Vrindavan Gurukula

ISKCON’s Vrindavan gurukula (boarding school) was founded by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada at Raman Reti, beside the Krishna-Balaram temple; the school gives 1976 as its founding year. In 1981 the GBC made it ISKCON policy to send boys from outside India to the “Bhaktivedanta Swami Gurukula in Vrndavana” from about age nine or ten. Dhanurdhara Swami was principal in 1979–1986 and 1989–1995.

ISKCON’s Central Office of Child Protection later found that he had physically and psychologically abused students (1999), that the teacher Ananta Rupa dasa had abused many children (2000), and that the teacher Gauri Das had used excessive corporal punishment (2008).

In 2002 the GBC approved splitting it into a gurukula and an ICSE-affiliated international school, now the Bhaktivedanta Gurukula and International School (BGIS). Lila Purushottam Das became its director in 2010 (ISKCON News). In 2012 ISKCON Vrindavan bought land at Ajhai, outside the town, for a new campus (ISKCON News); construction began in May 2015 in the presence of Gopal Krishna Goswami (ISKCON Desire Tree), whose memorial website calls him the campus’s “foundational guardian and patron”.

In June 2016 the GBC Executive Committee wrote that students had been “sexually abused off site by a local perpetrator who is known to be a danger”, and put the school on probation: “All efforts at fund-raising for a new school campus will be suspended”, it added, until its child-protection requirements had been met for six months. The resolution adopted in 2017 recorded the child-protection office’s finding that “child protection training, policies, and enforcement are inadequate within the BGIS”; the probation was extended to 2019. The school says it moved to the new campus in 2019 and continues as a boys’ boarding school. Critics, among them the maker of the documentary Cost of Silence, say abuse continued under the same management; see Gopal Krishna Goswami’s record.