The Vaiṣṇava Veneer: Unravelling ISKCON
The Vaiṣṇava Veneer: Unravelling ISKCON Posted on 5th September, 2026 (GMT 08:45 hrs) ABSTRACT This study reads the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) not as “mere spirituality” but as a relatively autonomous Ideological State Apparatus whose Indian career after liberalization is a textbook case of Gramscian trasformismo: a 1960s–70s counter-cultural mission, founded in New York in 1966 by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda on Gauḍīya personalism and initiation without birth-caste, absorbed into the bloc of concentrated capital, competitive religious patronage, and majoritarian cultural weather. Weber’s routinization of charisma explains the unfinished succession of 1977–78—the 9 July ṛtvik letter converted into eleven zonal ācāryas—and the harvest of that office: New Vrindaban’s RICO commune and two murders; a gurukula system that isolated minors under a theology of surrender, producing the 2000 Dallas suit, Chapter 11, and a $9.5 million settlement for 5...