Bringing Krishna Back to India: Global and Local Networks in a Hare Krishna Temple in Mumbai

The Hare Krishnas have long been associated with Western hippie culture and New Age religious movements, but they have also developed deeply rooted communities in India and throughout the world over the past 50 years. Known officially as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), this once-marginal religious community now wields vast economic assets, political influence, and a posh identity endorsed by Indian business tycoons and Bollywood celebrities.

Bringing Krishna Back to India examines the place of this globalized religious community in Mumbai, India’s business and entertainment capital, where ISKCON draws Indians from diverse regional and religious backgrounds and devotees adopt a conservative religious identity amidst a neoliberal urban context. Claire C. Robison examines the full-circle globalization of this religious movement and considers how religious revivalism shifts people’s relationships to their religion, family, culture, and nation. By inhabiting a Hindu revivalist role, ISKCON educates Hindus and Jains into a new vision of their own traditions and promotes greater religiosity in Indian public life. This contradicts notions that societies are moving towards secularism and highlights how new religious identities are fashioned amidst industrialized urban spaces, such as college campuses, corporate wellness retreats, and Bollywood celebrity events. It also shows how local religion is shaped by transnational networks-even forms of revivalism that revere premodern ideals. In urban India religious traditionalism is often a form of cosmopolitanism, partaking in neoliberal economies, shaping political trends, and reflecting elite urban aspirations and aesthetics

• Presents a full-length study of an Indian International Society for Krishna Consciousness community–a community that is often studied as a New Religious Movement for Western spiritual seekers
• Includes material from over 80 interviews with Indian devotees of this transnational religious group
• Showcases how this once-marginal religious community now wields vast economic assets, political influence, and a posh identity endorsed by Mumbai’s business tycoons and Bollywood celebrities
• Provides a rare glimpse into a socially and politically prominent organization in India that has yet to receive sustained scholarly attention in that context

Reviews

“In this richly-textured and readable ethnography of the ISKCON community in Mumbai, India, Claire C. Robison offers us an insightful take on the globalization of a religious movement. In exploring how religious revivalism changes people’s relationships to their religion, family, culture, and nation, Robison innovatively argues that ISKCON educates Hindus into a new cosmopolitan vision of their own tradition. This provocative and lively lesson in religious originality has applications and implications far beyond India and should be read by all students of religion and globalization.”
— Tulsai Srinivas, Emerson College

“With care and nuance, Claire C. Robison follows the diverse members of the ISKCON temple community-with a white American guru at their head-as they define themselves at the cutting edge of a transnational, twenty-first-century Hinduism. From the worldly to the spiritual, the hi-tech to the traditional, the global to the familial and national, ISKCON’s teachers must resolve the dilemmas confronting upwardly mobile young metropolitan Indians. From their answers, Robison derives questions that will speak to scholars of Hinduism, of urban India, and beyond.”
— William Elison, University of California, Santa Barbara

“Using extensive research conducted with devotee networks, Claire C. Robison expertly leads readers into the everyday lives of those who embrace ISKCON’s religious conservatism against prevailing currents of liberal values and secular ideas of success and happiness. By analyzing diverse resources, including social media platforms that feature monks-turned-wellness gurus gaining celebrity status, Robison captures the rich texture of religion in practice. She includes engaging accounts of devotees’ personal and professional struggles with leaving behind social norms to emphasize religious piety. Robison renders transparent the gravitas of ISKCON’s ‘rhetoric of revivalism,’ pioneering a thoroughly intersectional approach to studying religion and globalization in contemporary contexts.”
— Antoinette DeNapoli, Texas Christian University

“Bringing Krishna Back to India examines the place of this globalized religious community in Mumbai, India’s business and entertainment capital, where ISKCON draws Indians from diverse regional and religious backgrounds and devotees adopt a conservative religious identity amidst a neoliberal urban context. Claire C. Robison examines the full-circle globalization of this religious movement and considers how religious revivalism shifts people’s relationships to their religion, family, culture, and nation.”
— Jennifer Ortegren, Reading Religion