Why does ISKCON have a more organized managerial structure than most traditional religious groups?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
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Thank you So many traditional religious groups such as say Pushti Marga they don’t have any structured organization whereas ISKCON has that so why is that? Actually broadly it’s a response to historical things you know before in broadly speaking organization theory there are three kinds of organization structures. There is soft medium and hard soft means you know it’s just an informal agreement of philosophy and practice but there is no structure there is no managing authority as such who oversize everything the medium organization structure is where there is one managing authority there is a broad agreement of principles and that authority oversees everything and the hard organization structure is you know where every single thing is controlled so traditionally religion in India had like a soft organization structure that okay everybody say in Pushti Marga everybody worships worships the way Mahaprabhu has taught Mallavacharya has taught in Sri Sampradaya it is the way Ramavacharya has taught in Gaudiya Sampradaya it is the way Mahaprabhu has taught but within that there are a lot of local variations now the advantage of this is that there is a lot of spontaneity and individuality possible but the disadvantage of this or the limitation of it is that to get things done effectively there is no mechanism so when in the 18th century when Christian missionaries came to India and they started converting in India in the 19th century I would say so then they were quite influential not so much in converting people but doing a lot of propaganda so at that time in response to the Christian criticism of Hinduism especially they criticized two deities in India Kali and Krishna Kali is so ghastly looking and Krishna is so immoral Krishna dances with the Gopis and the whole thing they considered immoral so then in order to defend Hinduism at that time many what happened with the traditional religious organizations was that they were they used to speak in the local language or the traditional language, Sanskrit or the local whereas the Britishers were where the Christians were preaching in English and English was like the respectable language, the official language because the British government was there and the traditional teachers were not equipped to teach in English so at that time in order to defend Hinduism in their own ways many religious organizations started and all these religious organizations, they adopted more or less the organizational structure of Christian missionary organizations whether it be Catholic Church or Protestant because they found that in the modern world that was very effective in sharing the message so most of the organizations which started in the 19th or 20th centuries, religious organizations they have a medium level of organizational structure because that is the level which Christian organizations also had traditionally there was organization in India but that was a soft, strong organizational structure so the medium organization structure, it provides some forum for the cohesive action across a large number of people and so ISKCON also falls broadly in that kind of structure