The worldwide activities of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness
World News
North America
The mayor of San Diego attended the celebration for Lord Krsna's "birthday" in August at the Hare Krsna temple in her city. The mayor, Mrs. Susan Golding, said the temple grounds reminded her of Bali, Indonesia, one of her favorite vacation spots.
Eight hundred devotees met for a "family gathering," the second annual Prabhupada Festival, in Los Angeles last May.
ISKCON's school in Dallas celebrated its reopening in July after a $65,000 renovation. Srila Prabhupada first opened the school in 1972. Thirty students now attend.
Forty boys and girls vacationed in August at the tenth annual "Camp Krishna," at the Gita-Nagari farm in Pennsylvania. The program ran for ten days.
ISKCON Houston held a thirty-hour series of Krsna conscious seminars in July. Forty-five people attended.
The youth of ISKCON's farm in Mississippi sponsored the Rathayatra float in the New Orleans Mardi Gras last spring. They painted, decorated, organized, advertised, and raised funds for the project. Then they performed kirtanas and classical Indian dances on the float. One million people attended the parade.
Sumati Morarji is donating a granite floor for the Miami ISKCON temple. She has also offered to ship large altars waiting in India for the Deities. Through her shipping company, Scindia Steamship Lines, Mrs. Morarji sponsored Srila Prabhupada's first passage to America, in 1965.
An internal FBI memo suggests that acts of violence ten years ago against several Hare Krsna temples were perpetrated by Al-Fuqra, a U.S.-based Black Muslim group. Among acts that investigators have linked to the group: violence at the Hare Krsna temple in San Diego (August 1979) and firebombings of temples in Philadelphia and Denver (June and August 1984). Most of the targets of assaults attributed to Fuqra members have spiritual or cultural ties to India or hold Muslim views that Fuqra members regard as wayward, reported the New York newspaper Newsday. According to USA Today, Fuqra is suspected of sixteen bombings and six murders since 1979.
Chicago Rathayatra
Latin America
Devotees in Brazil have purchased four hundred acres of land in the jungle four hours from Manaus. They plan to build a temple, a school, a guesthouse, and houses for families.
Europe
Two devotees from Belgrade brought prasadam to children's hospitals, children's refugee camps, and homes for the aged in Podgorica, in the Yugoslavian republic of Montenegro. Jugoslav Airlines provided round-trip flights, the Red Cross welcomed the devotees at the airport, and a government firm gave a free hotel room for ten days.
Devotees in London celebrated their twenty-fifth annual Festival of the Chariots on July 4.
The "Hare Krishna Summer Festival" drew two thousand local people to the ISKCON farm in Bavaria, Germany. The festival marked twenty-five years for ISKCON in Germany.
India
The Bhaktivedanta Institute presented a three-day lecture series to more than two hundred students and professors last summer at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Bombay. The school is one of India's five most important institutes for research in engineering and technology.
Fifty children attended ISKCON Secunderabad's first Bhakti-yoga Training Camp, held for ten days last May.
ISKCON Chandigarh will hold its fifth annual Rathayatra festival on November 6.
Africa
A convoy of fourteen vehicles delivered hot Krsna prasadam to the primary school in the black township of Gamalakke last summer. Gamalakke is one of South Africa's most troubled spots, with intense fighting between the Zulu and Xosa tribes. Devotees led the school's staff and students in chanting Hare Krsna. And after the fourteen hundred barefoot and hungry students were fully fed, the devotees passed out a thousand of Srila Prabhupada's books in Zulu.
The annual Festival of the Chariots took place this summer in Nairobi and Mombasa.
South Pacific
British actress Hayley Mills took part in the bathing ceremony for Lord Jagannatha in Christchurch this summer. She and city council member David Cox also attended ceremonies to start a series of programs leading up to the Srila Prabhupada Centennial in 1996.
Devotees in Singapore held their first Rathayatra last July.
Padayatra News
Padayatra America
Padayatra America this summer completed its 1,700-mile walk through all the countries of Central America. The walk began in December from the freezing hills of Costa Rica and ended in May in Colon, on the Atlantic side of Panama.
Padayatra California
A group of devotees spent June bringing Krsna's holy names to the streets of fifty-four California towns. The devotees put on programs in thirty-seven homes during their travels.
Padayatra Phillipines
For two months this year, twenty-five devotees toured the island of Cebu, visiting forty towns and putting on a festival every night. An average of three hundred people attended each program.
Padayatra Eastern Europe
In July and August devotees walking alongside a bullock cart chanted Hare Krsna from Moravia to Prague.
For more information about Padayatra, contact:
Padayatra Worldwide
62, Sant Nagar, New Delhi 110 065, India.
Phone: +91 (11) 642-1736. Fax: +91 (11) 647-0742
Padayatra America
1111 Grand Ave., San Diego, CA 92109.
Phone: +1 (619) 273-7262.
Padayatra Europe
Bhaktivedanta Manor, Lecthmore Heath, Watford, Herts. WD2 8EP, England.
Phone: +44 (92) 385-7244