secretly, not within the house. Outside the house with some Muhammadan cooker. It was considered very abominable to eat meat, to drink. And women, they were kept strictly under the vigilance of parents, father. Young girls not to mix with any young boy. If one young girl goes out of home and does not come back at night, then her life is finished. Nobody will marry her. So the father had to keep the young girls with great care. And the father was very, very anxious to find out a boy to hand it over. We have seen in our childhood. But now these things are slackened. Jawaharlal Nehru, our late prime minister, introduced divorce law. Now the society is in chaotic condition.
Director: What can you do if society wants it? Society wants it that way.
Prabhupāda: Society. . . that's like your child wants to go to hell. But it is not the duty of the father to allow him to go to hell. Society want. . . Because the society does not know, the government does not know how to uplift the position of the human being. They do not know it. They know that the animals and we are the same. They simply loiter naked, and we are nicely dressed, that's all. Finished, civilization. I remain animal, but my advancement is because I am very nicely dressed. That is the standard now. But the Vedic civilization is not. The animal must change the consciousness. He must be trained up a human being. That is. . . (to devotee:) You say.
Amogha:
- śamo damas tapaḥ śaucaṁ
- kṣāntir ārjavam eva ca
- jñānaṁ vijñānam āstikyaṁ
- brahma-karma svabhāva-jam
- (BG 18.42)
Translation: "Peacefulness, self-control, austerity, purity, tolerance, honesty, wisdom, knowledge and religiousness—these are the qualities by which the brāhmaṇas work."
Prabhupāda: So people should be trained up.