ISKCON Mayapur

ISKCON Mayapur is the society’s centre at Sridham Mayapur, in the Nadia district of West Bengal, at the confluence of the Ganges (Bhagirathi) and Jalangi rivers, an area Gaudiya Vaishnavas revere as the birthplace of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (Wikipedia). After returning to India in 1970, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada set out to build a planned international headquarters there (Wikipedia). ISKCON signed a land deal for a nine-hectare plot in 1971 (mayapur.com). Its first building, a renovated hut later called the Bhajan Kutir, became the first temple when the Radha Madhava deities arrived in 1972, and was Prabhupada’s residence until the Lotus Building was built in 1973 (tovp.org). ISKCON’s annual international gathering already met there in his lifetime, as in 1976 (Wikipedia).

Mayapur grew into ISKCON’s spiritual and administrative headquarters (Wikipedia) and a place of pilgrimage; pilgrims from around the world come for the Gaura Purnima festival and the week-long parikrama of Navadvipa held around it (Wikipedia). The campus includes the Sri Mayapur Chandrodaya Mandir with its Radha Madhava temple and Prabhupada’s Pushpa Samadhi Mandir; the Temple of the Vedic Planetarium (TOVP), under construction since 2009, is scheduled to open in 2027 (Wikipedia). By its own account the community covers about 600 acres and has more than 7,000 residents (mayapur.com). A boys’ gurukula has run there since at least 1975, when its first known headmaster took charge (Jiva Institute); it is now part of the Bhaktivedanta Academy (ISKCON News), alongside other schools such as Sri Mayapur International School (mayapur.com).

The ISKCON Governing Body Commission Society is registered at Mayapur, and the GBC holds its annual general meeting there: in February 2025, and again in February 2026 (GBC 2025; ISKCON News). The GBC assigns Mayapur to a group of its members: in 1992 a four-member “ISKCON Mayapur GBC Committee” (GBC 1992); in 2025 a Mayapur Executive Board of four GBC members and the chairman of the GBC Executive Committee, with bureau members and two co-directors (GBC 2025). In the 1990s its management included the Mayapur Administrative Council (MAC), alongside the GBC members responsible for Mayapur (child-protection decision, 2000).

Problems on the record. In July 1977 shots were fired from the Mayapur temple at villagers; eleven devotees were arrested, among them Bhavananda, described by the Hindustan Times as “in charge of the matha”. Abuse of children at the Mayapur boys’ gurukula is documented over several decades. Its 1975–1979 headmaster wrote in 1997 that members of the Mayapur leadership, among them Bhavananda and Nitai Chand, “were actively involved in sexual abuse of some of the children”; no ISKCON body or court has ruled on these allegations. After a 1991 investigation of sexual abuse among the students, the principal, Bhakti Vidya Purna Swami, offered his resignation to the Mayapur GBC members, Jayapataka Swami first among them, but remained in charge until 2000, when ISKCON’s child-protection office found him responsible for physical and emotional abuse of students; in 2022 it found that he had sexually abused a minor girl in Mayapur (ISKCON News; GBC). The same office found in 2000 that Satadhanya dasa, who chaired the MAC in 1991, had sexually abused boys in Mayapur and Calcutta in the early 1980s, and that the protection Mayapur’s managers later gave him “went beyond what can be explained by naivete, ignorance, or simple forgiveness”. It called the history of child abuse in Mayapur before 1992 “one of the worst in ISKCON”, while noting that the administration had been “very cooperative” with the office since 1998. In 2017 the board of ISKCON TOVP authorised Satadhanya to deal with government authorities for the temple project, although the 2000 decision barred him for life from representing ISKCON to any governmental entity. The details are on the individual records.