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The Hare Krishna Movement: Immigration And Naturalization Act Of 1965

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INTRODUCTION
The 1960s saw the rise of a disproportionately large number of new religious movements (NRMs) in America. Many of these movements were rooted in existing faiths, from Judaism to evangelical Christianity to Buddhism, and were often populated by members of the emergent American counterculture. Concurrently, the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 was being passed into law, which lifted many restrictions on immigration to the United States and prompted a new influx of skilled laborers from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Over the following years and decades, these immigrants began to occupy a prominent role in the American religious landscape, including many NRMs. With these events in mind, this essay seeks to situate the Hare Krishna movement—a successful Hindu-based NRM also known as ISKCON, or the International Society for Krishna Consciousness—in the context of immigration and the counterculture at large. Unlike other Hindu NRMs, ISKCON utilizes contemporary English translations of Hindu scriptures and represents a decidedly Western expansion of several Hindu traditions.
Using a variety of primary and secondary sources, this essay discusses the history of the Hare …show more content…

Additionally, he continued to sharpen his critique of what he called ‘Western scientific materialism’. These allusions reflected Prabhupada’s increasing acclimation to the cultural propensities and values of American culture. More importantly, though, they aligned his Hindu teachings with the experiences and ideologies of the young Westerners he sought to convert. This augmented his success in proselytizing communities of young, countercultural hippies of the 1960s, with whom he “found an audience willing and eager to disallow the mainstays of American religion—Christianity and Judaism—and accept an Indian

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