Monday Morning Greetings 2025 #22 – Should we trust Dandavats.com?

Should we trust Dandavats.com?

By Jayadvaita Swami

Where is Dhanurdhara Maharaja? Why has this week’s Monday Morning Greetings been written not by him but by one of his readers—that is, me? Dhanurdhara Maharaja is alive and well, but something has happened that deserves to be told, and he shouldn’t have to be the one to tell it.

Two weeks back, as you may recall, Maharaja published a Monday Morning Greeting about the first Russian devotees to come to Vrindavana, back in 1991. He entitled the piece “Queen Kuntī was right!”

Two days later, the article appeared on Dandavats.com, an official ISKCON website that offers ISKCON news and teachings. Apparently Dandavats had thought the article would be an inspiring read for a wider devotee audience.

Only one thing: They stripped off the author’s name—Dhanurdhara Swami—and replaced it with the name of one of our godbrothers, Suresvara Dasa.

What?

When another of my godbrothers, a natural peacemaker, asked what had happened, an editor explained: Suresvara Dasa had read the article in a recent class, the editor had transcribed it from there, and since “Suresvara did not mention the author of the material he was reading from,” the editor attributed it to Suresvara.

Honest error?

When we listen to Suresvara’s class, here’s how he begins his reading:

This is a story. . . I have a godbrother—maybe you. . . . Dhanurdhara Swami. Or is it “Dhanurdhara Swami,” right? [Perhaps noting an issue in pronunciation.] So he has a blog, and he just shared a story, and the moral of this story is “Queen Kunti Was Right!” Listen to this. . . This is Dhanurdhara Maharaja: [Begins reading the article.]

Suresvara mentions Dhanurdhara Maharaja three more times—twice in the middle and once more at the very end.

Meanwhile, the editor wrote, the article had “gone viral.” And since the peacemaker had now kindly let him know who the author was, “I’ve updated the article to more clearly present it as a narration from Suresvara Prabhu.”

When the peacemaker gently suggested that this wasn’t quite honest, Dandavats just took the article down.

When it comes to light that a responsible publisher has plagiarized, is taking down the offending article all he does? Or does he issue a correction and apology?

Well, having plagiarized the article in public, the editor now wrote to Dhanurdhara Swami privately. Offering his “heartfelt apologies,” he wrote:

It was never my intention to misrepresent or cause any disturbance to you or those close to you. I deeply regret this oversight.

The origin of the mistake lies in a class I recently listened to by Suresvara Prabhu, in which the story of the Russian devotees was shared. I found the narrative inspiring and wanted to make it available to our readers. To that end, I downloaded the automatic transcription from YouTube and used ChatGPT to extract and format just the story for publication. At the time, I did not catch that the story was actually being relayed by Suresvara Prabhu as originally told by you. I thus mistakenly attributed the story to him.

And so, the editor wrote, he had now removed the article “to avoid further misunderstanding,”

and am now writing to offer my apology and an explanation. I understand this may have left you wondering about how the article was handled, and I hope this message helps to clear up any confusion or ill feeling.

So this offense would never have happened were it not for the sins of YouTube and ChatGPT. To test the credibility of this story, we used a feature of Microsoft Word to compare Dhanurdhara Maharaja’s original article with the version published on Dandavats. Miraculously, apart from some editorial intrusions, the two versions matched, even down to the sentence and paragraph divisions and down to the very punctuation marks.

Among the editorial intrusions: It seems that at Dandavats we can’t say good things about anyone Officially Out of Favor. So not only had the editor replaced Dhanurdhara Maharaja’s name. He had also obscured the name of Kesava Bharati Goswami. And even Sannyasa Dasa and Kamala Mala Dasa—the two Russian devotees whose glories the article had celebrated—came in for similar treatment. No longer officially blessed. Names replaced.

Bringing all this to the editor’s attention, Dhanurdhara Swami wrote to him:

Dandavats is an ISKCON GBC sponsored publication. Overt plagiarism therefore puts them in a terrible light. No respectable institution does this and if it is done, they correct it.

Please don’t unnecessarily carry this controversy on. Own the mistake and rectify it, for my readers, Suresvara Prabhu, ISKCON and myself.

Dhanurdhara Maharaja made three requests:

First, Dandavats should publish “an article whose headline clearly says it’s a correction and (should you choose to apologize) an apology.” Maharaja didn’t ask that his own name be mentioned, but Dandavats should admit the wrong attribution, put a link to Maharaja’s original post, and properly identify the three devotees whose names Dandavats had changed.

Second, “I also request you to contact some of the major ISKCON blogs where the plagiarized article was shared and ask them to publish your apology. I found the plagiarized version on Desire Tree, for example.”

Third, “I also request you to arrange a zoom call to speak to me personally.”

Maharaja wrote that if Dandavats did this, that would be the end of the issue. And if not, then in the next Monday Mornings Greetings “I will use my experience with Dandavats to highlight an important message—the challenges institutions face in adhering to even the most basic ethical guidelines.”

Maharaja ended, “Ultimately, for your sake, I pray you correct this egregious mistake that hurt many Vaisnavas.”

Well, Dandavats did reach out to “Desire Tree.” And Dandavats did publish an apology (https://www.dandavats.com/?p=115718). The apology admits the misattribution, expresses regret, credits the original author, provides the link, tells all the real names—and once again assigns the blame to YouTube and ChatGPT.

Oh, and one thing more: Dandavats published their apology on May 20 but dated it May 16, so that when published it lay buried under three or four days of intervening articles and news.

Should we trust Dandavats.com? It’s up to you. But this isn’t the first time I’ve seen Dandavats pull this kind of trick. So they and I have for many years had an understanding: They are not to publish any of my classes or any of my writings on Dandavats.com.