Hare Krishnas in India Aim Protest at U.S. : Religion: Devotees say an Orange County case shows America is anti-Hindu.

What began in an Orange County courtroom nearly a decade ago as a landmark case on religious cults became a forum for anti-American protest here Tuesday, as Indian political leaders joined with hundreds of Hare Krishna devotees outside the U.S. Embassy to denounce America as an anti-Hindu nation.

Carrying placards declaring, “Hare Krishna Is a Bona Fide Religion, Even in Russia,” the chanting and dancing devotees, many wearing their trademark saffron robes and shaved-head pony tails, presented a petition to embassy officials, appealing for a U.S. Supreme Court hearing of the prolonged and controversial Robin George case.

George, a Cypress, Calif., native who sued the Hare Krishna sect’s U.S. branch along with her widowed mother, was awarded a record $32.5-million judgment by an Orange County Superior Court jury that found the sect guilty of “brainwashing,” “mind control” and “false imprisonment” after the 15-year-old George had joined the sect in October, 1974.

The judgment was reduced to $5 million last August by the state appellate courts, but Hare Krishna leaders contend that even the lesser amount will force them to liquidate all five of their American temples, two of which are in Southern California.

The case is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, which stayed the sell-off order on Monday until May 10, when it will decide whether to hear the case.

“We’ve been chanting the name of Krishna in front of the National Archives in Washington for the last two months, and that may have had an effect,” Gopal Krishna Swami, head of the Indian branch of the Hare Krishnas and leader of the protest, said during Tuesday’s demonstration here.

“All we want is for the Supreme Court to hear our case, and, today, we’re just trying to bring that to the attention of the U.S. government and the American people.”

Asked whether he knew the details of the Robin George case, in which her father, Jim, died of a heart attack in September, 1976, after a two-year effort to rescue his daughter from Hare Krishna shrines throughout America, Krishna Swami said: “I am not a lawyer. . . . All we are saying today is give us a fair trial, and don’t close down our temples. If a shrine is closed in Los Angeles, it has implications all over the world.”

To emphasize that point, India’s Hare Krishna leaders were accompanied by five lawmakers from India’s newly elected national Parliament, all of them members of the Hindu-chauvinist Indian Peoples Party that won a record 80 seats in a wave of Hindu neo-fundamentalism that continues to sweep through traditionally secular India.

After the protest, legislator Uma Bharti officially introduced a resolution in Parliament calling on Indian Foreign Minister Inder Kumar Gujral to make an official protest to President Bush about the George case.

“We are appealing to President George Bush not to let any injustice come to Hindu temples in America,” Bharti said.

Krishna Swami flatly denied speculation by independent observers that the Hare Krishna society, which is a splinter sect from mainstream Hinduism, is trying to capitalize on India’s Hindu-fundamentalist movement by using the politicians to internationalize their cause.

Krishna Swami also denied that the Hare Krishnas, who formally call themselves the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, are a religious cult.

The cult issue was among the most contentious that dominated the original six-month George trial, in which prosecution lawyers and witnesses described in detail Jim and Marcia George’s painful ordeal to recover their daughter from the sect and then “deprogram” her.

The jury’s initial award of $32.5 million, 96% of which was for punitive damages, was reduced by the judge to $9.7 million, which the Hare Krishnas describe in their publicity blitz as “slightly less staggering.”

After the state appellate courts further cut the award almost in half, after dropping charges of both brainwashing and false imprisonment, the California Supreme Court refused to hear the Hare Krishnas’ appeal and the state court ruled that the Georges could execute their $5-million claim.