People

N. D. Desai—Industrialist with a Mission

A successful Bombay engineer seeks to inspire purity in his daily world of business and finance

by Yogeśvara dāsa

Every evening at 6:00 Narendra Desai leaves his office in downtown Bombay. His chauffeur drives him home through Streets crowded with cars, trucks, ox-carts, rickshas, eight million people, and an occasional elephant. They pull up at a seven-story building overlooking parks, swimming pools, and the Arabian Sea. Upstairs, Dr. Desai bathes, changes into white silk robes, applies two lines of sacred clay to his forehead, and enters the marble temple in his apartment. He places three drops of water in his right hand, then three drops in the left, lights three sticks of incense, and begins reciting Sanskrit verses of prayer.

Soon his wife and three children join him. Tiny burning wicks of clarified butter throw soft light on the devotional paintings and tapestries. Everyone's attention is focused on the smiling Deities of Lord Kṛṣṅa and His consort Rādhā. After the last prayer has been recited and the last flower offered, parents and children bow to the floor in submission to the Deities and then prepare for a dinner of vegetarian dishes first offered to the Lord.

The Desai family repeats the procedure each morning and evening, seven days a week, 365 a year. Brought up by pious, well-to-do parents, Dr. Desai has known the significance of the ārati ceremony since childhood. In fact, so have most Hindus. The same elaborate offering to the Deity takes place in millions of homes across the subcontinent and around the world. Kṛṣṅa, the ceremony proclaims, is the Supreme Lord and enjoyer of all works and sacrifices. He is the real master of the home, and His pleasure is the true goal of one's daily activities.

For Dr. Desai, however, the ceremony does not end with the last ablution. As an initiated devotee of ISKCON, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, he has dedicated his words, wealth, intelligence, and life to spreading the teachings of Lord Kṛṣṅa. His spiritual name, Nāthji dāsa, means “servant of Lord Kṛṣṅa, who is the master of all creation."

An ordinary day for Nāthji begins at 4:00 A.M. After morning duties he takes a brisk walk around Seaface Park while chanting Hare Kṛṣṅa on prayer beads and then joins his family in their temple room by 6:30 for ceremonies and a reading from Bhagavad-gītā. At breakfast, father and children trade stories from the epic histories Rāmāyaṅa and Mahābhārata. At 8:00 Nāthji brings his children to school and continues on to his office, where duties may include reviewing company accounts, evaluating new equipment, calling the minister of finance in Delhi about a new export factory, or visiting the refinery in Trombay, a Bombay suburb. Nāthji returns home by 7:00 for evening temple ceremonies, an offering of foods to the Deity, and then dinner with his family. Before retiring at 10:00 he may read from scriptures or prepare notes for his Sunday lecture at ISKCON's Bombay temple and cultural center.

Nāthji is the chairman of the board and managing director of several private companies, whose total combined sales exceed $40 million annually. Among his factories are India's largest producer of light bulbs, fluorescent tubes, and other lighting supplies and the country's second largest supplier of active electronic components. Despite the importance of his various enterprises, Nāthji's real attention remains focused on his projects for spreading Kṛṣṅa consciousness. In addition to providing financial backing for temples, cow protection centers (go-śālas) like the one at the ISKCON āśrama in Hyderabad, and the printing of Vaiṣṅava literature, he has designed a traveling temple, built on a large Tata company truck chassis that will broadcast Bhagavad-gītā to villages all over India. He sponsors gatherings as well—sometimes in tents holding fifteen thousand people, sometimes in the privacy of his own apartment—to teach bhakti (devotional service to Lord Kṛṣṅa) and encourage membership in ISKCON. Nāthji also serves as General Secretary to Bombay's Bhaktivedanta Institute, a branch of ISKCON dedicated to presenting Vedic scriptural conclusions in scientific terms.

At age twenty-one Nāthji graduated with a masters' in engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. That same year he secured a contract from Sunoco to open a nonfuel oil refinery outside Bombay. and soon thereafter he finished his Ph.D. One evening in 1971 he met devotees for the first time at his parents' house. His father, a member of Indian Parliament and president of several Bombay factories, often received religious people at his home. He greatly appreciated Śrīla Prabhupāda’s purity and world preaching efforts and invited him to come with disciples for chanting and a lecture. That evening Nāthji's father became one of ISKCON's first Life Members, but Nāthji remained skeptical. He had read several editions of Bhagavad-gītā commented upon by impersonalistic scholars, and the nondevotional, monistic school appealed to him more than the idea of a personal God.

Still, Nāthji began to visit Śrīla Prabhupāda whenever Prabhupāda came to Bombay. "I would argue that the Vedas describe every living entity as brahman, spiritual energy, and that Kṛṣṅa is just one expression of that spiritual energy. Śrīla Prabhupāda would correct me immediately. 'You may be brahman, but Kṛṣṅa is the Supreme Brahman. He is the source of everything, including the brahman energy. You are a tiny particle of brahman, and He is the complete whole. Where have you picked up this nonsense impersonalistic idea? You are God? Did you create the universe? What is your authority to speak? Kṛṣṅa spoke Bhagavad-gītā. Can you speak such wisdom?' In this way he would defeat me."

Despite philosophical differences with Śrīla Prabhupāda, Nāthji was attracted by his explanations and broad vision of theological matters. Studying the books of Kṛṣṅa consciousness and attending classes at the Bombay temple led Nāthji to adopt the chanting of Hare Kṛṣṅa as a daily meditation. Eventually he even relinquished his impersonal conceptions of truth in favor of the Vaiṣṅava explanation that the soul retains individuality eternally in loving service to the Supreme Person.

Just when Narendra Desai was feeling ready to take initiation into Kṛṣṅa consciousness, Śrīla Prabhupāda left this material world. Dr. Desai approached Girirāja Swami, the president of ISKCON Bombay, and asked where he was to find a bona fide spiritual master now that Śrīla Prabhupāda was gone. Girirāja Swami handed him some cassette recordings of Śrīla Kīrtanānanda Swami, one of the disciples Śrīla Prabhupāda had entrusted with the duty of initiating new devotees. Nāthji listened and found Kīrtanānanda Swami's explanations nondifferent from those of Śrīla Prabhupāda. Each point was clearly and authoritatively presented.

"That was when I knew I had found my guru. Just as the Ganges water is the same at Devaprayag, Hṛṣīkeśa, and Hardwar, so the teachings coming down in disciplic succession from Lord Kṛṣṅa are the same, whether delivered by Śrīla Prabhupāda or his faithful representative. I know that by hearing from Śrīla Kīrtanānanda Swami I receive the same wisdom passed down through the entire history of Vaiṣṅava spiritual masters.

Relatives and acquaintances looked askance at the idea of a highborn Hindu taking initiation from an American. "I told them there was nothing American left in him, that he had completely dedicated himself to Kṛṣṅa’s transcendental loving service. But many of them remained socially offended. I had been in Bombay five years, accumulating 'friends' like sins, and after my initiation many of them at first shunned me."

The notion that only born Hindus can accept spiritual initiation or perform the initiatory rites is widespread in India yet erroneous. According to Vaiṣṅava scriptures, offering initiation into spiritual life is the prerogative of anyone fully conversant with the science of Kṛṣṅa consciousness, and any sincere person can be a candidate for initiation. Nonetheless, social custom has made guruship and discipleship the privileges of those born in brāhmaṅa, or high-caste, families. Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, who promulgated the Kṛṣṅa consciousness movement in Bengal five hundred years ago. defied this artificial restriction and, on the authority of scripture, accepted disciples from middle-class, low-class, and even outcaste families. The spiritual masters in succession from Him have followed His example.

Nāthji was not disturbed by the criticism ("I didn't become a devotee to win friends," he says), and he continued his devotional practices openly. Paintings of Lord Kṛṣṅa and His many incarnations adorned the walls of his office and home. Holiday gifts to clients included posters of the Deities at New Vrindaban, his spiritual master's rural community in West Virginia. Many photos of Śrīla Prabhupāda and Kīrtanānanda Swami graced the tops of his desks, tables, and dressers. Nāthji even printed a special pocket edition of Bhagavad-gītā, just to have on hand for visitors and friends.

Not long after Nāthji's initiation, a young Communist union leader instigated a strike at one of Nāthji's factories. Nāthji rejected the strike leader's ambitious demands and instead handed him a copy of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Bhagavad-gītā.

"This has nothing to do with religion," the union organizer said. "We are talking worker-management relations."

“Then consult the real owner of the factory,” Nāthji replied. "My workers know I am a devotee of Lord Kṛṣṅa. They know I manage this place on His behalf. They also know I try to encourage them by setting an example of fairness and concern for their well-being. These are qualities Lord Kṛṣṅa praises in the Gītā. But your demands are unreasonable by any standards except your own. If you want to negotiate successfully with me, I suggest you take this book home and read it."

Nāthji noted that the workers were impressed by hearing him speak so strongly about the Gītā's teachings, and after a few meetings they signed an agreement. Nāthji later learned that the union leader, like many of his contemporaries, had received training in Bhagavad-gītā as a boy and that the negotiations had rekindled his appreciation for its teachings. After the strike the union leader even commented that work, after all, "wasn't everything." Eventually he quit the Party and took to regularly studying the sacred text.

"I had never heard of a strike being argued in quite that way," Nāthji says, "but one must have the strength of his convictions. Especially in business, where corruption is so widespread, Bhagavad-gītā has been for me an important guiding force for knowing how to act in the right way."

Acting "in the right way" is a lesson Nāthji imparts gently to his children, whom he feels have been "entrusted" to him. "Lord Kṛṣṅa describes in the Gītā that unsuccessful yogis take their birth in affluent or devotee families, a position from which they may easily complete their course of self-realization. By Kṛṣṅa’s arrangement, I am able to offer my children a favorable situation for becoming Kṛṣṅa conscious, and I therefore take it that they are very elevated souls.

"When I talk to them about the eternality of the soul and our loving relationship with Kṛṣṅa, they take it seriously. It's not that I impose the Gītā's teachings on them; they actually understand and follow. Of course I still play the role of father, but they know that in a higher sense Kṛṣṅa is their real Father and I am more like a guardian."

Nāthji also teaches his children not to fall for what he calls "sweet talk, "—that is, the allurement of materialism—without carefully considering the consequences. "A classmate may invite them to smoke or drink or indulge in some other distraction, so we have an agreement. Before accepting any proposal they are not sure is truly beneficial, we discuss: What do the scriptures say? What will the effect be? What is the authority behind the suggestion, its motive? Naturally, the main thing is for them to see good examples in their father and mother. Children are so perceptive, they see even the slightest flaw. In that way they are forcing us to become Kṛṣṅa conscious."

Nāthji's mother, an elderly woman who has done much social service and received several requests to run for public office, was at first suspicious that such a large organization as ISKCON might have been infiltrated by the C.I.A. Her suspicions were allayed when Girirāja Swami reassured her that any agent capable of chanting Hare Kṛṣṅa on beads for the two prescribed hours daily, following the rules of a devotee-no illicit sex, no meat-eating, no intoxicants (including coffee, tea, and cigarettes), and no gambling-would be a true agent of intelligence and a most welcome member of the community. Mrs. Desai has been a well-wisher of ISKCON ever since.

"Śrīla Prabhupāda's message to the world was not one of artificial renunciation," Nāthji says, "but of devotion. Whatever you may be—family man, businessman, professional—add Kṛṣṅa to your life and be happy. Business, after all, is an essential element of society. But if you work for Kṛṣṅa, your life becomes sublime."