Traditions

ISKCON and Gaudiya Vaishnavism

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (the Hare Krishna movement): its roots in Chaitanya's Gaudiya Vaishnavism, its founder Prabhupada, its beliefs and practices, and its presence in Britain.

Last reviewed 7 October 2026

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), popularly known as the Hare Krishna movement, is a Hindu devotional organisation dedicated to the worship of Krishna. Founded in New York in 1966, it brought the chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra to the streets of Western cities and became one of the best-known forms of Hinduism outside India. It belongs to the centuries-old Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition of Bengal.

Gaudiya Vaishnavism

Gaudiya Vaishnavism (from Gauda, an old name for Bengal) was founded by the saint Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534). Its key teachings are:

  • Krishna is the Supreme God, the source of all avatars, including Vishnu himself.
  • Radha, Krishna's beloved, is his divine energy of love, and the model of the perfect devotee.
  • Chanting God's names (harinama sankirtana) is the most effective spiritual practice in the present age, the Kali Yuga.
  • Inconceivable difference and non-difference (achintya bhedabheda): souls are both one with and different from God, in a way the mind cannot fully grasp.

Chaitanya's followers, especially the Six Goswamis of Vrindavan, developed the tradition's theology and restored Vrindavan as a centre of pilgrimage.

Prabhupada

A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) was born in Calcutta and initiated into the Gaudiya Matha, a Gaudiya Vaishnava organisation. His teacher, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, urged him to spread Krishna devotion in English. In 1965, at the age of 69, he sailed to the United States on a cargo ship with little money and a trunk of books. The following year he founded ISKCON in New York, attracting young people from the counterculture of the 1960s. By his death in 1977, ISKCON had temples across the world.

Prabhupada's translations and commentaries, especially Bhagavad-gita As It Is and the multi-volume Srimad-Bhagavatam, are distributed in many languages by the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust.

Beliefs and practice

Central to ISKCON is chanting the maha-mantra (“great mantra”):

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare;
Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare.

Initiated members chant the mantra on prayer beads at least sixteen “rounds” (1,728 repetitions) a day and follow four regulative principles:

  1. no meat, fish or eggs;
  2. no intoxicants, including alcohol, tobacco, tea and coffee;
  3. no gambling;
  4. no sex outside marriage.

Food is cooked as an offering to Krishna and then shared as prasadam. ISKCON's Food for Life programme distributes free vegetarian meals around the world.

ISKCON in Britain

ISKCON has been active in Britain since 1968. The Beatle George Harrison became a close supporter; in 1969 he produced the single “Hare Krishna Mantra” by the Radha Krishna Temple, which reached the UK top twenty, and in 1973 he donated a mock-Tudor manor house in Hertfordshire, now Bhaktivedanta Manor. In the 1980s and 1990s, a long planning dispute over public worship at the Manor became a major campaign for British Hindus, and was eventually resolved in the temple's favour. Today it is one of the most visited Hindu temples in Britain, with its largest gathering at Janmashtami. ISKCON also holds an annual Ratha Yatra (chariot festival) procession through central London.

ISKCON and the wider Hindu community

ISKCON began with mostly Western converts, but in Britain, North America and elsewhere many of its members and visitors are now from Indian Hindu families. Like many religious organisations, ISKCON has faced difficult periods, including leadership disputes after Prabhupada's death and the abuse of children in its boarding schools in the 1970s and 1980s, which it has publicly acknowledged.

Sources and further reading

  • Graham Dwyer and Richard J. Cole (eds), The Hare Krishna Movement: Forty Years of Chant and Change (I. B. Tauris, 2007).
  • Edwin Bryant and Maria Ekstrand (eds), The Hare Krishna Movement: The Postcharismatic Fate of a Religious Transplant (Columbia University Press, 2004).
  • Malory Nye, Multiculturalism and Minority Religions in Britain: Krishna Consciousness, Religious Freedom and the Politics of Location (Curzon, 2001).