Krishna Prasadam: the Transformative Power of Sanctified Food in the Krishna Consciousness Movement

Religions of South Asia 4.1 (2010) 89-104 ISSN (print) 1751-2689 doi:10.1558/rosa.v4i1.89 ISSN (online) 1751-2697 Krishna Prasadam: The Transformative Power of Sanctified Food in the Krishna Consciousness Movement GRahaM DWyER1 Centre for Theology and Religious Studies University of Winchester SO22 4NR [email protected] aBSTRaCT: In the hare Krishna movement ritually sanctified food (known as prasadam) lies at the heart of key religious and ceremonial activity, and has progressively become the main rallying point for the movement’s preaching strategy or mission in the West. This article examines the experiential and doctrinal import of prasadam in the lives of adherents of the Krishna Conscious- ness movement and discusses its role as a preaching or proselytizing tool. as a means by which the movement today seeks to recruit new followers into its fold, the article looks at the movement’s programme of taking sanctified food to the public, with a particular focus on hare Krishna Food for all missionary activity in London. KEyWORDS: hare Krishna movement; Krishna Consciousness; mission; prasadam; ritual. INTRODUCTION The hare Krishna movement first appeared in the Western world in 1965, the year the movement’s spiritual leader, his Divine Grace a. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, travelled from his homeland of West Bengal, north-east India, to america. Prabhupada was 69 years old when he made the long ocean crossing on board an old cargo steam vessel called the Jaladuta. But within one year following his arrival in the West he had not only gathered around him 1. Graham Dwyer is an honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, University of Winchester. his main publications are The Divine and the Demonic: Supernatural Affliction and its Treatment in North India (London and New york: RoutledgeCur- zon, 2003) and, edited with R. J. Cole, The Hare Krishna Movement: Forty Years of Chant and Change (London and New york: I. B. Tauris, 2007). © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011, 1 Chelsea Manor Studios, Flood Street, London SW3 5SR. 90 RELIGIONS OF SOUTh aSIa an increasing number of followers; he also established in 1966 the Interna- tional Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). Indeed, before his demise in 1977, the 11 years that he spent building up and nurturing this Society saw the founder-acharya attract an impressive 5,000 disciples as well as tens of thousands of followers worldwide (Rochford 2007: 13). From the very beginning of Prabhupada’s proselytizing work in the West, the distribution of prasadam or sanctified food was a central preaching tool. ‘[F]ood’, Kenneth Valpey (2004: 51) says, became ‘a major vehicle for missionary activity in ISKCON’, an activity that centred upon ‘vegetarian food offerings to the temple deities’ that would be transformed ritually into ‘good tasting Krishna prasadam’ and ‘then distributed to the public’. In addition to the giving of free sanctified food to the public at large as a means of gaining new recruits or spreading the message of Krishna Consciousness, two other approaches were also employed to attract followers and to increase numbers of converts, namely, hari-nama sankirtana (chanting the names of God in public locations) and the distribution of Prabhupada’s books, including his own translations of key Vaishnava scriptures. as Mukunda Goswami (2001: 21), one of Prabhupada’s early disciples, as well as a widely respected current ISKCON leader, states: ‘Srila Prabhupada gave great emphasis to distributing three features of Krishna’s mercy: his books, the holy name through hari- nama sankirtana, and prasadam.’ Today, however, of these outreach activities, which in ISKCON are also frequently and explicitly referred to as forms of preaching, only the last of the three appears still to remain strong and continues to grow. In terms of the practice of street chanting, for example, Mukunda Goswami ruefully bemoans the decline that has occurred here. he says, ISKCON’s daily or weekly hari-nama sankirtana in many parts of the world…has not seemed to have kept pace with…book and prasadam distribution. The number of devotees who participate in hari-nama, and the quality of most of the [sankirtana] parties, needs addressing (Mukunda Goswami 2001: 21). Yet, in drawing attention to the fall in the number of devotees or groups of ISKCON adherents one finds chanting in public places today, Mukunda Goswami highlights only one area of weakness that has occurred in ISKCON’s missionary programme. how hari-nama sankirtana has atrophied is the sole focus of Mukunda Goswami’s lamentations. There is, however, a good deal of evidence that literature distribution, too, has substantially reduced over the course of the last two or three decades. For example, E. Burke Rochford Jr, who has been researching and writing about the hare Krishna movement for over 30 years, points out in his recent study of ISKCON (Rochford 2007) that income obtained from book distribution in North america fell dramatically in the year 1980 and has since continued upon a downward slope, a problem that has forced ISKCON leaders to seek alternative ways of fund-raising. Rochford (2007: 185) says, ‘hindu contributions quickly became critical as book distri- © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. DwYeR KRIShNa Prasadam 91 bution revenues dropped precipitously in 1980 and continued to slide there- after’. Rochford then adds: [F]acing financial crisis, ISKCON’s communities shifted their priorities to serving the religious and ethnic needs of Indian congregations. What this meant was that ISKCON’s temples emphasized deity worship at the expense of preaching (Rochford 2007: 197). A similar pattern in Britain, and indeed throughout the West, has also been identified in the collection of essays which I edited with Richard Cole (Dwyer and Cole 2007a). In the ‘Introduction’, we contend that ISKCON has changed from being a temple-based, communal organization to one that is essentially a householder movement, with emphasis now being placed upon ‘congrega- tional activities and…[importantly, on] the cultivation of practices that increasingly embrace the hindu diaspora’ (Dwyer and Cole 2007b: 1 and passim). Ross andrew’s essay in the same collection makes it abundantly clear with reference to ISKCON’s UK headquarters at Bhaktivedanta Manor that loss of revenue gen- erated from book distribution has been remedied directly through donations made by Indian patrons. andrew (2007: 55) says: ‘the economic dependence on…temple residents, through book sales…has been replaced with programmes seeking support from the ethnic hindu community’. and he emphasizes that this development has not only been crucial for the economic survival of the movement but seems to be progressively leading to what andrew, following Carey (1987), calls ‘the process of Indianisation’ (p. 55). But, although preaching through book distribution as well as through street chanting parties has suffered major decline (with concomitant attention increasingly focused on ethnic hindus as the main financial supporters of ISKCON temples today), prasadam distribution shows no signs of weaken- ing at all, and indeed seems to have emerged as ISKCON’s greatest missionary triumph in the West. It is noteworthy that the work of devotees in the hare Krishna movement here often is greatly favoured by, and receives much applause from, many people in wider society, particularly as the distribution of free vegetarian food is frequently used to feed the homeless as well as those who are in situations of extreme poverty.2 Indeed, based on my own research 2. Although sanctified food is widely distributed without charge, it should be noted that at temples like Bhaktivedanta Manor, bread, cakes and biscuits, and other types of confec- tionery, are also often sold. Prasadam that is sold at the Manor’s shop is itself an impor- tant source of revenue for the temple. Indeed, as a way of generating income, the sale of prasadam appears to be gaining increasing success in a number of new ISKCON projects. For example, in the Bhaktivedanta Manor Newsletter (august 2009: 1), it is reported that ISKCON Wales has opened a factory called Govindas Foods Ltd. One of the factory’s prasadam food lines is vegan and gluten-free cheesecakes. according to the Bhaktivedanta Manor Newsletter (p. 1), ‘The cheesecakes will be available in 415 holland and Barrett health food stores across the UK’. It then states (p. 1): ‘The initial production will be around 6,000 cheesecakes every week’, and further adds that Govindas Foods Ltd has put in place plans soon to have quiche and lasagne products available for commercial distribution. © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. 92 RELIGIONS OF SOUTh aSIa with devotees responsible for preparing and distributing prasadam to the public—research that was carried out at Bhaktivedanta Manor and at one of its linked centres in King’s Cross, London—it seems that growing popular support for this work is one key reason why this aspect of ISKCON preaching has been and still remains especially successful. But to explore this matter in greater depth, as well as to appreciate the success of prasadam distribution as a missionary endeavour, some discussion of how prasadam itself is conceptu- alized and ritually celebrated in ISKCON is in order, as is some discussion of devotees’ testimonies about the role it is said to play in religious life and in spiritual experience. Sanctified Food: its Purifying EfficaCy and its SpirituaL Potency The term prasadam (Sanskrit prasāda) means ‘grace’ or ‘favour’, a term which Sanskrit scholar Will Johnson (2009) points out expresses theologically ‘the free choice, or action, of a deity…to favour a devotee with the means of libera- tion’. In terms of broader and widely shared hindu theological ideas about prasada, Johnson says, [T]he deity’s…favour, or prasada, is materially conveyed to the devotees through the distribution…of food…and other previously made offerings.

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