International Society for Krishna Consciousness

ISKCON Full Form in English, letter by letter

ISKCON is the Hare Krishna movement, a Gaudiya Vaishnava society founded in 1966 by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

ISKCON Full Form in Indian Languages

The Hare Krishna devotees seen at Rath Yatras and city temples belong to ISKCON, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, a Gaudiya Vaishnava movement.

What ISKCON is

ISKCON full form is International Society for Krishna Consciousness, a Vaishnava organisation founded in 1966 in New York by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, a monk from Kolkata who reached the United States by cargo ship in 1965 at the age of 69.

He had started his Back to Godhead magazine in India before sailing, and the movement grew from a small storefront temple in New York into an international society within a decade.

It is known to most people as the Hare Krishna movement, after the mantra its members chant. Today it runs temples, farm communities and food distribution programmes in many countries, with one of its largest presences in India.

Beliefs and daily practice

ISKCON follows the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition traced to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who lived from the late 15th to the early 16th century, and treats the Bhagavad-gita and Srimad-Bhagavatam as its main scriptures. Devotion to Radha and Krishna sits at the centre, with Prabhupada regarded as the founding spiritual master.

Initiated members chant 16 rounds of the Hare Krishna maha-mantra on beads daily and keep four regulative principles: no meat, fish or eggs, no intoxication, no gambling and no sex outside marriage. Food is cooked vegetarian, offered to Krishna, and then eaten as prasadam.

ISKCON in India

The big Indian centres are Mayapur in West Bengal, the birthplace of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and the site of the Temple of the Vedic Planetarium project, and Vrindavan in Uttar Pradesh, along with major city temples in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad.

The Akshaya Patra Foundation began in Bengaluru in 2000 with support from ISKCON Bangalore and cooks mid-day meals for government school children. It now runs as a separate charitable foundation and is one of the largest school meal programmes run by a non-government organisation in the country.

Festivals draw crowds well beyond the membership: the Rath Yatra chariot processions, Janmashtami, Gaura Purnima and the appearance days of the tradition's teachers. Free or low-cost food is a fixture at most centres, and visitors often eat prasadam without sitting through the whole programme.

Books, schools and the organisation

The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, set up in 1972, publishes Prabhupada's translations and commentaries, and his Bhagavad-gita As It Is has appeared in dozens of languages. He died in 1977 in Vrindavan and left the movement to a Governing Body Commission rather than to a single successor.

The same network runs schools and gurukuls, farm projects that grow food for temple kitchens, and the Food for Life programme that supplies meals in Indian cities.

Several temples also run guest houses, where visitors can book a stay to follow the routine: a morning programme before dawn, study and service through the day, and kirtan in the evening.

Visiting a temple as a non-member

Temples welcome visitors, and the Sunday feast, aarti and darshan need no membership or prior notice. Most expect modest dress and bare feet inside the prayer hall, and photography rules vary from centre to centre, with inner prayer areas usually restricted.

Donations are voluntary and nothing is expected in return for a visit. Book stalls and prasadam counters take their own payments separately, and the stalls sell the movement's own editions of the Gita and the Srimad-Bhagavatam.

Nobody is pressed to join. The usual expectation is that you follow the temple's basic etiquette and enjoy the programme. Check timings on the temple's own notice, since the darshan breaks in the afternoon at many centres.

ISKCON and look-alike names

Searches for ISKCON usually point to one of three things: a temple visit, the Hare Krishna mantra, or the food distribution drives. All three belong to the same movement, which is why the full form turns up on culture pages as often as on religion pages.

It is easy to confuse ISKCON with the Akshaya Patra Foundation, the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust or an individual temple's trust. Each has its own registration and accounts, and a donation receipt will name the exact body that received the money. The abbreviation also appears in general knowledge questions on world religions, where the full form is the expected answer.

ISKCON explains both the chanting devotees and the food drives seen around Indian cities. A temple visit and a plate of prasadam are the simplest way to see what the society does.

ISKCON Full Form: Common Questions