Older and Wiser

Saffron robes, shaved heads and prayer beads are still the classic symbols, but the Hare Krishnas are not the young zealots they used to be.

When members commemorate the 30th anniversary of the movement in the United States this month, they are more likely to be gray-haired members dressed in business suits.

Like its members--the baby boomers who were its earliest devotees in this country--the movement is maturing. You won’t see them endlessly blocking the sidewalks of Venice Beach or swarming Los Angeles International Airport anymore.

“We made mistakes in the past, we offended people and we apologize,” says Anuttama Dasa, the movement’s North American spokesman. “We are trying to rectify that.”

Indeed, evaluation and restructuring are prominent features of Hare Krishna’s aging face.

Some members, now in their mid-40s, look back on their earliest days in the movement with a sense of humor.

“That was the rock ‘em, sock ‘em Hare Krishna movement, when a small number of zealots lived in the temple and gave everything to the movement,” says Swami Hridayananda, who joined in 1969 as a student at UC Berkeley.

In 1977, he was named one of 11 gurus worldwide to succeed the founder, Swami Prabhupada, who brought the religion to the United States in 1966. Hridayananda is now completing a doctorate at Harvard University’s Sanskrit department and will teach at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley next fall.

“We look back and laugh a lot about ourselves, tackling people at airports and things,” he says. “Now we’re much more concerned about just being civilized.”

Hridayananda, like more than 90% of North American Hare Krishna members, lives outside the temple and attends Sunday evening services. “We grew up, moved out of the temples, got married, had families,” he says. “We’re building congregations.”

Along with the emphasis on congregation-building, the movement’s leaders are in the beginning stages of restructuring management.

Sudharma Dasi, who lives near Gainesville, Fla., is part of that effort.

“I was 19 when I joined; the oldest leaders were in their 20s,” she recalls. “Now we are all married with children. It’s very different from being young kids checking out an Eastern religion. We’re looking at more mature systems of organization.”

Plans include standardizing religious instruction so that temples around the world are teaching the same program, implementing child-care systems and developing business opportunities.

There are about 45 temples scattered across the United States and Canada, and all are supported primarily by donations from membership, which is estimated at about 100,000 in North America, says spokesman Dasa. Worldwide, the unofficial figure is several million members; India has one of the largest concentrations of members.

Some temples, including the one in Los Angeles, are subsidized by their own vegetarian restaurants and gift shops. The L.A. temple complex, housed in nine small apartment complexes on Watseka Avenue in Los Angeles, also includes offices, a school and living quarters for temple workers. About 40 young initiates live in an ashram--a type of retreat house--and study the faith.

Los Angeles is also the U.S. headquarters of the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, which publishes translations of sacred Hindu texts--particularly the 5,000-year-old Bhagavad-Gita--along with vegetarian cookbooks and others that relate to the movement. The book trust generates about $10 million to $15 million per year, which covers operating costs, says its president, Savasa, who is also president of the local temple.

A small video production operation rounds out the business ventures in Los Angeles. It produces videos with “a devotional perspective.” The biggest success has been “Cooking With Kurma,” featuring an Australian chef, which airs on PBS stations around the world.

A number of temples, including Los Angeles, have developed a Food for Life program, serving free meals to needy communities in U.S. cities, as well as disaster areas worldwide--most recently, Chechnaya and Sarajevo.

*

These signs of stability in the movement come after a decade of controversial expansion in the 1970s, and a decade of conflict and turmoil following the death in 1977 of founder Prabhupada.

The ‘70s were marked by concerns that Hare Krishna was a cult. Parents still report to Cult Awareness offices and Cult Education programs that their teenage children live in temples and never call home. To combat such complaints, anyone younger than 18 needs parental permission to live in the temple.

A number of second-generation Hare Krishnas are now in their late teens or early 20s. Jaya Rhadhe, raised in Illinois by Hare Krishna parents, lives in the Los Angeles ashram. She turns 18 in July and plans to attend Santa Monica College and become a teacher.

She recalls her life in the Midwest: “It was a hard fit, having Jaya for my name, being vegetarian and born into the movement. Now, I love wearing my sari.”

If the ‘70s was a decade of fitful expansion, then the ‘80s were marred by disintegration. A number of public accusations concerning illicit acts by temple leaders, including child molestation, drug dealing and even murder, led to civil trials and the removal of several gurus from their positions of power.

The Los Angeles Hare Krishna community was not immune to trouble. In 1986, the temple’s Swami Ramashwar was accused of breaking his vow of celibacy. Soon afterward he left the community and the city.

The same year Steven Bryant, a devotee who lived in Virginia and traveled the country voicing his criticisms of improprieties, was murdered near the Los Angeles temple. Thomas Drescher, a lifelong member, was convicted of the crime in 1987.

During those turbulent years, Nori Muster was a public relations spokeswoman for Hare Krishna worldwide. She was based in Los Angeles until she left the movement in 1988. Her book, “Betrayal of the Spirit, My Life Behind the Headlines of the Hare Krishna Movement,”will be published by the University of Illinois in September.

“While the leader, Prabhupada, was still alive he could make final decisions and people respected them,” she says. “But with the loss of him, the organization turned dysfunctional.” She describes the dozens of splinter groups that have formed to voice criticisms and call for reform. “There are bridges to be mended. Sometimes it seems impossible that any amends will be made,” Muster says.

*

Larry Shinn, a Methodist minister and president of Berea College in Kentucky, has studied the Hare Krishna movement since 1980.

“It’s been a rough history, but one sign of maturity is this move by critics from the inside to express their point of view,” he says.

In the early ‘80s Shinn lived in 14 temples across the country, doing research for his book “The Dark Lord: Cult Images & the Hare Krishnas in America” (Westminster Press, 1987). He found that communities varied, depending on the quality of their leaders. “Tragically, some leadership has been rotten to the core, but most of the people were wonderful and very committed,” he says.

The Governing Body Commission has continued to meet every five years in India. At their most recent gathering, this spring, members of the commission asked Shinn for his comments. “Today, the concern of gurus around the world is what is and is not working.”

To diffuse power, 30 new gurus were recently named, with more to come. Critics are concerned that worthy men be chosen to ensure honorable leadership. The standards are high--a guru should be as “good as God.”

“Are they that good?” Shinn wonders. “We don’t know yet.”

The future of the movement may be only as good as its leaders. Still, Burke Rochford, a sociologist at Middlebury College in Vermont and a close observer of the first 30 years, is optimistic, as is Shinn.

Says Rochford: “The question now is not, ‘Will they be gone?’ The question is, ‘What will the Hare Krishna movement look like 10 years from now?’ ”