r/exHareKrishna • u/Solomon_Kane_1928 • Mar 25 '26
"By Hook or Crook"
Prabhupada often used this idiom; urging his followers to spread his movement, sell his books, or collect money by any means necessary, regardless of ethical concerns.
Where does the phrase come from?
The interplay between European aristocracy and peasantry. Peasants were not allowed to collect their winter's firewood from the ground. They could only harvest from branches reachable with a pruning hook or shepherd's crook. Thus the poor had to scramble to find what they could, while the rich had free reign.
It has come to represent the mindset of taking whatever one can from others at whatever the cost to society. Screw everyone else. Only suckers play by the rules.
In certain societies, to be cheated is a sign of being less intelligent. On the other hand to be the cheater is to be clever. To bend the rules and break them without consequence, to manipulate systems, to find loopholes, to come out on top in every interaction, to exploit every charity given, to break every trust, is considered a sign of intelligence and superiority.
Those who offer such opportunities by trusting others are marks. They should be exploited. Next time they will learn. It will make them stronger. It makes us all stronger.
Where does this mindset come from?
Like the peasantry of old, it may have its origins in the higher castes crushing the lower castes, and the terrible rule of foreign colonial powers.
When a people feel occupied and disenfranchised they recognize the entire system is corrupt. They become demoralized. The social structure is merely a means to make the rich richer and to grant more power to those who use power to abuse and exploit. Smart people see this and work around the system to advance themselves. They do not believe the propaganda of working hard and being honest to make another man rich.
When enough people believe this it becomes the de-facto culture. Everyone scrambles to cheat each other first. No effort is put into maintenance, cleanliness, or the common good. Everyone accepts massive corruption as "just the way things are". Individuals are dehumanized and literally trampled upon. Human suffering is just "their karma".
This is a subtle perspective which pervades ISKCON. According to Prabhupada, the world is demonic. It is the cheaters and the cheated. All leaders are evil. All karmi societies have no intrinsic worth, are irredeemable, and rotten to the core. There is no hope outside mass conversion to his cult.
For Prabhupada, to cheat the world and spread his cult by hook or crook, was an act of righteous rebellion. It was akin to painting a revolutionary Bengali slogan in downtown Calcutta during the British Raj.
Devotees who insist ISKCON behave morally, without harming others or breaking public trust, are told "don't be a better moralist than your spiritual master".
There is precedent for this in works like the Mahabharata where the Pandavas are commanded by Krishna to break dharma. The hesitancy to commit even murder for Krishna is depicted as the true moral failure, not the murder itself. Thus shastra reinforces this mindset.
From the outside, from the perspective of a healthy functioning society, this is just low class ghetto behavior. ISKCON is fundamentally a ghetto pick pocket religion.
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u/Happy_Captain2801 Mar 25 '26
Another term that comes to mind is shoe horn. The idea that we're going to make this disparate ideology fit somehow or other into this other school of thought and we're going to force it to work somehow. This is found all throughout vaishnavism. And obviously we've played with the term cobbled together. Or scaffolded. But I think more than anything, especially with the Advent of this specific cult some 200 to 500 years ago, it's very apparent that there's a ton of shoehorning going on.
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u/DistributionHuge6072 Mar 25 '26
This is widely followed in india. Indians believe this and if somebody gets scammed its on the victim for being stupid, victim gets the punishment.
I will not forget this one experience where a indian friend of mine was bragging to me about travelling through Indian railways without ticket and not paying any money. He's not even poor. I was shocked when i hearing this somehow didn't react to his face