Srila Gurudeva: Once there was a brahmacari named Siddha-svarupa. He went to preach in East Bengal with Nemi Maharaja. Nemi Maharaja was a very learned person, knowing all sastra and speaking in Sanskrit and pure Bengali.
When they were preaching, Maharaja told Siddha-svarupa that, “You should speak something.” He began to say that in Bengal there is a goat having a big white beard who is always pursuing she-goats. Who is he? That Rabindranatha Thakura who won the Nobel prize. He said this about him. He also said that there is a gunda of religion, a dacoit of religion. Who is he? Vivekananda. He said that he is not ‘Vivekananda’ (one who takes bliss in having intelligence) but rather he is ‘Vi-vekananda’ (one who takes bliss in being ignorant). Meaning he had no intelligence. Hearing this, the entire audience, thousands of people began to shout, “We don’t want to hear, we don’t want to hear this!” That audience used to praise both of these people.
The whole audience became so angry and so that meeting was dispersed. Then Nemi Maharaja wrote a telegram to Prabhupada, “We were preaching here very nicely but this Siddha-svarupa ruined everything. He spoiled our preaching. He was criticizing Rabindranatha and Vivekananda.” Prabhupada at once replied by telegram, “Oh, his preaching is worth lakhs and lakhs and thousands and thousands of dollars. It is so high class. He has spoken the truth. Tell them that I am coming there to support Siddha-svarupa. A meeting should be called and I will prove that what he said was true. One was a religious gunda and the other was a goat.”
Srila Prabhupada went there and a big meeting was called. Prabhupada then proved it as truth that this Rabindranatha Thakura was like a goat. He said, “Those who are always pursuing this bhoga, this sense enjoyment, they are like goats. So he is like that. He has no realization about anything spiritual. He is not speaking about transcendental anything related to Krsna, Gita, Bhagavata or the Vedas.” Also this person, Vivekananda, he went to Chicago and in a religious discourse he said that, “Brahma is zero. This world is zero, everything is zero. From zero everything has come and everything will merge back into zero. This is a religious gunda. They don’t know the ABCD of religion.
Prabhupada proved this and then everyone there who was opposite now became favorable and they became the sisya of the Gaudiya Matha. So this was the preaching at that time. Nowadays we cannot speak the truth. If you are going to speak the truth, then everyone will become opposite to you. Also, those who are following in the line of Svami Maharaja, they are also like this. They are not speaking the truth. Nowadays, suddha-bhakti is very rare. Prabhupada was the first person to preach this suddha-bhakti, pure bhakti.
[Spoken by Srila Gurudeva on December 7th, 1998, Malaysia, published as part of the Bhakta Bandhav Anthology, Volume 25]