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New Vrindaban: Pilgrimage, Patronage, and Demographic Change

Eberly, Grace, Eberly
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ouashonors1461696886

Abstract Details

2016, Bachelor of Arts, Ohio University, Classics and World Religions.
If you were to visit New Vrindaban, West Virginia (or any number of ISKCON centers in the United States) in the late 1960s or early 1970s, you would have primarily encountered young, white, counter-culturists. These Americans, with their Sanskrit spiritual names and Indian garments, moved to the commune to live off of the land in exchange for their service to the community and to the growing movement. These devotees would have been intimately familiar with the teachings of their guru and ISKCON’s founder, Prabhupada, and many would have denied a Hindu identity. If you visit the community today, you will discover a radically different scene. Driving up the long, winding road, you will pass a number of abandoned dormitories that are the only remaining vestiges of New Vrindaban’s communal past. Devotees now own their own homes and generate their own incomes. If you enter the temple on a weekend or during a holiday, you will find that roughly ninety percent of those in attendance are Hindus of South Asian descent. This thesis explores the historical and social processes which have allowed for and informed such a profound demographic transformation. It argues that New Vrindaban’s devotee and Hindu populations are strange bedfellows and, consequently, New Vrindaban’s temple is a coterminous social space in which religious and ethnic identities are reinforced, resisted, and renegotiated.
Brian Collins (Advisor)
71 p.
American Studies; Asian American Studies; Demographics; Minority and Ethnic Groups; Religion; Religious Congregations; South Asian Studies; Spirituality
New Vrindaban; ISKCON; International Society of Krishna Consciousness; Hinduism; American Religion; American Hinduism; Pilgrimage; Diasporic Religion; Diaspora

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Eberly, Eberly, G. (2016). New Vrindaban: Pilgrimage, Patronage, and Demographic Change [Undergraduate thesis, Ohio University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ouashonors1461696886

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Eberly, Eberly, Grace. New Vrindaban: Pilgrimage, Patronage, and Demographic Change. 2016. Ohio University, Undergraduate thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ouashonors1461696886.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Eberly, Eberly, Grace. "New Vrindaban: Pilgrimage, Patronage, and Demographic Change." Undergraduate thesis, Ohio University, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ouashonors1461696886

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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© 2016, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Ohio University Art and Sciences Honors Theses and OhioLINK.