Prabhupada, Bhaktivedanta (1896–1977)

His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada was the founder and spiritual preceptor of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON, popularly known as the “Hare Krishnas”). Author or translator of more than 60 volumes of Vedic texts, including the Isopanishad, the Bhagavad Gita, the Bhagavata Purana (Srimad Bhagavatam), and a host of other sacred literature, he performed the impossible by transplanting India's sacred Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition onto Western soil.

Born Abhay Charan De, in Calcutta (now Kolkata), West Bengal, Prabhupada studied at the Scottish Churches College, which was administered by the British and functioned under the auspices of Christian missionaries. Still, his parents raised him as an orthodox Vaishnava—a devotee of “the Supreme Personality of Godhead”—and he claimed that there was never a time ...