INDIA acronym:

I – Internationalization

N – Non-discrimination

D – Development

I – Infrastructure

A – Appreciation

Transcription by: Santosh Prabhu

“ISKCON’s contributions to India” is the topic that we will discuss today.

I would like to present this as an acronym INDIA

In this first short talk, I will give an overview of these five ways primary reason which ISKCON’s contributed to India and then in subsequent five talks, I will talk about these more in detail.

I – Internationalization

ISKCON is International Society for Krishna Consciousness and one of its foremost contributions to India is that it has spread Indian culture all over the world. Today there are practically Krishna devotees in more countries than there are either software engineers or Indian expatriates and this is not ISKCON’s claim, this was the statement in Times of India editorial under the title ‘Rebirth of Krishna’ where it said how ISKCON has globalized Krishna, Krishna bhakti and Bhagavad Gita and even in ISKCON’s prominent temple in Delhi, when the then Prime Minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpayee came to inaugurate the temple, he said that in this area of globalization, ISKCON has globalized the Bhagavad Gita and its message.

So due to the vibrant spiritual presentations of ISKCON in various parts of the world, practically all the inhabited continents, today there are people who not only know about Krishna something which very few or most people did not know before 50 years ago, not only they know about Krishna but they know about the Hare Krishna mahamantra, many more people know about the Bhagavad Gita and millions of people have appreciation for these things.

So ISKCON has contributed to increasing substantially the respectability and the glory of India in the eyes of the world by sharing India’s spiritual legacy all over the world, the message of love of God, the message of devotion, the message of Bhagavad Gita of Bhakti, and this has led to millions of people all over the world coming to India in search of spiritual truth and appreciating Indian culture and Indian spirituality much more. So spirituality is India’s distinctive strength or uniqueness in the world. Very few countries in the world have as profound or broad or as deep spiritual culture as India has. And this spiritual culture in one of its most dynamic and relish able expressions, expression of bhakti yoga has been made available by ISKCON at an international scale. So ISKCON has internationalized India’s spiritual culture. So internalization is one major contribution that ISKCON has done for India.

N – Non-discrimination

India unfortunately is divided in many ways, not just according to state boundaries, not just according to religious lines, but even within the mainstream religion of India, there are cast divisions, there are creed divisions, so the message of bhakti which is based on the Bhagavad Gita which is widely shared by ISKCON is universal and in the temples of ISKCON and in activities of ISKCON, there is no discrimination based on caste, color, creed, gender or any such external bodily feature. So this India has […]