Kimmo Ketola: “…..One can only wonder: How did this happen? What made his movement so attractive to young people in America and Europe? What is perhaps most remarkable in this story is that the usual elements of legends associated with illustrious religious founders are lacking. Prabhupada’s birth is not surrounded by miraculous occurrences. His own conversion seems to have been of a completely intellectual kind. The popular biographies written by devotees do not contain accounts of dramatic visionary experiences or supernatural abilities of healing and miracle-working. On the face of it, his religious life seems strangely sober and low-key for a religious founder. The usual charismatic attractions of ecstasies, visions, healings and miracles are simply not there. Did the secret lie in the ideological message? Were his social teachings and moral visions attractive to the members of the counterculture? Or was it rather his extraordinary personality that was so appealing? What exactly took place during those first few years of his stay in the West? It is broad questions like these that have formed the basis for the present research. As it happens, I am not the only one asking them. A number of observers-both scholarly and non-scholarly-have felt compelled to seek answers to the riddle. The Hare Krishna movement has attracted a great deal of sociological and anthropological research that has already touched upon these issues. In fact, there is a venerable scholarly tradition of interpretation of what is generally called “new religious movements” (NRMs) and their appeal in the West. The approach and methodology of the earlier research differs, how- ever, rather signi? cantly from the approach I have chosen. To shed light on the direction taken here, I shall ? rst review earlier major research on the Hare Krishna movement…..”
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