Temple of the Vedic Planetarium (TOVP)

The temple is ISKCON’s largest building project. On Gaura Purnima in 1972 A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada placed a deity of Ananta Sesa in its foundation pit (TOVP), and in February 2010 the project held its formal inauguration and ground-breaking (TOVP). Its chairman since at least 2008 has been Ambarisa Das (legal name Alfred Ford, a great-grandson of Henry Ford), who has given a large part of its funding; Sadbhuja Das has been its managing director since 2009. Parts of the building have opened since 2020, and the project’s site gives the start of its grand opening as November 2027.

People ISKCON had found to be abusers. The project’s own team page listed Bhavananda Das as its “Creative Director”, “working closely with Ambarish Prabhu and Sadbhuja Prabhu”, from its earliest capture in October 2009 until March 2016, although ISKCON’s child-protection office had found in 2000 that he physically and psychologically abused children. The same page listed Satadhanya Das under “Finance / Legals” (2009–2010) and “Legal and Official Services” (2011), and in June 2017 the project’s board named him its Secretary (Legal & Official Relations), although the office had found in 2000 that he sexually abused boys and barred him for life from representing ISKCON to any government body. The title “Creative Director” disappeared from the team page between 7 and 15 March 2016, around the time an ISKCON India Bureau resolution, as reproduced on a critics’ blog, barred Bhavananda, Satadhanya and two others from “any managerial capacity at ISKCON Mayapur Branch”; the project has not said why. In 2023 a report commissioned by the GBC on the Mayapur and Vrindavan gurukulas found that “individuals previously identified, through internal investigations, to be child molesters have been allowed to feature as high-profile spokespersons for flagship projects such as TOVP”. The records of Bhavananda, Satadhanya and the chairman set out each case.