Prabhupada's initial struggles to go to America
Gargamuni Dasa: Mr. Gopal Agarwal sponsored Prabhupada to come to America through the father, Mr. Agarwal from Agra, where Prabhupada had a program in 1965, before of course he came to America. Mr. Agarwal was very concerned about his son living in America and he married a foreign lady. Back in the 60s no Indian wanted their son to marry a foreign lady. Maybe now it's changed, after fifty years. But at that time Mr. Agarwal senior was very concerned about his son. Prabhupada just mentioned that, "Yes, I would like to go to America. But I don't have the means now to do." Mr. Agarwal said, "No, I will write my son and he will send the documents to sponsor you, because I want you to notify me about my son, because I'm concerned. He doesn't write letters."
In those days I don't think there was phones in Agra, in the 60s. Maybe there was. It was very difficult to call. Because I had experience trying to call in the 70s. If you called America you had to make an appointment with the Indian telephone company that you wanted to make a trunk call to America. You had to wait twelve to twenty four hours before you could make the connection. So the only way to communicate in those days was by letter or telegram.
Anyway, Prabhupada really didn't take this person very seriously. So Prabhupada returned back to Vrindavana, continued with his Bhagavatam writing, and printing in Delhi at Chippiwada, which we celebrated last year. I went there to do a program for the fiftieth anniversary of Prabhupada returning back to Chippiwada in 1967. So in 2017 was the fiftieth anniversary. So I did a program for four days there, about the Chippiwada activities of Srila Prabhupada, which are very interesting. But that's another story.
Anyway, Prabhupada was in Vrindavana and all of a sudden he did get documents. I'm not sure how, what the time was. But he got documents from America where Prabhupada would be sponsored personally for all his expenses while Prabhupada would stay in America. So he got all the paperwork and then based on that Prabhupada was able to get a visa, a tourist visa. The only way you could get a visa was that somebody in America had to sponsor you.
Generally, there was a law passed in the 1920s by Congress in the United States limiting the amount of visas to people from South Asia, from India, Pakistan. Not Pakistan, I think. Just India. Pakistan was an ally during the cold war. Pakistan was with America and China, and India was with Russia. So that was the lines drawn. Only a hundred visas were issued a year to Indians based on this law passed in Congress. In the early 1900s many, many hundreds of Punjabi, mostly Sikh, from the Sikh community, came to California to do farming, as we know they're expert farmers. They knew how to do farming cheaper than Americans could do, and better, get more produce from their land. Thus putting the American farmers mostly out of business. So America did this also in the 1800's against the Chinese because the railway was being built in the western United States and most of the labor came from China. So Americans were cut off from that employment. So America had to limit the number of Chinese coming into America. They were very good at starting their own businesses, especially the laundry business. In America the laundry business was started by Chinese. Even to this day, you go to the cleaners, they're Chinese or oriental people. So they were very industrial, the Chinese. They also brought with them their opium powers. So the workers would go to the parlors and smoke opium. The Chinese, they introduced that. That kind of culture. So anyway America put a stop to that and put a stop to the farmers to help the American farmers.
So Prabhupada, how he got the visa is practically, you can say, it's like a miracle. Because he wasn't sponsored by a corporation or university. He was sponsored by an Indian who was working in, I think, he was engineer or something, in Pennsylvania. Anyway Prabhupada got the visa. The problem that Prabhupada had was getting the permission to leave India. An Indian could not leave India till they got permission from the Indian government. So Prabhupada had to do preaching to the man because the man saw on the visa that Prabhupada wasn't being sponsored by a university or a corporation.
Anyway he got the No Objection Certificate to leave India in which Prabhupada was only offered forty rupees, which they said he can exchange in America to get travelling money, because you couldn't take any foreign exchange. Indian didn't have very much in those days. But they didn't tell him that if you brought rupees to America you couldn't exchange them in America. It was a non convertible currency. So even when Prabhupada got to America he couldn't use the forty rupees anyway. So practically speaking Prabhupada came to America penniless. He had nothing. So how is he going to live? If you think about it, who would ever leave their country of origin at the age of seventy and go to a foreign, strange land with nothing! I don't think any. I know I couldn't do that. I'm seventy now, over seventy. I know I couldn't do that. I don't think there's anyone, in their right mind, that would leave their residence and go to a strange place at such a senior age. Especially Prabhupada was going to introduce a whole new religion to the Western countries, a whole new culture not just a religion, but a culture, even the dress, the food, everything. He was then going to introduce something new. How would he do that at the age of seventy! Practically you'd have to say such a person would be crazy.