Some believe that certain parts of Srila Prabhupada’s teachings were just “preaching strategies”, or deliberate lies told with the goal of making his preaching sweeter to certain audiences. The list includes points such as Prabhupada’s insistence that the soul has an eternal relationship with Krsna and such a relationship is simply forgotten when the jiva falls into the material world, giving brahmana initiation to ladies or saying that they could eventually also accept disciples and so on. The list is constantly growing.

This attitude of interpreting instructions from Srila Prabhupada and raising doubts about the honesty of the founder-Acarya sound to me dangerously close to the offense of interpreting and minimizing the glories of the holy names (arthavāda).

Just as some say that Srila Prabhupada cheated his lady disciples by claiming to give them brahminical initiation, or cheated his readers by claiming that the jiva has an eternal relationship with Krsna, others claim that the descriptions of the potency of the holy names in the scriptures are deliberately exaggerated in order to convince people to chant, even though the process is not as powerful as claimed.

The particular point about claiming that the glories of the holy names described in the scriptures are exaggerated is mentioned by Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura:

“The name of the Lord can destroy all the sins that a sinful person can commit. “All this glorification is very true. Those engaged in karma and jñāna, on hearing this glorification, minimize the meaning in order to maintain their activities. Arthavāda means to believe that the glorification of the name in scriptures is not true, but is praising the results in order to make people believe in the name. Those who commit this offense to the name cannot develop a taste for the name. Having faith in the statements of scripture, you should chant the name of the Lord. One should not associate with a person who commits this offense, arthavāda.”

We can see that the rationale behind both classes of arguments is similar. In both cases one is projecting his own imperfections on the previous acaryas or in the scriptures, claiming that they are dishonest. It’s important to notice that such a tendency is very common in sahajiya groups, which are not considered particularly elevated. Sahajiyas frequently project their own moral imperfections into Krsna’s pastimes, describing the Lilas as full of lust and enviousness.

People tend to project their imperfections on others. People who are honest tend to also presume that others are honest (at least until proved wrong), while others try to project dishonesty on blameless persons or even in the scriptures themselves.