ISKCON

[Jadranka Schauer]

It is difficult question even to their own members. There are few types of
followers: the first ones that live in the temple or follow morning-evening programs
with service connected with their temple. The second type is congregation that used
to live in the temples but got married or got a job outside of the temples and they
give a major donations. In India, there is one very nice program by their founder
Srila Prabhupada called "Life membership. Only Calcutta has 26.000 of them. Mumbai
has more. They give donations, help the programs, come to sunday programs, hold
programs at their homes, etc. according to their taste.

One who has been initated by a founder himself, or by his disciles that are voted to
be bona-fide gurus in ISKCON (there are about 80 of them) are called Hare Krishna
devotees. Unfortunately, 90% of founder's disciples are not in ISKCON today.

Prof. P. Kumar wrote:

> I would imagine this is a rather difficult question to answer because to my
> knowledge the ISKCON does not have like membership type follower. Most of
> their followers are spontaneous ones who would attend some of their
> festivals/rituals etc., may not necessarily attend daily/weekly rituals at
> their temples. It does not mean there isn't a core group that almost
> regularly attends and participates and perhaps even consider themselves as
> followers of the Hare Krishna way of life. But even those, I don't think
> are actually counted as per some records. Just to give an example in the
> Durban temple (Hare Krishna) on every Sunday there might be about 200  or
> so devotees most of whom are not regular followers as such but general
> Hindus but sometimes take time to visit the temple. But at the time of the
> festival of chariots which happens on the beachfront in Durban there may be
> about a 100 000 devotees (this is according to the rough estimate by local
> newspapers) attending the festival on a daily basis during the three days
> of the festival. So perhpas the question needs to be put differently.
>
> Pratap
>
> >Can someone inform me how many supporters the Hare Krishna (ISKCON)
> >movement has
> >worldwide? How many of these live in India?
> >
> >David
>
> Prof. P. Kumar, Centre for Religious Studies, University of Durban-Westivlle
> Private BagX54001, Durban, 4000
> South Africa, Tel: 027-31-204-4539 (work), Fax: 027-31-204-4160 (work)
> Email: kumar at pixie.udw.ac.za
>
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