c. 1999 Religion News Service

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia _ The first night of Sasa Miljic’s recent mobilization into the Yugoslav Army, his officers discovered he was one soldier who marched to the beat of a different drummer.”They saw me at three in the morning, praying, chanting, `Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare’, you know, with my prayer beads and bead bag. They asked me what had happened to me. They asked me, `Did you hurt your hand?'”said Miljic, 25, a Hare Krishna monk.”I explained I was praying to God. They had many questions.” After interviews by his commander and military police on Miljic’s vegetarianism, Hare Krishna beliefs and attitude toward killing, Miljic said he has been accepted in his unit stationed on the Montenegrin coast. Other soldiers gave him the nickname”Hare,”Miljic said, and are accustomed to his refusal to smoke, drink alcohol or gamble.”I am very different,”said Miljic, a lean, tanned man with deepset blue eyes and a buzzcut.”They drink and play cards. I chant and pray.” Miljic’s mobilization into the Yugoslav Army in response to NATO’s bombing is one reason why the country’s tiny Hare Krishna community is in dire straits. Another is that while some male members of the Belgrade temple have been called up for military service, female devotees have left for a large Hare Krishna farm across the border in Hungary. Yugoslav men between the ages of 14 and 65 are forbidden to leave the country.

The Hare Krishna movement is an offshoot of Hinduism that is best known for its public chanting and bookselling _ both considered integral parts of its mission work. It was brought to the United States in the mid-1960s as the International Society of Krishna Consciousness and was especially popular among young people.

Before the NATO bombing started, about 100 people lived in the Belgrade temple, a large, rented house overlooking the Danube River in a working class neighborhood in the west of the city. Now, that number has dwindled to 10 devotees, said Daniela Purkhmeyer, 25, a temple leader. Before the bombing started, the community had hoped to purchase property for a permanent home. “But now if you buy a house, you don’t know how long you will have it. There are the bombs,”said Purkhmeyer, who predicts the community may soon be forced to give up its rented quarters for lack of money and meet in different members’ homes.

Aside from attrition caused directly by the NATO attacks, Purkhmeyer said the Hare Krishna community had already been having a difficult time because of an educational campaign in Serbian schools warning students of the dangers of the Hindu movement. “If there weren’t all this bad propaganda, we would have many more members. They were saying that we are using drugs, that we are spies for Croatia and that we are promoting the New World Order,”she said, referring to the label given by some Yugoslav leaders to the geopolitical strategy they say is behind NATO’s attacks on Yugoslavia.

One prominent Serbian Orthodox author, Father Zarko Gavrilovic, said that while he supports Yugoslav citizens’ right to choose what they believe, he considers the Hare Krishna movement to be harmful to a society where the traditional denomination has been the Serbian Orthodox Church.”Hare Krishna is not a Christian sect,”said Gavrilovic, 67, a theologian who studied at Oxford.”They are taking our territory, our believers, and in some way washing these people’s brains.” Although the Hare Krishnas certainly have their critics in Yugoslavia especially now _ a time of rising Serb nationalism _ Purkhmeyer and other leaders said they have never suffered discrimination by the government. The economic downturn resulting from the bombing is a greater concern as traditional sources of income like bookselling or peddling vegetarian snacks are no longer an option because”since the war started you need to get a special permit and they are rationing gasoline to only 20 liters a month for each person,”she said.

Despite the difficulties, neither Miljic nor Purkhmeyer nor other temple leaders doubted the longterm prospects of the Hare Krishna movement in Yugoslavia. For one thing, Purkhmeyer said, the Hare Krishnas are offering an explanation for a conflict that is beyond explanation for many of those enduring the daily air raids.

Among ordinary Belgrade residents reliant on the selective news coverage of state television there is genuine bafflement at why a military coalition of the world’s wealthiest nations is bombing their country. Purkhmeyer said the Hare Krishnas have a clear, if difficult, answer. “Some other religions would answer at this point, `The ways of God are not known to us.’ But from our point of view we understand that what is happening is an unraveling of karma. This is the result of past deeds. Surely, God is not allowing this to happen accidentally. It is difficult for people to hear, but it is logical,”said Purkhmeyer, a former Roman Catholic who quips,”I still like Jesus very much.” Ultimately, for Belgrade’s Hare Krishna community help from abroad may be necessary to stem the erosion of members caused by the war. But, according to temple president Bhakti-grantha das, accepting such aid brings with it another set of problems.”These NATO countries, they tend to have strong Hare Krishna communities. If they come to support us, then it could be bad for us here,”he said.”Then people might say, `Look whose side you are on.'” Sitting next to Bhakti-grantha das in the temple during his Army leave, Sasa Miljic, too, was concerned about having his loyalty questioned and refused to answer questions about where precisely he was stationed or whether, as a Hare Krishna monk, he would shoot at an enemy soldier.

Miljic did say that NATO aircraft on bombing flights from the Aviano airbase in Italy frequently fly directly over his position as they head toward targets inside Yugoslavia. The jets have yet to drop a bomb on Miljic’s unit but on his first night home on leave nine bombs were dropped on a nearby factory, making it difficult to sleep but, he said, bolstering his faith.”I realize that God,”Miljic said,”is the only one who can protect me when bombs are falling everywhere.”

DEA END RNS