History & overview · every faith gets one
Chant the names, and Krishna is present in the sound.
The Hare Krishna movement, incorporated in New York on 13 July 1966 by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, then aged seventy: Gaudiya Vaishnavism carried into English, with Krishna as the supreme person rather than one deity among many, the maha-mantra told on beads sixteen rounds a day, and a discipline of vegetarian food offered before it is eaten. Governed since 1970 by a Governing Body Commission rather than by a single successor, which is itself the movement's longest-running argument.
The society's residential gurukula boarding schools in the United States and India were the subject of a suit filed in Texas in 2000 on behalf of more than ninety former students, alleging physical and sexual abuse through the 1970s and 1980s. Twelve ISKCON entities filed for Chapter 11 protection in 2002 and the claims were settled in 2005 for about 9.5 million dollars. ISKCON established its own Child Protection Office in 1998 and has published findings against its own members since. Separately, Kirtanananda Swami, who led the New Vrindaban community in West Virginia, pleaded guilty to racketeering in 1996 — the counts included conspiracy in two killings — and was sentenced to twenty years, reduced to twelve in 1997; New Vrindaban had been expelled from ISKCON in 1987.
Why it is filed this way
ISKCON is a twentieth-century institution teaching a sixteenth-century theology. It places itself in the Brahma-Madhva-Gaudiya sampradaya descending from Chaitanya, and Vaishnavas in India generally accept the claim. It is carried here as a movement because the society itself dates from 1966, not because the lineage is doubted.
The founding
Prabhupada arrived in New York in September 1965 on a cargo ship with forty rupees and a trunk of his own Bhagavatam translations. He chanted under an elm in Tompkins Square Park and taught in a Second Avenue storefront; the society was incorporated the following July.
Its founding is bound to A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada — 1966 CE.
What it holds
Reality. A material world of temporary bodies, and Krishna's own unending one behind it.
The divine. Krishna is God himself, not an avatar of Vishnu — the reverse of the usual ordering, and the position that defines the Gaudiya line. Radha is worshipped with him. Other deities are real and subordinate, which is stated plainly and is why some Hindus find the movement narrow..
Death and after. Rebirth driven by karma until devotion ends it, then Krishna's own abode.