A formal demand to the directors of the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International
Restore the Original Editions
Śrīla Prabhupāda departed in 1977. Every change to his books since is unauthorised.
Read the full text of the demand ↓
A formal demand to the directors of the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International
Śrīla Prabhupāda departed in 1977. Every change to his books since is unauthorised.
Read the full text of the demand ↓
The demand
To the directors of the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International.
An author who has departed cannot approve a revision. Śrīla Prabhupāda departed in 1977; every change to his books since was made by someone else, without the author's authorisation.
As those who hold that authority today, we hereby call upon you to restore his original editions — the texts as he left them at his departure — as the standard texts published, translated and distributed worldwide, and to give any revised edition a distinct cover, the editor's name on it, and a published record of every change: the standard the Modern Language Association sets for any scholarly edition of a primary source.
The undersigned
Made by Centros de Bhakti Yoga, a non-profit association registered under Spanish law, CIF G76660679, Tenerife, Spain — together with everyone who signs it. · The text above was sealed on and cannot be changed — how that is proved. · This is the text that is signed; the Spanish version is a reference translation, sealed separately.
Signatories
Loading the register…
What has happened since the demand went out, day by day: the diary.
In the years before his departure in 1977, Śrīla Prabhupāda published his translations and commentaries. They sold in the millions, were praised by scholars, and were the books he saw, corrected and approved.
After his departure in 1977 they were revised. The revisions were not announced, no list of the changes was published, and the new editions appeared under the same title, the same cover and the same author's name.
The extent of the alterations — thousands of them — became public only decades later, through comparisons made by devotees rather than by the publisher.
What has been sent to the BBT
| Sent | Date | Delivery | Answer | Proof |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delivery takes place on the announced date, with every signature received up to that date included in the document delivered. | ||||
Questions
It was drafted by Centros de Bhakti Yoga, the association that makes the demand, and has not changed since it was sealed. Four rules governed the drafting.
Only what cannot be disputed. No quotation whose meaning is contested, no claim about anyone's intentions, no assertion of fact that is not a matter of record. The premise is a date.
Addressed only to those who can act. Not to the past, not to an institution in general, but to the people who hold the authority to do this today.
As short as possible. A long document invites negotiation and dilution. This one asks for two things.
Nothing punitive. No person is accused, no removal is sought, no edition is to be destroyed.
“Formal” means that a record remains. A request gathers opinions; a formal demand fixes facts: who sends it (a registered association, signed by its legal representative), to whom (the directors of BBT International, nominally, at their registered address), what is asked (that the original editions be restored as the standard texts, and that every revised edition carry a distinct cover, the editor's name on it, and a published record of each change), on what deadline (thirty days), and that it arrived.
That it arrived is proven twice over: a certified letter with a qualified eIDAS seal, and the sealed text anchored in Bitcoin.
It is not a lawsuit. It obliges nothing. The directors have no obligation to reply.
But silence stops being an absence and becomes a documented fact. Until now anyone could say they had never been formally asked. That is no longer true, and it can be proved.
No, and it is worth saying plainly why.
A number of anonymous supporters proves nothing. It cannot be checked, it can be dismissed as invented, and it gives the directors an easy reason not to answer. What obliges an answer is the opposite: identifiable people, whose connection to the mission can be verified by anyone who knows them, willing to put their names to a single sentence.
Your name and your connection to the mission are published; your city and country only if you give them; your email address never.
We know this costs something for devotees serving inside temples. It is the reason the demand asks for nothing beyond the restoration itself, and names no one but its addressees — so that signing it is as defensible a thing to have done as it can be.
Signing sends a single-use link to the address you give, and the signature does not count until you open it. That is what stops anyone adding your name without your knowledge, and what stops the list being inflated with names that do not exist.
Your address is used for that confirmation, and to tell you what answer the directors give. Nothing else. It is never published, never shared and never passed to anyone. The site runs no analytics and carries no tracking. It sets one cookie once you have signed — the identifier of your own signature, so that the names can be shown to you — and the only thing it loads from outside is the Cloudflare check that keeps automated signatures out of this form.
Before a single signature was collected, the exact text was published and its fingerprint recorded on a public, permanent record. If one word had been altered — by us or by anyone else — the check below would fail.
curl -O https://restore.vedicvault.org/letter/letter-en.txt
curl -O https://restore.vedicvault.org/letter/letter-en.txt.ots
sha256sum letter-en.txt
ots verify letter-en.txt.otsThe register of signatures is deliberately not sealed this way. Permanence must protect a text; it must never trap a person. It is available as JSON at /api/register.
Each recipient of the demand receives an individually addressed email — never a bulk mailing, never a blind copy list — certified by an independent service, with the original .eml and its DKIM signature retained and linked from the record.
What this does not claim. These records establish that a document existed in a specific form on a specific date, that it was addressed to a named person through a channel they use, and whether a reply arrived by the stated deadline. They do not, and cannot, prove that a recipient read it. We say so here rather than let it be discovered as an objection.
No, and the text was drafted so that it could not.
The demand makes no allegation of wrongdoing against any person. It asserts no fact that is in dispute in any proceeding. It takes no position on the parties, the evidence or the merits of any case. It claims no legal right and seeks no remedy from any court. It is a request addressed to the directors of a corporation, asking them to do something that lies within their own authority.
Its single premise is a date — the author departed in 1977 — which no party anywhere disputes.
If counsel to any party nonetheless believes otherwise, we ask them to write to us and say so. We will publish their statement in full and unedited, and we will act on it.
The demand asks for one thing that every party to this discussion already says it wants: Śrīla Prabhupāda's own words, available as he gave them. Nothing in it concerns any person, office or institution, and it names no one but its addressees. If agreement on that single point divides us, the division was already there.
No. The demand asks that the original editions be the standard, and that any revision stand separately and be clearly identified as a revision. That is the ordinary practice of publishing, and it costs the revised edition nothing but its anonymity.
Every signature received up to 5 October 2026 is inside the document delivered to the directors on Tuesday 6 October, by certified courier with acknowledgement of receipt, at the corporation's registered office in Los Angeles. That date was published before anything was sent and it will not be moved.
After that the page does not close. Signatures are still received, still published, and a further delivery is made if enough arrive to warrant one. Nothing that is signed later is wasted; it simply arrives in the second envelope rather than the first.
The demand is addressed to the directors of The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International, Inc., the corporation that holds the rights to the texts. It is delivered to its registered office, which binds the corporation as a whole, and the officers and directors are named inside the document — taken from the organisation's own annual return to the United States tax authority, not from any list assembled by us.
The notice of 4 September went to the address the BBT itself publishes for this purpose. What that page said on that day is recorded by an independent certification service, so it cannot later be said that we wrote somewhere else.
What was sent on 4 September was an advance notice, not the demand: a letter saying it exists and asking whether they wish to reply. Every entry in the record is published on the day it happens and never afterwards. Anyone invited to sign since 8 September 2026 is told, when invited, that the invitation and a refusal of it may be published; those invited before that date were promised otherwise, and that promise is kept.
One sheet. Print at 100%, no scaling — leave a stack at your temple, or hand it to one person.
