Finding the divine: growing up in a (Hindu) cult in America

Finding a spiritual anchor in a culture of constant self-(re)making

Dec 08, 2024

This is the first of several essays on the place of Indian religions in the American spiritual tapestry. The observations below are based on personal experience and reading. Many will undoubtedly disagree with specific assertions, which is the nature of the search for truth when conclusions are based on intuition and qualitative observation.

Introduction

At Salesforce’s annual conference in San Francisco, two Hare Krishna devotees stopped me while I was running late for a packed session.1

They offered a ‘free’ book on the power of mantra chanting in exchange for a donation, which I reluctantly took before rudely running off; I had all the books they wanted to push at home. The book also advertises exclusive interviews with John Lennon and George Harrison, who urge you to develop a chanting practice.

I grew up in this movement, once seen as a full-fledged cult. Now, it’s just a benign one. But I feel at home with my people in these encounters because I grew up among them.

I’m a product of the American counterculture and the rural South. The story of the Hare Krishna movement is intertwined with the American spirit of self-determination and questioning authority. A traditional religion took hold in a modern, libertarian culture precisely because the constant reinvention of the self is central to the American ethos. I’m not part of the organization but still moved by it.

I can’t find the feeling the chanting awakens other than my visits to New York or Florida. But this yearning for the chanting and dancing I grew up with follows me. I keep chasing this feeling of losing myself in the euphoria of the ecstatic chanting (referred to as kirtan henceforth). I sadly can’t find it outside the temple where I grew up, in Alachua, Florida.

My parents moved there from Queens when I was three, specifically to be part of the new community of devotees who bought some acreage in 1992 with dreams of opening a temple. It’s now the largest such community in North America. Florida was our manifest destiny.

I seek out Hare Krishna devotees whenever I visit New York in Union Square and other parks. Curious people are always standing nearby. Recently, I happened upon a diverse group of devotees sitting in a cluster with broad, double-sided drums and small cymbals chanting Krishna’s name with raucous rhythms. I joined in, cross-legged in the back.

Sitting on a mat on the concrete immediately hurt my back, but the pain was worth it because I heard the chanting I could never find elsewhere. There was a small stand with books and a Venmo QR code. We were live-streamed on Instagram. I joined in chanting the mantra to small cymbals and drums. It’s the most normal thing to see dudes who might otherwise pass as hippies in saffron-colored ascetic garb.

Early history of the movement in brief

Hare Krishna temples are distinct for their kirtan and dancing during worship. Majestic images of Krishna and his consort, Radha, carved from marble, are adorned in the center with intricately embroidered clothing, jewelry, and flowers everywhere. To the left are the images of the saints Chaitanya and Nityananda, who lived in fifteenth-century Bengal and proselytized love for Krishna. To the right, Krishna and his brother Balarama form the third pairing of divinities.2

The altar in Alachua; Krishna on the left and right on the right.

The Hare Krishnas are members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), forged in the fires of the American countercultural movement of the 1960s. Scholars have contended that the founder, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, would not have found the same success if he had come to the US even a few months earlier or later.3

The timing was everything. Bhaktivedanta opened the first house of worship with young disciples on 2nd Avenue in an unassuming shop and the second in San Francisco, the promised land of personal liberation.

The ISKCON organization’s belief system is rooted in the Gaudiya Vaishnava (go-dee-yuh vaysh-nuv) tradition, traceable to the fifteenth-century saint Chaitanya in Bengal. Chaitanya preached devotion to Krishna, a prominently placed deity for hundreds of millions today. Krishna (who may or may not have lived as a man and become divine later) is the supreme divinity in this sect.

Krishna’s young life, as narrated in the Bhagvata Purana, and his lessons in the Bhagavad Gita are central to the group’s philosophy. Of course, other sects also revere these books; the Indic philosophical corpus is oceanic. Chaitanya stands in the larger context of the bhakti movement in medieval India.4

Prabhupada came to the West explicitly for cultural conquest. Religion from a formerly colonized land was to spread in a society experiencing its cultural paroxysms regarding its own government’s imperial tendencies. While the secular and capitalist West was warring against communism and racing to technological arms, its youth searched for meaning in an anti-modern medieval-era tradition.5

Relationship with mainstream Hinduism

Modernity had taken firm hold of the secularized elites in India by midcentury. Prabhupada wanted to reconvert them to what he saw as the foundational tradition of an ancient land by conquering the American psyche. He had a resounding success by many measures - flagship temples were opened in several Indian cities, and the temples in Krishna’s holy land, Vrindavan. The organization has also brought the Indian diaspora into the mainstream fold with its liberalization, taking a realistic approach to growth. The diaspora provides membership and crucial funds from its vast wealth, while the adherents from the general population tend to come from working class and less educated backgrounds.

Most Hare Krishna temples in North America today have primarily Indian congregants who are largely well off. This ironically fulfilled the founder’s vision of bringing their religion back to Indians, but not in the intended society. But the Indian-origin people who’ve taken over North American congregations were raised in a fundamentally opposite society.6

Mainstream Hinduism, as Indians practice it, is akin to Catholicism, while Hare Krishnas encourage transcendental love, a personal relationship with god, and ecstatic worship, comparable to Evangelicalism. Sundays at the temple in Alachua are for socializing and for creating collective effervescence in that order. Rituals at mainstream Hindu temples are first about Sanskrit liturgy and second about community. This is because temples are also inadequate selection mechanisms for class status, which Indians care about far more than Hare Krishnas.7 After all, the latter are primarily working class.

A benign religious movement or cult?

Bhaktivedanta came to the U.S. intending to spread Krishna consciousness (not to be confused with that catchall term, Hinduism), not just to save Western souls but to revive such devotion in India through his preaching. He astutely saw that his countrymen were inclined to Western ideas of modernity in their approach to spirituality. This was evidenced by the many reform movements founded by high-caste men in the twentieth century under imperial cultural pressure. Amid the rapid changes in Indian society, non-dual8 interpretations of god proliferated among the educated elite who once upheld the colonial administrative state. Victorian Christian interpretations of Hinduism as heathenism heavily influenced these interpretations of one’s relationship with the divine and its place in the world.

The term ‘cult’ is tense because the U.S. is a fertile ground for religious entrepreneurs. Cults generally are thought to require their adherents to cut ties with the outside world entirely, and ISKCON did so in its first two decades. However, cultural conditions recently required it to tolerate a more realistic approach to living in a capitalist society. They once functioned as communes, financially unviable in the long term. But it is still fundamentally a traditionalist religion in a postmodern culture, a benign cult thanks to the Internet. The Internet enables some cults but undermines others.9

Initiation in ISKCON required leaving the hyper-consumption behind of secular society and a stricture on the use of one’s labor - you could not, for example, work in menial professions in contact with meat and alcohol. These restrictions meant most members were working class in terms of their income and living standards. Therefore, wealth precludes spiritual purity in this sect because obtaining it would require working in impure jobs. People joined to escape the rank materialism of mainstream American society and willingly accepted this circumscribed freedom in exchange for a moral community. Indians’ motivations for immigration, in contrast, are almost always economic. Most of us aren’t going to give that striving up for religion.

When first entering the organization, one was expected to leave the entire outside world behind and devote oneself to service in the temple. One lived in an ashram of the celibate, and one eventually joined the clergy or married within.

These are the general signs of a cult in the widespread sense of the term. When devotees left the organization in the early decades, they stole away in the dead of night, leaving their co-religionists to wonder what happened. Invariably, the defector was blamed—they could not handle the austere lifestyle and the requirement to leave the material world behind.10

Since the 1990s, however, the organization has experienced multiple schisms that enabled the liberalization of some rules. For example, temple leadership at the micro level was forced to contend with allowing family formation once one entered the organization and facilitating some transition to Congregationalists. ISKCON has shown evolution in this acceptance that a life of austerity and renunciation is not for all devotees, and the restrictions on working outside the temple context have become somewhat relaxed. As a result, many devotees have become entrepreneurs interacting with the outside world. My parents have always had a food business, and they feel responsible for bringing sanctified food offered to Krishna to the non-religious population.

Today, the organization’s ability to adapt and incorporate the Indian diaspora has arguably cemented its place in the American religious landscape. Indian Americans may attend mainstream temples and patronize ISKCON temples, particularly for holiday festivals.

Yearning for something higher than the self

There is also a symbiotic relationship between many movement members and the explosion of new-age spirituality among those under forty-five in North America and the U.K. Festivals of ecstatic chanting around the world attract non-devotees and devotees alike. These festivals are akin to EDM festivals but without the drugs. Picture hundreds chanting in praise of Krishna and Radha (the supreme deities) and singing in call and response with ever-rising ecstasy, losing themselves in the collective effervescence. Many may also experience this emotion through sports and concerts, but the context of kirtan is the only one in which I’ve felt such intense emotion. I don’t want to join the movement in true American fashion because I’m skeptical of organized religion. But I still want something from it.

I’ve spent the past few years wishing to attend the temple of my childhood in Alachua, Florida (kirtan captured above from Alachua’s Mayapuris musical group, which is hot on the kirtan fest circuit), which has the largest devotee community in North America. I didn’t appreciate the collective energy of the congregation until I no longer had it, which taught me that I’m not an atheist at all and yearn for a relationship with the divine. My full name, Anuradha, refers to the sacred feminine, Radha. I never stood a chance with atheism because I feel her in the depths of my soul. So, I’m caught between two impulses: a burning desire for the ineffable and a heavy skepticism about religion.

As a youth, I was eager to poke holes in everything, especially religious doctrine. I even had a period of atheism from college to my thirties. Then, I found myself wishing for nothing more than community and being part of a congregation as religion re-entered my life. An under-appreciated (and frequently maligned) facet of religion is the strength it provides people going through hardship. I once derided this sort of faith, but my beating depression was in no small part attributable to taking back my relationship with divinity. This process began earnestly with philosophy and ethics rather than an emotional connection with god. Once I permitted myself to reject the dominant political paradigm among my peers entirely, I stopped being ashamed of my spirituality.

Looking back, I remember feeling far more in tune with my peers in having a relationship with the divine feminine, or forms of Shakti, rather than the Vaishnava interpretations of divinity (i.e., Krishna/Vishnu/various Vishnu incarnations). This is because Shakti, especially Kali, has been folded into feminist new-age spirituality as a focal point. This is a whole other essay, but the opinions of non-religious but spiritual millennial women seem to have driven my conception of divinity for a good decade. I moved away from Shakti worship and back toward Krishna around the same time I rejected leftist identity politics.11

This process of finding religion again by exercising my agency was more empowering than the feeling of rejecting it in college. The rejection was a misplaced reaction to the use of religion for immoral ends. Something being used by bad actors doesn’t mean the thing itself is without worth - a lesson I learned from religion but now apply to every part of my life. But at the same time, I’m also picking what I want out of Gaudiya Vaishnavism and the rest of the Hindu traditions, which robs me of depth. I’m acting like an American - spiritually lost and trying to construct a bespoke religion to find meaning.

This approach to religion is uniquely American: taking what you want and leaving the rest.12 Still, I invite the ineffable into my life with open arms because the alternative is hyper-focus on rationalism, productivity, and technological progress at the expense of the spirit. The former is necessary to order a chaotic world, but the hunger youth have for something higher than themselves reveals that America may not be done with faith or the idea of god. And, because the religious are more satisfied with life overall, my subversive view is that religion is a net positive for society even as it circumscribes individual actions.13

This is contrary to modern liberalism's narrative, which demonizes religion as the source of myriad oppressions. These doctrinal interpretations do not negate the value of a relationship with the divine in a person’s life. We ought to collectively question the reflexive rejection of religion in the cultural zeitgeist. I understand why my peers are skeptical of Christianity, for example, but the community of a church congregation cannot be easily replaced with other group affiliations.

I see many of my peers forming alternative communities that are said to fill the hole left by religious practice. Having tried some of them, I can report that they’re not the same, at least for me. They certainly didn’t help me construct or reinforce a moral code.

Returning to a coherent moral code is essential in this age of fractured individuals, communities, and countries. Unlike the vogue among the professional-managerial class, universal moral mandates exist in philosophical and religious traditions across the globe. The four cardinal virtues of justice, fortitude, temperance, and prudence are thematic in much of my reading. Organizations may misbehave, but the teachings still have worth.

Simply doing whatever we please in the name of personal liberation led to the rejection of religion among my generation, including me. When I was unmoored from my moral code, I was an entirely different person. Finding myself meant finding religion and philosophy together. My hope for you, dear reader, is that you find something that gives you meaning, community, and acceptance. But avoid outright rejecting religion as you search. The American ethos is to make the Self, but we must be discerning in the elements we integrate.

Edit January 1, 2024: a previous version erroneously mentioned the displacement of Sanskrit in everyday worship.

Question for discussion or reflection: What is spirituality to you, and is it different from religiosity?

The highest compliment I could receive is sharing my work with others. Subscribe to receive bi-weekly-ish posts in your inbox.