Importance of ISKCON, INC.
Prabhupadanugas understand the importance of cooperating together, associating together, organizing together, internationally. But agreeing on one Society has been difficult.
How would the worldwide devotees work together if they cannot even agree on any one name of the international Society, as is the case now when there are many regional or local groups of Prabhupadanugas but there is no agreement on one common name of an international society or an agreement to work together?
The local/regional societies, even though they could be transcendentally ISKCON when following the purposes of ISKCON, but still organizationally they are different, hence most devotees are not able to cooperate on one platform.
Especially now that Srila Prabhupada’s worldwide movement has been highjacked and the followers of Srila Prabhupada are feeling out of place in “ISKCON”, many already having left it or not even having joined it.
Most Prabhupada followers are more or less working/preaching alone, sometimes barely surviving. Hence it is very important to find one platform to work together.
Srila Prabhupada’s books are filled with references to ISKCON and International Society for Krishna Consciousness as the Society he has created to provide association to the devotees and for preaching organizationally.
There are four unique features of ISKCON, Inc., that Srila Prabhupada made his main ISKCON society and thus it lends itself naturally to worldwide organizational cooperation.
- Srila Prabhupada himself established the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, Inc. in 1966 in New York (from where the 7 purposes of ISKCON are coming from). This was the only Society he himself registered.
- Srila Prabhupada coined the acronym ISKCON for this society.
- The basic Management directives of ISKCON are given by Srila Prabhupada himself, namely the Direction of Management, on the letterhead of ISKCON, Inc. referring to all the centers existing in the world at that time, 34 in total, to be “branches” (NY temple to be one of these) of this ISKCON, Inc., and making a GBC for those centers, of ISKCON, Inc.
- When Srila Prabhupada established the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust (BBT), on May 2, 1972, in Los Angeles, he stated that “this trust is created and shall be operated exclusively for the benefit of the INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR KRISHNA CONSCIOUSNESS, incorporated by me,” again recognizing the central place of ISKCON, Inc.
These four unique criteria of ISKCON, Inc. lends us more chances that real long-term organizational cooperation could happen among devotees worldwide. We can actually go further and claim to be the Original ISKCON.