If you go in the villages, you’ll find that the villagers rising early in the morning, they’re taking bath, changing cloth, and chanting Hare Krsna as far as possible. Still in the mass of people of India, the Krsna consciousness is still existing; it is not yet lost. And they believe in the next birth, next life, past life. They believe in God, in Krsna. They’re satisfied with that position. But the modern leaders, they do not like it. They want to make them intoxicated so that they can work like an ass for the morsel of food.

Srila Prabhupada/ Talk on Bhagavad-gita 4.9 — March 29, 1974, Bombay