How to Pronounce A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
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Sep 01, 1896 Kolkata, West Bengal, India Died on 14 Nov 1977 (aged 81)
Indian guru
VirgoA. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada - Place of Birth, Date of Birth, Age, Wiki, Facts, Net Worth, Birthday, Biography and Family
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About A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
- Abhaya Caranaravinda Bhaktivedanta Svami (born Abhay Charan De; 1 September 1896 – 14 November 1977) was an Indian spiritual teacher and the founder-preceptor of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), commonly known as the "Hare Krishna Movement".
- Members of the ISKCON movement view Bhaktivedanta Swami as a representative and messenger of Krsna Caitanya.Born Abhay Charan De in Calcutta, he was educated at the Scottish Church College in Calcutta.
- Before adopting the life of a novice renunciate (vanaprastha) in 1950, he was married with children and owned a small pharmaceutical business.
- In 1959 he took a vow of renunciation (sannyasa) and started writing commentaries on Vaishnava scriptures.
- In his later years, as a traveling Vaishnava monk, he became an influential communicator of Gaudiya Vaishnava theology to India and specifically to the West through his leadership of ISKCON, founded in 1966.
- As the founder of ISKCON, he "emerged as a major figure of the Western counterculture, initiating thousands of young Americans." He received criticism from anti-cult groups, as well as a favorable welcome from religious scholars such as J.
- Stillson Judah, Harvey Cox, Larry Shinn and Thomas Hopkins, who praised Bhaktivedanta Swami's translations and defended the group against distorted media images and misinterpretations.
- In respect to his achievements, religious leaders from other Gaudiya Vaishnava movements have also given him credit.He has been described as a charismatic leader, in the sense used by sociologist Max Weber, as he was successful in acquiring followers in the United States, Europe, India and elsewhere.
- His mission was to propagate, throughout the world, Gaudiya Vaishnavism, a school of Vaishnavite Hinduism that had been taught to him by his guru, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati.
- After his death in 1977, ISKCON, the society he founded based on a type of Hindu Krishnaism using the Bhagavata Purana as a central scripture, continued to grow.
- In February 2014, ISKCON's news agency reported reaching a milestone of distributing over half a billion of his books since 1965.
- His translation of and commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, titled Bhagavad-gita As It Is, is considered by adherents of the ISKCON movement and many Vedic scholars as one of the finest literary works of Vaishnavism translated into the English Language.
