nama om Vishnu-padaya krsna-presthaya bhu-tale
srimate bhaktivedanta–svamin iti namine
namas te sarasvate deve gaura-vani-pracarine
nirveshesa-sunyavadi-pascatya-desa-tarine
Jaya Sri Krsna Caitanya, Prabhu Nityananda, Sri Advaita,
Gadadhara, Srivasadi Gaura–bhakta-vrnda
Hare Krsna, Hare Krsna, Krsna Krsna, Hare Hare,
Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare
Dear Srila Prabhupada,
Please accept my prostrated obeisances at your lotus feet. All glories to Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu! From your Lilamrta we understand that way back, when you were still at Jhansi organizing the League of Devotees program with your only disciple, you set out on padayatra. You spent at least five nights in five villages, holding festivals in the evening.
In 1976, you ordered us to travel with bullock carts, and in the year that followed, just before your departure, you expressed your desire to revive and expand by traveling all over India with bullock carts. You personally wanted to travel with such a program. But Krsna had another plan, so the scheme to travel never worked out.
After you left us, I made some unsuccessful attempts to organize the kind of traveling program you had so much desired. Ultimately, by Lord Caitanya’s mercy, we were able to organize the Sankirtana Padayatra in commemoration of Lord Caitanya’s 500th appearance anniversary. After some experience and many detailed instructions from you on how to run such a program, we are already eight months on the road, having visited numerous villages and brought Krsna consciousness to uncountable doorsteps. As the padayatra passes through villages, towns, cities, and states, it is making headlines in the national daily newspapers, on television, and on the radio. Everything is going on fairly nicely on the padayatra, and we feel it is increasing in its strength.
The padayatra has many different features. One of them, however, is conspicuous only by its absence, and that is mass prasadam distribution. I remember how our bullock cart sankirtana party met you in Allahabad. At the Kumbha-mela we presented our program, and you expressed how much you were pleased by the prasadam distribution. That satisfaction of yours was the perfection of our preaching efforts. Many seemingly convincing reasons and excuses may be cited as to why we have not as yet started distributing prasadam on mass scale. We are praying to Krsna to help us rectify this situation so that we may become absorbed in mass prasadam distribution. We have already tried and had some success at this several times. Since our goal is your satisfaction, we would like to use any end all facilities at our disposal to make this program a success.
As the padayatra, the largest preaching program ever organized in India, is going on successfully, we have received suggestions from many devotees to continue it past our scheduled date of termination. A strong suggestion came from Tamala Krsna Goswami. In his letter to us he wrote, “Frankly, I was feeling that this padayatra should not be stopped at the 500th anniversary celebration. Why should it not continue indefinitely…” He reminded us that Prabhupada said we could conquer India by perfecting padayatra. Yes, Krsna consciousness should conquer India! If padayatra is the means to that end, it must be adopted at all costs!
Though our immediate destination is Mayapur, your place of worship, we are contemplating continuing to finally reach your home, Vrndavan Dhama. There in Vrndavana we would like to inaugurate a ten year traveling sankirtana program to celebrate the centenary of your sacred appearance. While keeping you in the center, we would travel, preaching gaura-vani to all we meet. It would be a befitting celebration of your appearance! To some it may sound like trying to “shoot the rhinoceros,” but that is exactly what you always wanted us to do. It is not an impossible goal.
Begging for the necessary strength and determination to continue this Sri Krsna Caitanya Sankirtana Padayatra.
We beg to remain, your servants,
Lokanath Swami