The Iskconisation of British Hinduisms Malory Nye Dept of Religious Studies, University of Stirling Presented to a conference on Diaspora Asian Religions, SOAS, London November 1996 DRAFT COPY, not to be quoted without author’s permission Ten years ago Sean Carey published an article in the seminal volume on ‘Hinduism in Great Britain’ which talked of the ‘Indianisation of the Hare Krishna movement’. 1 In that paper he outlined the growing relationship as he saw it between ‘traditional’ Hindus and ISKCON (the Hare Krishnas), and in particular the ways in which ISKCON was going back to its Indian roots by actively seeking support from Hindus in Britain who had an ancestral link with India. Since the publication of that work (and even more so since the time when the research was conducted) much has happened within both ISKCON and the wider field of Hinduism in Britain, and in this paper I will outline some of the ways in which the turn by ISKCON towards the ‘Hindu community’ has led to developments which are not only limited to ISKCON themselves, but are also indicating some possibly significant changes to the ways in which Hindu traditions are expressed in the British context. In the mid 1990s one can definitely say that ISKCON are still around. Despite two very damaging scandals involving initiating gurus (first in 1982 with Jayatirtha Goswami and then in 1986 with Bhagwan Goswami 2 ), as well as scandals and other problems elsewhere in the world, ISKCON have established themselves in Britain as one amongst a number of alternative Hindu groups, and to a degree have managed to throw off their image of being a ‘cult’ or ‘new religious movement’. To a large degree this is because of the Indianisation process that Carey saw happening in the 1980s. However, it is important to stress that ISKCON still remains a complex mixture of new and old - it is a modern version of an 1 Carey, S. "The Indianization of the Hare Krishna movement in Britain", in R. Burghart (ed.), Hinduism in Great Britain: the perpetuation of religion in an alien cultural milieu. London: Tavistock, 1987. 2 For a frank and insightful discussion by a leading ISKCON thinker on the problems that ISKCON faced in the 1980s, see Ravindra Svarupa das, ‘Cleaning house and cleaning hearts: reform and renewal in ISKCON’, parts one and two, ISKCON Communication Journal, nos 3 & 4, 1994.