Monkey on a Stick: A Tacky Tale of Murder, Abuse… and Chanting

By Liam Lacey

Rating: C

George Harrison sang the Hare Krishna chant in his song “My Sweet Lord,’ Alan Ginsberg chanted the mantra at William F. Buckley on television, and the movie Airplane! parodied the presence of its annoyingly cheerful orange-robed disciples at airports.

The movement, which blossomed alongside the hippie movement in the late sixties with its anti-materialist message, is known formally as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). An offshoot of the Hindu religion, founded in New York City in 1966 by an elderly Indian immigrant known as Prabhupada who arrived in New York at the age of 69 and started picking up followers while chanting in an East Village park.

Prabhupada initiated a movement that spread from the United States back to India and Europe and other parts of the world. Though the Hare Krishna presence is far less conspicuous today than it was in the 70s and 80s, there has been a slew of true crime documentaries about the movement in the last five years, including programs presented on CNN, HBO and ABC. These films, about crimes committed and reported on more than 20 years ago, aren’t exposés but a response to the appetite for true crime and cult indoctrination stories.

Now there’s another one, the synoptic Monkey on a Stick, from Canadian filmmaker, Jason Lapeyre (I Declare War, Cold Blooded), based on a 1988 book by John Hubner and Lindsey Gruson, which summarizes the history of the organization’s dark side. Certainly, there’s lots of darkness there, from mail fraud, racketeering, sports merchandise counterfeiting, drug trafficking, child abuse and murder, though none of this is new.

Comprised of talking heads, some archival clips, some tacky dramatizations, and sophomoric surveys of a group of subjects on questions of the nature of faith, it’s a patchwork tabloid affair. When it plays it straight, the film is informative and broad reaching.

Among the interview subjects are former followers of the movement, including “independent scholar” Steven Gelberg, along with former Hare Krishna devotee and public relations head Nori Muster (author of a book entitled Betrayal of the Spirit) and Hubner, the source material’s co-author. Collectively, they provide the story of the movement’s humble start, rapid growth and period of schisms, squandering and debauchery.

A few warning signs of trouble ahead include the emphasis on acquiring money and the deep misogyny of the movement, though things didn’t get nasty until the death of Prabhupada in 1977 at the age of 81, when the administration was handed over to 11 of his disciples with different responsibilities. A couple of years later, Hare Krishna members were busted for a hash oil importing scheme, which they were using to raise money.

From there, the film focuses on four “bad gurus” from the original 11. First up is leader Robert Grant (a.k.a. Ramesvara Das) who was kicked out of the movement for grooming and having relations with a teenaged girl.

Then there was James Immel, a.k.a. Jayatirtha, a.k.a. the LSD guru who, five years after being ousted from ISKCON and forming his own schismatic offshoot, was murdered and decapitated by a deranged devotee. (A reenactment of the murder scene features a blue-skinned androgynous youth, Krishna, peeking at the murder scene from around a corner). A third bad guru, Hans Jurgen Kary, a.k.a. Hansadutta Das, was leader with a fondness for fast cars, guns and rock and roll, was arrested on weapons charges.

A substantial section is devoted to the most notorious Hare Krishna-related crime case, that of Keith Ham, a.k.a. Kirtanananda Swami, the Baptist-raised leader of the New Vrindaban’s commune in West Virginia, who built a temple that is still a tourist draw.

Ham was charged with mail fraud, racketeering and conspiracy to murder two men who, according to the charges, threatened to expose his sexual abuse of minors. (The title Monkey on a Stick alludes to the practice on Indian banana plantations of putting a dead monkey on a pole to warn other monkeys from stealing the crops.)

In 1991, Kirtananda was convicted on nine of the 11 charges (excepting the murder charges) but on appeal, celebrity defence attorney Alan Dershowitz (his later sex offence clients include Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein) successfully argued that the child molestation evidence unfairly prejudiced the jury against the defendant, and Ham was released. Before a retrial, he pled guilty to racketeering and was sent to prison.

Monkey on a Stick also deals the organization’s public acknowledgement in 1998 of the widespread physical, emotional and sexual abuse of children who were sent to live at Hare Krishna boarding schools in the 1970s and 1980s. A $400 million lawsuit by former students against ISKCON was settled in 2005 for just $9.5-million former boarding school students in schools in the U.S. and India.

One area the documentary ignores is ISKCON’s continued transformation in the current millennium, where the organization is bigger in India than in North America, and most American followers are South Asian immigrants, who live not in communal ashrams but in their own homes and, instead of begging on the street, do ordinary jobs.

They were drawn to the Hare Krishna centres because they were much easier to find than Hindu temples such as they left behind in India. Whether or not it’s true for individuals, reincarnation is clearly possible for spiritual movements.

Monkey on a Stick. Directed by Jason Lapeyre. In select theatres October 18 (Toronto) and October 25 (Vancouver).