5. Serving Gupta-Vrindavan: Devotional Service in the Physical Place and the Workings of the “International Society”

Abstract

Fieldwork in Mayapur was completely different from fieldwork in Navadvip. The people, the place, the kind of devotion—everything was starkly dissimilar. In a series, along the main road which cuts across the small village of Mayapur, with stretches of agricultural fields on the other side, are large, sanitized temples and guest-houses built by Gaudiya Math. Like Navadvip’s sahajiyas, Mayapur’s villagers are poor and primarily live by farming. In sharp contrast to Mayapur’s rural background, however, the main attraction for pilgrims and my primary fieldwork site is 500 acres of enclosed land and a walled compound with the most modern, up-to-date facilities, unprecedented in any Indian village, within which approximately 500 Indian and foreign ISKCON devotees reside and worship. ISKCON devotees are mostly foreigners and professional, affluent, English-speaking middle-class or rich Indians, who offer financial patronage to ISKCON through unstinting donations and publicize the institution to their families and friends. Mayapur has one of the largest concentrations of foreign devotees in India. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) was founded in New York in 1966 by A. C. Bhaktivedanta, known among devotees as Prabhupad (god’s servant), an English-educated man from Calcutta who became initiated into Vaishnavism and in his chapter 5