Thousands Attend ISKCON Festival in Bengal

Each spring hundreds of ISKCON devotees from all corners of the world assemble in the sacred Indian villages of Mayapur and Vrndavana for a joyous celebration. The occasion is the anniversary of the appearance of Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, the incarnation of Lord Krsna who inaugurated the Hare Krsna movement some five hundred years ago.

This year more than four hundred devotees undertook the pilgrimage. For many it meant over twenty-five straight hours of travel by chartered 747 jet. After the flight from New York City landed in Calcutta, the devotees boarded buses for the short ride to ISKCON temple grounds in Mayapur, on the bank of the Ganges in West Bengal. Finally, the weary but joyful pilgrims settled into newly-built quarters just a few minutes' walk from Lord Caitanya's birthplace.

Each day of the two-week Mayapur festival was packed with a variety of Krsna-conscious activities. The devotees toured local holy spots, attended classes on bhakti-yoga, and saw the Vaikuntha Players of New York perform dance and drama from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, traditional Indian histories. The highlight of the program was the evening lectures on Krsna-conscious culture given by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founder-acarya of ISKCON, and prominent Indian citizens like M. Bannerjee, Minister of Education for West Bengal. And, of course, prasada (spiritual food) was freely distributed, both to the devotees and to the hundreds of thousands of Indian guests who visited the center during the festival. The climax was a ten-course feast for ten thousand on the full-moon night of Lord Caitanya's appearance.

From Mayapur, the devotees traveled 750 miles to Vrndavana, the rural village ninety miles south of Delhi where Lord Krsna displayed His childhood pastimes five thousand years ago. The Vrndavana festival featured daily workshops in such arts as Deity worship and Vedic cooking. And in nearby Mathura, the actual birthplace of Lord Krsna, the devotees put on a lavish exhibition of chanting, lectures, plays, and ISKCON art and books-as well as prasada distribution to thousands.