By Bhakti Caitanya Swami
In 1992, shortly after coming out of prison, but before he became President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela visited our Sri Sri Radha Radhanatha temple in Durban, South Africa. I got to show him around.
On the whole he was very nice, but the most interesting thing was when we went into the temple room. We took him over to see Srila Prabhupada, and he offered obeisances. Then he and I sat down on the other side of the temple room and spoke a little. I was explaining about our movement and what Srila Prabhupada did to establish it – how he travelled single handed from India and got everything started.
At one point Mr Mandela asked me, in a very pointed way, “how did he do it?” he was really struck by Srila Prabhupada and his achievements in the face of adversity. So I explained further about how Srila Prabhupada was spiritually empowered, and he appreciated that.
He also liked prasadam a lot.
Mr Mandela came to our temple again in 1994, when he was President, on an official visit. I was not there at the time, so I don’t know the details of that visit, but I understand it went very nicely.
Then in 1997 our Durban Food for Life devotees put on a large scale programme for 40,000 school children in a stadium, and Mr Mandela attended. He was only meant to stay for an hour or so, but he ended up staying for maybe four or five hours, and afterwards said it had been the happiest day of his life. That day he interacted no numerous occasions with different devotees, and saw very clearly that it was a Hare Krishna programme, so it certainly must have also made a great impact on his heart.
Now he has moved off to his next lifetime, but I’m sure there are significant benefits there on the transcendental platform for him
No comments:
Post a Comment