At 69 he sailed to New York on a cargo ship and launched Hare Krishna
In 1965 an elderly Bengali monk arrived in America with a few trunks of books and no contacts. He started chanting in a New York park, and within a year his students helped him found ISKCON, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. An astrologer had supposedly foretold the voyage at his birth.
He was born Abhay Charan De in Calcutta on 1 September 1896, the day after Krishna's birthday festival, into a Bengali merchant family devoted to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's form of Vaishnavism. His father sold fabric and clothing, and across the street stood a Radha-Krishna temple that young Abhay visited daily. According to family lore, the astrologer called in at his birth predicted that around seventy he would cross the ocean, become a renowned teacher and open 108 temples.
Signs of the future came early. At six he persuaded his father to get him a miniature of the huge chariot used in Puri's Ratha-yatra procession and staged his own version; decades later he brought the festival to Western cities. His mother wanted him to read law in London, but his father feared Western habits, so in 1916 he entered Scottish Church College in Calcutta. As a young man he received an instruction from his guru to spread Krishna consciousness in English, which eventually sent him abroad.
His teaching held that each person is an eternal spirit distinct from the body, meant to restore a relationship with Krishna through hearing scripture, chanting Krishna's names and devotional service. Initiated disciples had to give up meat, fish and eggs, gambling, intoxicants including tea and coffee, and sex outside marriage. Believing a guru must pass on the message unaltered, he produced Bhagavad-Gītā As It Is and translated works like the Srimad-Bhagavatam, putting several into English for the first time. He wrote more than eighty books before his death on 14 November 1977.
His legacy is contested. In the late 1970s and 1980s critics in America and parts of Europe branded ISKCON a destructive cult; scholars and courts rejected the brainwashing claims and recognised it as an authentic Hindu branch, though the image lingers. Some of his remarks have been criticised as racist, casteist or misogynist. Even so, some scholars and Indian politicians rank him among the most effective promoters of Hinduism outside India.
Source: A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
