Did Prabhupāda really predict a nuclear war? Will it still happen?
Śrila Prabhupada once said a nuclear war would devastate parts of the world. It would start with a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan and involve the main nuclear powers.
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In the 1975 Gaura Purnima Festival, in Mayapur, Śrila Prabhupada made a prediction that there would be a nuclear war that would devastate vast parts of the world. This war would start with a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan and would involve the main nuclear powers, culminating in Armageddon.
It was not just something he said jokingly; it was serious. He even ordered notices to be sent to all the main temples, urging the leaders to take steps to prepare for the impending catastrophe. Prabhupada commented that devotees would have to endure hardships, but that after the war, the preaching would be very nice, and there would be a possibility of Krsna consciousness spreading widely in the world.
However, time passed, and there was no war. Ravindra Swarupa mentions in an article that when Prabhupada was asked about it, his response was that, "Krsna had changed His mind". Prabhu develops the topic further, conjecturing that the reason may be the visit of Śrila Prabhupada to the Soviet Union, in which the seeds that would later lead to the collapse of the regime and the appearance of a significant number of devotees were planted. Krsna changed His mind and created a brighter future for us.
Many still live under the idea that a nuclear war will come at some point and that our movement will somehow flourish after it. Some not only expect, but actually desire it.
Surely, the possibility is still there. Just because a nuclear war didn't happen in the 1970s, when tensions were at their highest, it doesn't mean it may not still happen in the future. Many countries still have large stockpiles of nuclear weapons, and many analysts believe that further proliferation may happen in the following years, with more nations attaining nuclear weapons as a result of current conflicts.
The chance for a nuclear war may be relatively low at any given time, but it has only to happen once.
Personally, I don't think desiring a nuclear war is a good meditation. Wars are nasty affairs, and we don't even understand what a worldwide nuclear war would bring. Certainly, thousands of devotees would die in the process, and many others would face great difficulties. Maybe it would not even be necessarily good for the spreading of Krsna consciousness. Recent history shows us that external crises don't always bring devotees together. On the contrary, they often increase internal disputes and put devotees against each other.
Just because Prabhupada mentioned the possibility of a nuclear war at a certain point and predicted the outcome would be ultimately positive for the growth of our movement at that particular time, it doesn't mean that a nuclear war in different circumstances will also be positive.
We can remember what happened in 2020 during the pandemic, for example. Most programs had to stop, and devotees started fighting like anything on all kinds of public forums over mundane topics. There are a few examples of communities that increased their spiritual efforts during the crisis, like our book distributors in New York and Silicon Valley, for example. Still, in general, it was not something very positive for our movement. In 2022, there was another crisis in the form of the Russian-Ukrainian war, and again, we didn't do very well in the test of unity. There are devotees on both sides still shooting at each other to this day. Not only did the war fail to bring devotees together, but created a great split between the two communities that may take a long time to be solved, if ever.
We have been seeing in the past decades that our movement tends to flourish when there is relative freedom and a certain degree of stability and optimism, and witter when there is persecution, crisis, and hardships. Our movement gained a foothold in Iran during the reign of the Shah but completely disappeared after the revolution. It flourished in Russia in the 1990s, during the time of freedom, but has been struggling since 2014, following the growing repression. There are examples of devotees being able to distribute prasādam and conduct humanitarian programs in war zones, but there are no large-scale examples of communities that would flourish in such environments. As a rule, we flourish in times of peace and relative prosperity.
Examples like this may give us some insights into why Krsna “changed His mind.” We, as a movement, were probably not prepared for such a great catastrophe at that time, just as we are probably not prepared now. I believe it's time to stop fantasizing about nuclear wars bringing magic solutions and start thinking about how to solve the problems we have here and now.
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Hare Krishna Prabhu, i wish there would never be such a thing, but we still need to consider it as possibility as Srila Prabhupada also said about the weapons that since they were made, they will also be used. Also Guru Maharaj openly states that we need to be actively preparing ourselves for this possibility, and build land communities to provide shelter for fleeting population