Śrīla Prabhupāda's Temples
A Comprehensive Guide to Śrī Vṛndāvana Dhāma
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), more commonly known in the West as the Hare Krishna movement, comes in a tradition that traces itself all the way back to Lord Krishna Himself. ISKCON was founded in 1966 in New York by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977), known fondly by his disciples as Srila Prabhupada. Srila Prabhupada came to the United States because his spiritual master, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakura, had asked him to teach bhakti, pure devotional service to Krishna, to the English-speaking world.
Srila Prabhupada arrived in Boston in 1965, at sixty-nine years old. By 1966 he had moved to New York City and had developed a small following.
From 1966 through 1968 temples were established in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Montreal, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The first Festival of the Chariots (Ratha-yatra), an age-old tradition imported from Jagannatha Puri, India, was held in San Francisco in 1967. This began an annual ISKCON event, now held in more than twenty major cities around the world.
In 1970, Srila Prabhupada established the Governing Body Commission (GBC), ISKCON’s international managerial body, to oversee his young Society, which had quickly grown from a storefront center in New York to close to 100 temples, schools, restaurants, and farm communities. Between 1971 and 1973, temples opened in cities in Europe, Canada, South America, Mexico, England, Africa, and India.
Srila Prabhupada had a desire to give India back its bhakti culture, so from 1970 through 1977, he arranged for the building of major centers of Krsna devotion at the pilgrimage sites of Mayapur, West Bengal, and Vrindavana, in Uttar Pradesh. He also had constructed a large temple in Bombay (now Mumbai).
Besides temple construction, Srila Prabhupada had been ordered by his spiritual master to publish books on devotional service. To facilitate this end, he founded the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust (BBT) in 1972, now the world’s largest publisher of books on bhakti-yoga. The unique website, Krishna.com, is sponsored and maintained by the BBT.
In 1973, Srila Prabhupada founded the Bhaktivedanta Institute, ISKCON's scientific branch, and gave it the mandate to write books and articles and to hold conferences to present Vedic science to the world.
In 1974 Srila Prabhupada's disciples founded ISKCON Food for Life, a food relief program that functions in dozens of cities around the world, providing both free meals, and when necessary, disaster relief.
Srila Prabhupada passed from this world In November 1977. At that time, ISKCON had established 108 temples and had more than 10,000 followers.
The movement has continued to grow since Srila Prabhupada's departure, including in the former Soviet Union. In 1989, the Hare Krishna movement was able to come out from the underground as glasnost brought an end to persecution. By 1991, more than 1,000,000 copies of Srila Prabhupada’s Bhagavad-gita As It Is had been sold in the former Soviet Union. ISKCON continues to thrive in Eastern Europe.
Today, ISKCON has about 400 centers worldwide, with an international congregation in the tens of thousands. ISKCON devotees come from all walks of life, but have one thing in common: an interest in offering pure devotional service to Sri Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead.