Swami Bhaktipada, who built a massive farm
community and a Palace of Gold that became the crown jewel of the U.S.
Hare Krishna movement before scandals and criminal charges led to his
downfall, died Monday in India, his biographer said. He was 74.
Bhaktipada had been hospitalized in July in Thane, India, with a
collapsed lung and a bleeding brain, said spokesman, former disciple
and biographer Henry Doktorski. His kidneys began to fail last week, and
Bhaktipada died Monday morning.
Doktorski lived at the New Vrindaban community near Moundsville in
West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle for 16 years and said he plans to
soon publish “Gold, Guns and God: Swami Bhaktipada and the West Virginia
Hare Krishnas.”
Under Bhaktipada’s leadership, New Vrindaban grew
into what at one time was the nation’s largest Hare Krishna community.
But the community’s membership waned after the swami was convicted of
racketeering and sentenced to prison time in the 1990s.
“Although
he played a positive role in the Krishna movement’s earliest years, he
later severely violated the strict standards expected of a Krishna
devotee, especially a leader,” said community spokesman Anuttama Dasa.
Also
known as Kirtanananda Swami, Bhaktipada had been born Keith Ham in
Peekskill, N.Y., the son of a Southern Baptist minister, who became a
Krishna swami in 1966.
Without the permission of his leader in
India at the time, Doktorski said, Bhaktipada set out to “westernize”
the religion by eliminating some traditional elements and chanting
prayers in English at a New York City temple. He was evicted from the
temple and left New York in 1967, but was later forgiven.
In the
late 1960s, Bhaktipada and his lifelong partner, the late Howard Morton
Wheeler, formed New Vrindaban, the community with a famed Palace of
Gold. They started with about 132 acres and eventually acquired nearly
5,000, becoming a destination for pilgrims in the International Society
for Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON.
Bhaktipada took over the
community in the 1970s but was in trouble with ISKCON by 1987, when the
governing body expelled him for “moral and theological deviations,”
Doktorski said.
Sankirtana Das, a New Vrindaban member for more
than two decades, told The Associated Press in 1999 that the community
had flourished in the late 1970s and had more than 600 members by 1985.
That year, Bhaktipada was attacked by a visiting devotee and
hospitalized in a coma for a month.
In 1987, the FBI raided the
community, seizing records and computers, Das said. Bhaktipada and New
Vrindaban were excommunicated from ISKCON, and members began to leave as
Bhaktipada formed a new League of Devotees.
Prosecutors later
accused Bhaktipada of ordering the killings of two devotees who had
threatened his control of New Vrindaban. One dissident, Charles St.
Denis, was killed in 1983 at New Vrindaban. Another, Stephen Bryant, was
killed three years later as he sat in his van in Los Angeles.
Bhaktipada
denied any involvement in the killings, though another man was
convicted of the murders and testified that the swami ordered him to
commit the slayings.
Prosecutors also alleged that Bhaktipada had
amassed more than $10 million through illegal fundraising schemes,
including the sale of caps and bumper stickers bearing copyrighted and
trademarked logos.
He appealed his 1991 racketeering conviction,
then pleaded guilty at a second trial in August 1996 and was sentenced
to 20 years. A judge reduced the sentence to 12 years in 1997, citing
Bhaktipada’s poor health. He’d suffered with severe asthma and
complications from childhood polio.
Dasa
said Bhaktipada eventually lost the support of his New Vrindaban
followers and left the community entirely in 1994. Shortly afterward,
the community petitioned to rejoin ISKCON, and it was restored to full
membership in 1996.
The conditions for rejoining ISKCON included
adhering to traditional worship and new accountability standards, and
demonstrating a willingness to work with about 50 other North American
temples, Dasa said.
Today, New Vrindaban has about 200 members living on or next to the property.
It
remains a destination for pilgrims, drawing crowds for festivals, major
holy days, and weekend or weeklong retreats. About 25,000 people visit
annually, enjoying the ornate palace, a rose garden with more than 100
varieties, and an organic farm and dairy.
