‘Hare Krishna Day’ in Czeck Schools

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Prague, Czeck Republic, is one of the more dynamic temples in Europe. They have a good core of devotees that travel all around the country distributing books. For the past fifteen years they have had this steady team of devotees doing this glorious activity. The temple President, Narakrti prabhu, said to me, “We have many activities happening, but without book distribution, everything else would appear dry.”

One of the other things happening, is they regularly go to schools to preach. Once they went to a school that was from grades six to ten, to give a lecture to the students. While making the presentation the devotee mentioned some of our cultural activities. The faculty liked the presentation so much that they asked the devotees if they could come to the school in a week and have a – “Hare Krsna Day” in which the students will have no classes, but will only participate in the, “Hare Krsna day.” A week later the devotees went and, did what we do best, for six hours. That means, there were traditional barat natyam dancers, they also taught dance, there was bhajanas, they gave cooking classes to the students, there was Ayur Vedic classes, and there was also a book table from which many books were distributed. Faculty members from other schools heard about this, and came just to see what it was like, and to see if they would also like to have such a presentation at their school. The visiting faculty members liked it so much, that they decided to have this presentation at all the schools in the region, annually.

Some Christians didn’t like that this was happening in their school, and complained to the Principle. They said, “This group is a cult, and we don’t want it to go on.” The principle then said in reply, “No, this is not true, the “Hare Krsna movement is accepted in the European Union as a bonafide religion.” They then said, “Alright, but we also want to have a day when we can have, “Jesus Christ day.” He said, “We don’t mind if you do that, but what are you going to present?” They couldn’t think of anything, and the converasation ended there.

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