While certain obvious formatting and printing issues in the early books should be corrected, that does not justify an unbridled license to edit the entire literary legacy of His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

The editors like to talk about obvious misprints (like a purport in the wrong place), but what about the practically endless examples of stylistic changes (not corrections) that we have seen presented on numerous web pages by numerous and outraged devotees? For God's sake, what a mess this editing business has caused! Certainly the editors should know that even the most minor editorial item must be proposed to the devotees and the Vaishnava world prior to printing!

How can the followers of Srila Prabhupada be expected to trust in the literally hundreds of undocumented, highly dubious and unnecessary changes to the 1972 Bhagavad-Gita As It Is? Changing the books destroys the trust and faith of people in Srila Prabhupada's books, and is another factor which has only served to dramatically undermine Srila Prabhupada's Mission.

How many times have we seen or heard that devotees no longer read or distribute Srila Prabhupada's books because they are upset about the changes? What better way to stunt the movement's growth than by impeding the acarya's clear instructions, His vani, his books. And will this 'change the books' policy continue to expand further and further until all of Srila Prabhupada's books are changed? What is the plan here? To continue to make changes to the end of the Yuga?

At the least, changes should be footnoted in each publication so that the original and the so called "improvement" can be directly compared, side by side. All proposed changes involving spelling, punctuation, grammar, omissions and the like, must be fully documented! All proposed changes in this category should be approved by a broad panel of qualified devotees. Not a panel of the editors who have an obvious bias for their proposed editing. And a published record of every one of the "simple" changes must be kept. Then, those few adjustments to correct the spelling, punctuation and so on which are made should be footnoted or put in an appendix so that this information can be viewed in the same book.

In this way the BBT and the editors can do their service to Srila Prabhupada properly without undermining anyone's faith in Srila Prabhupada's books, without undermining the potency of the books themselves, and without making it necessary for some to have to struggle to re-print duplicate editions of the unchanged books (which still contain obvious formatting blunders).

Time has come to reexamine this editing business with a view to protecting, rather than changing, Srila Prabhupada's recorded realizations.

Your servant,

Nityananda dasa