The Hare Krishna Movement: The Postcharismatic Fate of a Religious Transplant

Edited by Edwin Bryant and Maria Ekstrand

New York: Columbia University Press, 2004

by Ravi M. Gupta

I write this review from two perspectives. First, I am an insider to the movement that is the subject of this book: I grew up in the Hare Krishna movement, and three generations of my family are committed members of ISKCON, or the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Together we have participated in ISKCON’s activities in both India and the United States, from the early nineteen-seventies to the present day. Second, I write as an academic who specializes in the study of Hinduism.

The Hare Krishna Movement: The Postcharismatic Fate of a Religious Transplant is a collection of twenty-five articles on ISKCON and its institutional offshoots as they have developed since the passing away of ISKCON’s founder, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. The book is divided into six coherent sections, addressing the movement’s theological background, history, controversies about lineage, heresies, social issues, and members’ reevaluations.

Perhaps the most noticeable feature of the book’s composition is its authorship. Nearly all the individual authors (and the editors of the volume) hold or have held a personal commitment to the movement. Many are forthcoming about their associations, while others are not. The selection of pieces is generally balanced between current and ex-members of the movement. The contributions of so many insiders make the book an interesting study of the insider/outsider issues that have elicited much recent interest in academia. Can a religious practitioner also be a scholar of his tradition? On the other hand, does a non-practicing scholar truly have access to the tradition she studies? Several of the authors explicitly raise these issues (e.g., Vishnu), while others provide good examples of insider scholarship (e.g., W. Deadwyler).

While it is convenient for readers to find a diverse range of perspectives within a single volume, little of this scholarship is fresh or original. Much of the material, information, and analysis has been around for years, and it will be quite familiar to anyone who has followed the movement’s course over the past decade. This will be especially true for readers who are insiders to the movement—the essays on each topic, excluding the purely historical essays, are written by the usual proponents of a particular viewpoint, using material that has repeatedly surfaced in the recent past. A few articles stand out as noteworthy or even brilliant exceptions, such as those by Kenneth Valpey and Thomas Herzig. A direct consequence of this lack of originality is that the volume offers a very narrow window on the Hare Krishna movement. This limitation is recognizable in several areas:

1) Geography. Some of the most significant recent developments in ISKCON, and certainly much of its expansion, have taken place in Eastern Europe, Russia, and India. These areas have been loci for social change, doctrinal debates, and institutional controversies (of the type discussed in the book). Even for the movement in the United States, these regions have become sources of influence that are no longer easy to ignore, as does this volume.

2) Demographics. Some of the most important catalysts for change in the Hare Krishna movement in the last couple of decades have been its shifting demographics. Devotees have moved from communes to congregations and have shifted from being single to supporting households. Temples themselves are often populated by priests “imported” from distant parts of the world. Congregational families increasingly find spiritual support in small “gatherings” and “worship groups,” rather than large, centralized temples. The movement is experiencing the aging of its membership, accompanied by a shift in pastoral care priorities. The movement has now seen the arrival of two generations of devotees for whom Hare Krishna is their family religion. This has led to attempts at creating viable educational alternatives, including home-schooling, Sunday schools, and institutions of higher education such as Bhaktivedanta College, in Belgium. Perhaps the single most powerful element that has kept ISKCON afloat in its post-charismatic phase has been the consistent support of the Indian community in the diaspora. Many temples in the U.S. are now populated, managed, and funded by local Indian communities. The Hare Krishna Movement takes only passing notice of some of these demographic changes, succumbing instead to a “catalogue of controversies” approach to historical documentation.

3) Time frame. As a consequence of ignoring recent demographic changes, the book has a relatively limited time frame. Despite its stated aim of addressing the “fate” of the Hare Krishna movement, the volume has very little to say about the movement’s present or future. It focuses primarily on a series of debates from a decade ago, privileging the concerns of a specific generation of members. I found in the book little description of the ISKCON I have known as a second-generation Indian in America. My experience of the movement is far from unique; indeed, it is the experience of a significant section of the membership in countries such as the United States, United Kingdom and India. This limited time frame, one could argue, is embedded in the title of the book. “Fate” is a forward-looking word applied to an entity with no future. It suggests a future that is doomed or, at best, predestined to decline. Indeed, in their concluding words, the editors consider the possibility of writing “ISKCON’s epitaph,” but fortunately dismiss the idea as “premature.”

Despite The Hare Krishna Movement’s virtues as an honest appraisal of institutional turmoil

after 1977, and the presence of passionate articles from a diversity of viewpoints, the book is unlikely to be widely appreciated in ISKCON or its institutional offshoots for a simple reason: Two articles, written by the same author, attack the movement’s founder in a manner that many members may find to be uninformed and offensive. Even persons disaffected by ISKCON—this includes advocates of every viewpoint voiced in the volume—maintain an attachment to the movement’s founder and some conviction in his integrity as an individual and a spiritual leader.

Ekkehard Lorenz’s essays on Prabhupada attempt to depict him as racist, sexist, intellectually dishonest, ungrateful, unethical, unsophisticated, and unaware of the norms of the societies in which he lived. His teachings are blamed for condoning abuse of children, abuse of women, and abuse by leadership, while promoting dictatorship, intolerance, and autocratic rule by the guru. Lorenz’s articles betray a lack of scholarly method and analysis. To make his points, Lorenz simply quotes Prabhupada out of context and then interprets his statements with no regard to Caitanya Vaisnava theology, the social contexts in which Prabhupada lived, or Prabhupada’s own application of his teachings. A straightforward example: Lorenz produces a selection of statements by Prabhupada on the role and status of women; then he draws his conclusion without giving thought to traditional Hindu views on women, the understanding of women in Caitanya Vaisnavism, or Prabhupada’s significant reforms and innovations in this regard (offering women brahmanical initiation, the opportunity to perform worship on the altar, leadership roles in missionary activity, and so on). Such contextualized analysis would, of course, greatly complicate Lorenz’s project of portraying Prabhupada as sexist.

In their conclusion, the editors admit Lorenz’s lack of attention to context, but they sidestep the difficulty by saying that “contextualization immediately problematizes simplistic notions of the absolute nature of the guru” (439). I see no good reason, however, for an academic volume to fear such problematization, especially when the alternative is simplistic criticism. Overall, The Hare Krishna Movement will prove useful to scholars of religion as a glimpse into the struggles of a religious tradition taking root in foreign soil. For members of the Hare Krishna movement, the book can serve as a useful tool for historical reflection and self-assessment, for it assembles material from diverse perspectives within the pages of a single volume. As there have been few studies of the Hare Krishna movement in the last decade, this book is a noteworthy contribution.

Nevertheless, for the reasons given in this review—lack of originality, the dated nature of the discussion, and insufficient attention to context, especially recent social changes—it appears that the book as a whole offers a rather limited perspective on the Hare Krishna movement. This is unfortunate, for the notion of “transplant” entails more than just the transport of an object from one location to another. Success in transplanting depends as much on the conditions of the new environment as it does on having a healthy and vigorous specimen. The arrival of a plant in a new landscape means that the landscape will be changed, but it also requires that the plant adapt in response to its new environment. Understanding this interaction, therefore, becomes indispensable for ensuring a verdant future.

Indeed, a contextualized analysis of the Hare Krishna movement—one that addresses recent developments within the movement along with issues of integration into new environments—would be of great value to all those interested in studying the migration of Indian traditions to the West.