On the occasion of Pani-hati cida dahi festival, His Holiness Sukadeva Goswami Maharaja has announced the offering of a new project for the pleasure of Srila Prabhupada in this 50th year of ISKCON’s incorporation. Earlier this year, 10 acres of land with an existing ashram building in Tatipatri village, Andhra Pradesh, were donated to ISKCON Nellore. The land and ashram were cleared and prepared to take shape as a temple, which is now named ISKCON Tatipatri Village Ashrama, an exte...

The Bhaktivedanta Manor marked the start of a new chapter in its history on Friday 10th June, as the groundbreaking ceremony for the long awaited Haveli building was led by UK Prime Minister David Cameron. The ceremony formed part of the Manor’s offerings to celebrate the 50th anniversary of ISKCON, upon which Mr Cameron heartily congratulated ISKCON on by praising Srila Prabhupada on his creation of a "global mission". A reception of over 300 people, including Parliamentary Secretary Under State...

The title read, “Now Irish Eyes are Smiling”, an article in the Back to Godhead magazine by Mathuresa Dasa covered the installation ceremony of Sri Sri Radha Govinda, the presiding deities at ISKCON Northern Ireland’s Govindadvipa temple. The year was 1986, Ireland was still in the midst of a guerrilla warfare conflict, and it was a cover feature and multiple page spread in the publication that was the mainstay of ISKCON media coverage in the pre-internet and social media era. The install...

On May 28, 2016, ISKCON celebrated the 500th anniversary of Lord Chaitanya’s visit to Vrindavan at the famous Talkatora Indoor Stadium in New Delhi. The Festival of Inspiration, which was attended by nearly 8,000 people from Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR) and other parts of India, saw the presence of several senior vaishnavas including: HH Gopal Krishna Maharaja HH Bhanu Maharaja HH Lokanath Maharaja HH Navayogendra Maharaja HG Basu Ghosh Prabhu HG Sridhama Prabhu HH Bhakti Anugra...

The special global event to celebrate ISKCON’s 50th Anniversary at the Sydney Opera House has sold out in record time. The show entitled ‘Transcendental Journey: Hare Krishna Celebrate 50 Years’ was quite an ambitious and optimistic project but with overwhelming support from devotees and Australian public the show sold out in just 3 days. Transcendental Journey is a theatrical, musical and multimedia spectacular showcasing how Srila Prabhupada’s extraordinary journey transformed the ...

Over 20000 students attended a mega youth festival organized by ISKCON Pune on 20th March to celebrate the 50th anniversary of ISKCON. The event, which was attended by principles of various colleges, political leaders from the youth community, the education commissioner of Pune and several other VIPs, was widely covered by several newspapers and broadcast on Indian’s national TV channel, Doordarshan. The theme of the event was ‘Drishti - Bharat leads the world’ and showcased India’s real spiritual wealth by means of which the country has the capacity to lead the entir...

Some of his main purposes for the Society included “to systematically propagate spiritual knowledge to society at large,” and “to bring the members of the Society together with each other and nearer to Krishna.” Fifty years later, residents of his first rural community, New Vrindaban, are celebrating his Society’s Golden Jubilee with a packed year of events that intend to spread spiritual knowledge and deepen connections with devotees, the general public, and local municipal le...

Rasamandala Das, Director of ISKCON Educational Services, made a presentation on devotee care at the plenary session. Earlier, he had delivered several seminars on devotee care, many of which had proved highly popular with the international audience. He felt that the ILS offered a chance to air new ideas, become innovative and deal with things as they were happening.  "We need to be able to relate shastra to real life experiences of devotees," he said. "In a sense it is about getting rea...

At the pre-launch of ISKCON Connection on the 7th day of the ILS, Praharana Devi Dasi explained that the new initiative will help connect every devotee to our worldwide community. ISKCON Connection, which will be formally launched on Gaura Purnima day this year, is a 50th anniversary initiative. “Any ISKCON devotee can register on the website, and will be able to connect to other ISKCON devotees, become familiar with GBC activities, be nurtured in spiritual life, and access a secure datab...

After screening a short film about Mayapur on the sixth day of ILS, Brjavilasa Das spoke to the ILS delegates on behalf of the Temple of Vedic Planetarium (TOVP), stressing the importance of Mayapur in the eyes of Srila Prabhupada. He mentioned that Prabhupada had wanted to establish Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu as the yugavatara for this age from the precincts of this temple. “In 1969, Srila Prabhupada gave his first ever instruction on Mayapur to Gopal Krishna Goswami,” announced Brjavila...

On the fourth day of the ILS, delegates at the plenary session heard a presentation by Anuttama Das, GBC Minister for Communications on the topic, ‘Srila Prabhupada, the greatest communicator’. He explained that we normally associate Prabhupada with his books, letters, conversations and speeches, but we should also remember that Prabhupada was a skilful communicator. “Prabhupada tried to create a favourable environment for preaching Krishna consciousness by meeting influential leader...

On 50th Anniversary of ISKCON, we wish to organise 50 Gita Yajna in our preaching area Kanyakumari. In this program our aim to distribute 5000 Bhagavad Gitas, take oath from them in yajna to read one page atleast daily, distribute prasadam to 10000 people and reach out Harinama to minimum 20000 people through this program. We started this program with 2015 Gita Jayanthi and so far conducted 11 yajna program. Distributed 1143 Bhagavad Gitas and nearly 1720 people have taken Oath to...

The third day of the ILS started with a presentation on ISKCON’s 50th anniversary by Anuttama Das, GBC Minister for Communications and Pancharatna Das, Executive Member of the International Fiftieth Anniversary Committee. They spoke about the importance of the 50th as an opportunity for glorifying Prabhupada, educating the public, celebrating achievements, appreciating devotees and accelerating our mission. “Not many of us may be here to see the 100th anniversary of ISKCON,” said Anu...

On the second day of the ISKCON Leadership Sanga, Praghosa Das, the GBC Chairman presented several quotes of how Srila Prabhupada’s appearance was predicted in many scriptures and spiritual masters. Titled, ‘The greatest story ever told’, his presentation pointed out the five steps Srila Prabhupada had taken to make his institution more effective: 1. Founding ISKCON 2. Accepting the honorific title ‘Prabhupada’ 3. Establishing his role as the ‘Founder Acharya’ 4. Creating the ...

The grand annual Mayapur festival began today with the inaugural session of the ISKCON Leadership Sangha (ILS 2016) with 1,200 delegates attending 87 seminars spread over 12 venues at ISKCON Mayapur.  ILS 2016 features a spectacular 50th Anniversary Expo highlighting the achievements of ISKCON, and stalls from various international projects such as Vanipedia, ISKCON Congregation services, TOVP, Varnashrama Museum of the Sacred Art, Govardhan Eco Village and several others. Speaking at the...

Yes! 50 years of ISKCON is a big deal. We have come a long way since Srila Prabhupada established ISKCON in 1966 but we still have miles to go. Srila Prabhupada envisioned Malaysia as a fertile ground to cultivate Krishna Consciousness as early as 1971. In May 1971, Malaysia was fortunate to have its soil blessed by the dearest devotee of Srimati Radharani, AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. In Malaysia, the devotees are enthusiastically and creatively coming up with various...

MUMBAI: Empowering the young with a new level of spirituality will be one of the foremost missions of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Iskcon), as it gears up to celebrate its fifty years. Iskcon, also known as the Hare Krishna movement, has expanded widely since it was founded by Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupda in New York City in 1966. Although Mumbai is home to three temples, Juhu, Girgaum and Mira Road and the under-construction temple at Kharghar, a mammoth rath y...