By Vijaya Dasa
Usually the Bali temple is barely noticed in the world of book distribution, but in July something happened, I don't know what, and the temple had its best month in history, with 15,064 book points: an 849% increase. The devotees there are a quite devoted group, so perhaps they were showing their gratitude to Srila Prabhupada on this fiftieth anniversary of ISKCON. We received shocking news months ago that Russia had passed a new law restricting religious activities to places of worship. We thought that this might be the end of book distribution and harinama sankirtana. Sure enough, under the new law, not long ago a book distributor was stopped and had to go to court, with the possibile penalty of paying a huge fine. ISKCON had a good lawyer, though, and the judge acquitted the devotee. This victory for Lord Caitanya's sankirtana movement during the auspicious fiftieth anniversary of ISKCON was topped off by the Moscow devotees' all-out book distribution marathon. Moscow was the No. 2 temple in the world in July, with 17,932 book points, a 53% increase.