and also for how they live in harmony with their Hindu neighbours over the years.
Three bhakti movements in the UK, and Christianity: 1. ISKCON1 (Hare Krishna movement)
We now turn to our main theme of Hindus and Christians in the West. There follow three chapters based upon the Teape lectures that I gave in Calcutta, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore in November 2011.2 The general theme of these lectures was Christian engagement with bhakti movements. This was mainly in the UK, but there will be clear links to what I write later about the USA. This applies to all three themes – ISKCON, South Indian bhakti, and South Asian conversions, including Jesu Bhakters. Readers in the USA are therefore encouraged to read these chapters.
For most Westerners, their image of Hinduism can be stereotyped around yoga, idol worship, festivals, caste and India – some key concepts. Like most generalizations, these associations are both true and not true. Actual contact with Hinduism may have begun with a journey to India, as a student backpacker or a searcher for spirituality, or on a luxury package tour of discovering the exotic. For those who have never made such a visit, their contact in the West may first have been to witness the chanting and preaching of a Hare Krishna group in a high street of their local city. The distinctive saffron clothes and the musical instruments mark them out. The devotion to Krishna is easy to pick out within their much-repeated and rhythmic mantra: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. If onlookers have shown much interest and lingered, they may well have been given a copy of the Bhagavadgita, and perhaps they have glanced into this scripture, as they may have looked at the Bible on their shelves at home from time to time. They may have noticed that the devotees are a mixture of Western and Indian, and there will probably be some curiosity about why their fellow Europeans or Americans have got caught up in this. Have they been brainwashed? Are they free to come and go? Is this movement a cult? Is it to be feared, to be welcomed, or to be ignored?
There may be some other half-remembered connections in the mind of the onlooker – the involvement of George Harrison and other Beatles for a time; the song of Boy George, ‘Karma Chameleon’; stories from the USA about residential schools and cases of abuse, something also perhaps about cow worship being taken to excess, where cows can appear to become more important than people.
Overall, there may well be some admiration for the apparent commitment and evangelistic enthusiasm of these groups, a feeling that they are probably harmless, and genuine in their spiritual search. It is not difficult to see this as a bhakti movement, if we know the word – a charismatic, spirit-filled devotional movement. Let us then search further, into the history of the movement, its origins in India, its development in the West, its theology and praxis, and whether there has been or could be engagement with Christians in a positive direction. Could this movement be a way into understanding what is the third religion of the world, after Christianity and Islam? For whatever else it is, this movement comes deeply from within Hinduism, and remains so. It is not like, for example, the Brahma Kumaris, also attractive to Westerners, but assertively not Hindu, though from India. Nor Jainism or Sikhism or Buddhism, all stemming from a Hindu background, but again clearly other faiths, sometimes called Indic faiths. We should also clarify at the beginning that Hare Krishna is a popular name, derived from the beginning of their distinctive mantra, while the official name is ISKCON, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, the Hare Krishna movement. Put simply, this is a Krishna-orientated bhakti movement.
As we may know, Hinduism as a concept, as a religion, was only named in the colonial period. But its traditions go back thousands of years, often estimated at 5,000 years. ISKCON’s origin is much clearer. It began in Bengal, where its centre remains, though Vrindavan, the birthplace of Krishna, has become equally important, and Puri in Orissa. It centres on Gaudiya Maths – ashrams, spiritual, missionary and educational in intent. And its founder was named Chaitanya. He was a highly charismatic devotee of Krishna, with what has been called a ‘theistic intimacy’ with God as the beloved. He is from the Vaishnavite tradition, a tradition where the Supreme has personal attributes, expressed in the avatars of that tradition, who include Krishna, always associated with his consort Radha, his Shakti, who is worshipped passionately and lovingly by devotees. He is seen as a divine child, divine lover, a charioteer who helps those in need who turn to him. He is both cowherd and divine lover. The Gita centres on him. The greatest intimacy with Krishna is called rasa lila, the dance of divine love, and the flute symbolizes God’s beauty. It calls the worshipper back to Krishna, who is the God of Love, who meets the eternal longing within the human heart. We can compare here the place of the reed, the Sufi flute, as found in Rumi’s poems. Here Krishna is both one of the incarnations of Vishnu, and also the intimate supreme deity, beyond Vishnu.
Chaitanya lived from 1486 to 1543. He personified the above bhakti so strongly, moved so closely with God, that he became seen as God in his lifetime, not just after his death. He began to chant the mantra, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, which means ‘O Lord, O energy of the Lord, please engage me in your ceaseless service.’ A Christian theologian, John Moffitt, has written, ‘If I were asked to choose one man in Indian religious history who best represents the spirit of devotional self-giving, I would choose . . . Chaitanya.’3 He attracted a strong personal following, and this became a movement, as he went round the above places preaching and teaching, and above all chanting and dancing. The movement was open to all, across castes, including women. It was known as Gaudiya Vaishnavism. Chaitanya’s guidance for chanting was: ‘Be as humble as a blade of grass, and tolerant as a tree; demand no respect from others, and give respect to all.’ At first it was free and unorganized. As time went by, as usual in India, Brahminic hierarchical tendencies came in. But the founder, and his writings, remained the inspiration in the following centuries.
The movement came to the West from 1965, when it came to the USA through the missionary leadership and spiritual guidance of the founder of ISKCON, Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. He came for the first time to London in 1969. Interviewed on TV then, he said, ‘My mission is to teach how to love God. People have forgotten God, and I am come to remind them.’ And ‘I am speaking of the same God as the Christian God. There is one God whom we all worship, Christians and Hindus alike, and he has many names. One of his names is Krishna.’ ‘I have come to teach anyone how to see God. It is possible to talk with God. Just as we are talking to each other now, you can talk with God.’ He went on to initiate, called ‘taking diksha’, 300 men and women in the UK. The story of the early years of the movement in the UK is found in a major book, When the Sun Shines: The Dawn of Hare Krishna in Britain, by Ranchor Prime.4 In a very readable way, the author takes the account through to Prabhupada’s death in 1977. Martin Palmer writes of the book, on the back cover:
I can’t remember when I saw my first chanting, dancing Hare Krishnas. They were simply there in the late ’60s and early ’70s, like the pied pipers of the alternative worlds, drawing us away from what we thought we knew. Ranchor Prime tells how those who danced and thought and developed made this country a different and better place.
The book tells the story of Prabhupada’s meeting with a nun, Sister Mary, who asked him, ‘How do we know who is a lover of God?’ He quoted Chaitanya describing his love for Krishna: ‘Every moment is like 12 years. I am crying torrents of rain. I find everything vacant without God.’ Prabhupada went on to the sister, ‘Like Jesus Christ, Sri Chaitanya sacrificed everything. That is the love of God. You may follow any religious path – it does not matter. The method is simple: chant the holy name of God. We don’t say you chant Krishna. If you have any name, God’s name, then chant that. I chant, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare
