BIO

At the 2022 Annual General Meeting, the GBC appointed South African devotee Champakalata devi dasi to the post of ISKCON’s Justice Minister.

Champakalata dasi has been practising bhakti yoga since 1978 when her parents joined ISKCON in Durban, South Africa. She has an impressive résumé of ISKCON services as well as outstanding educational and professional qualifications.

In South Africa, Champakalata dasi has served as the Communications Officer, Legal Advisor, and Chairperson of the ISKCON KwaZulu-Natal Management Board, and she currently serves on ISKCON’s South African National Executive Committee. Internationally, Champakalata dasi served as the Director of ISKCON’s International Child Protection Office (CPO) from 2009 to 2016 and subsequently as the first director of ISKCON’s Prevention of Leadership Misconduct Office. She has a wealth of experience within ISKCON, having also served as a member of the CPO Review Committee, the Ministry of Education, and the Ethics Advisory Committee. She has had extensive training in child protection, including completing courses on counselling and trauma counselling.

Champakalata dasi holds multiple degrees – Bachelor of Arts, Law, and Education (qualified teacher). Significantly, in her teaching degree, she studied, inter alia, modules in psychology and classroom management (discipline), expertise that she brought to her role as a CPO director. She has her own law firm, lectures on a part-time basis for the Law Society of South Africa, and, when available, serves as an acting Magistrate in the South African judiciary and as a presiding officer for the Department of Labor in workmen’s compensation matters.

Unlike in some other parts of the world, where laypersons can volunteer for a few hours a year to preside in less serious cases, Magistrates in South Africa must possess both law degrees and relevant industry experience and are drawn solely from the ranks of senior attorneys, advocates, and prosecutors. The appointment process is rigorous. Accordingly, she is an admitted attorney with the right of appearance in the High Court of South Africa. Admission as an attorney includes passing the board exams (attorneys’ admission exams). She has successfully practised as an attorney for the past 30 years in her own law firm, where she has a growing staff complement who assist her, thus enabling her to manage both a law firm and her services in ISKCON.

She also possesses the added qualifications of being a conveyancer, notary public, and trained mediator (including mediation as a specialty in the study for her Master’s degree). These qualifications are difficult to obtain as the examinations are intensive. In 2020, she was appointed by the South African Legal Practice Council to serve as an examiner for the attorneys’ admission exams, where she not only grades written examinations but also conducts oral examinations for prospective attorneys. In 2023, she was appointed by the Legal Practice Council to serve on its disciplinary committee.

Since her appointment as the Justice Minister, Champakalata dasi has prepared a standardized course for the training of ISKCON members who serve as judges, adjudicators, disciplinary, or review panel members in ISKCON proceedings. She encourages, where appropriate, that alternate dispute mechanisms and restorative justice be explored prior to engaging in adjudicatory processes. Champakalata dasi strongly advocates for fair and due processes with the rules of natural justice underpinning all investigative and adjudicatory processes.

Despite all of the above commitments, Champakalata dasi finds time to spend with her family and to study Srila Prabhupada’s books and is expected to complete the Bhakti Vaibhava degree this year. She is often seen giving classes at the local temple or at festivals, participating in book distribution, and loves serving the devotees.