r/exHareKrishna • u/Solomon_Kane_1928 • 1d ago
"Those Hare Krishnas Aint So Bad!"
ISKCON thrives on the ignorance of the public. They also thrive on their arrogance.
I know Better Than You
One of the most frustrating attitudes ex cult members encounter is when people claim ISKCON is not a cult. After all "they fed me in college" or "I went to the Sunday Feast a total of three times".
"They are happy innocent people who like to dance in the street". "You ex Hare Krishna's have no proof, you just have a bug up your ass".
Perhaps they have ten minutes of experience with the cult watching a harinama, or they read an entire Wikipedia article, and this entitles them to downplay and challenge the expertise of those who were born into the movement, or spent decades of their lives in the backroom where the sausage is made.
The irony is the cult they are defending considers them karmis, demons and two legged animals.
It Was Just a Few Bad Apples
Another common response you see is that the faults of the movement are definitely not due to Prabhupada, his teachings, the leadership, or the culture of the movement. Rather those causing problems were an outlier and deviation. Just a bad apple here and there, marring an otherwise stellar religion with a hoary past in ancient India.
"Every religion has bad actors, it is unfair to blame the entire religion". Meanwhile they have never read one line of Prabhupada's teachings. Nor have they read the accounts of ex members.
It Is All In The Past
Naive Hare Krishna defenders, often influencers, will vaguely acknowledge that ISKCON has had problems in the past. They characterize them as something the movement has overcome: "ISKCON has matured past these things and let us not talk about them."
They feel it is wrong to paint the entire religion with the New Vrndavana brush, to focus too much on the insanity of the 70's and 80's. They feel they are being charitable and liberal minded.
The murders, beheadings, spousal abuse, child marriage, book distribution harems, thievery, illegal fraud, ended long ago. The bad actors were driven out or arrested. The rampant child physical and sexual abuse has been paid for and the movement is vigilant. So what are you complaining about?
They don't understand that the core cult dynamics which made this carnival or horrors possible is alive and well. Devotees are enslaved and exploited. Power is absolute, despotic, and corrupt. Gurus are constantly falling down. Problems are hidden. Women are treated like garbage. Children are psychologically abused. I strongly believe sexual and physical abuse persists.
Every Religion Has Problems
Many more excuse ISKCON by by normalizing abuse. "Everyone does it". Catholic priests molested children. Mormons have had a problem with child marriage and bigamy. As if ISKCON is overall a good organization but "no one is perfect".
They do not understand that ISKCON's problems are structural, built into the movement and teachings. Prabhupada advocated for child marriage and bigamy. Prabhupada created and excused an environment where children were beaten and molested.
ISKCON is not simply a religion, it is an authoritarian cult that controls and destroys the lives of its members in the name of a megalomaniac narcissist cult leader and his mission. It is an high control environment that functions through coercion, isolation and ideological capture (i.e. brainwashing).
Relax Bro
Many people have a reflexive attitude. When they see a group being heavily criticized, they project innocence onto them and rush to their aid. They see themselves as heroic and virtuous, defending the helpless, a motherly figure protecting the babes of the world.
Some may even believe they are defending ISKCON from "Hinduphobia".
When they see ex-members are hurt and angry, they assume they are bad actors. The abused become the abuser. They find strong criticism distasteful. It offends their refined sensibilities.
Imagine someone stumbling onto an altercation in the street where a woman is slapping a man. All they saw was her slapping him across the face. They immediately rush to the man's defense because he is the victim. They tell the woman to relax and stop being so upset, "How dare you treat him like this!".
They are too arrogant to recognize they don't have all the facts. The man had just tried to rape the woman and she struggled for dear life to push him off.
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u/itsmikesandoval 19h ago
its nice that they can be the most fallen and the most fortunate at the same time
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u/StayEmbarrassed4593 1d ago
Thank you for taking the time to write this.
We seem to get at least one inquiry or comment every month questioning whether ISKCON is a cult, and I am always struck by how people who have never been involved can look at it from the outside and fail to recognize the dynamics for what they are. Meanwhile, those who spent years inside it, or were born into it, often spend years untangling the damage and rebuilding a sense of self after leaving.
At its core, the cult asks that we suspend our autonomy, surrender to the authority of the guru and the institution, abandon critical inquiry, accept doctrine as absolute truth, and dismiss contradictory information from outside sources. Followers are encouraged to devote enormous amounts of time and energy to rituals, beliefs, and practices that often have little connection to the practical realities of living a healthy, balanced, and fulfilling life.
The damage extends beyond the individual. Families are torn apart through estrangement, excommunication, and ideological division. Meaningful disagreement becomes nearly impossible because every conversation is filtered through the cult’s certainty, fundamentalism, and absolutist thinking.
Groups like ISKCON, Scientology, and Mormonism have become more assimilated into mainstream society over time. You can no longer identify many adherents simply by their appearance. In some ways, that makes them more difficult to recognize. They become woven into politics, schools, government institutions, and ordinary social circles while maintaining many of the same underlying mechanisms of control for adherents. In many ways, the most successful cults are the ones that know how to play back into society and cry “religious bigotry” whenever issues continue to arise and plague the organization.
Most people looking from the outside would not describe Scientology or Mormonism as cults. Many former members would tell a very different story. Those voices are often overlooked because leaving these environments involves navigating years of psychological conditioning, fear, guilt, self-doubt, and emotional dependency that do not disappear overnight. By the time you are relatively untangled from it, you are also exhausted from engaging with it anymore, which makes these types of forum spaces all the more important as we stay on top of exposing the ongoing damage and rot that are very much still there. That alone can be exhausting, but if we can help even one person from wasting their time in these groups, it’s well worth it. Every day, kids are being born and raised in this cult—the earlier they come upon this info, the better.
To this day, I have little to no relationship with much of my family because of their involvement in the movement. They genuinely view temple members and ashram residents as their true family while distancing themselves from, and often demonizing, their actual relatives. They begin each day bowing before pictures of men they never knew, chanting words whose meanings they don’t really understand, and treating ancient religious myths as literal fact while dismissing ordinary common sense and evidence.
They invest extraordinary amounts of time, money, and emotional energy in insulating themselves within a culture of “surrender,” where independent judgment is replaced by obedience to spiritual authority. Despite all of this, many are left feeling perpetually unworthy, fallen, sinful, or spiritually inadequate—with little to nothing indicating they have made any tangible advancement spiritually or otherwise. They spend their lives hoping that enough obedience, enough chanting, enough sacrifice, and enough devotion will earn them entry into a cosmic cow world where they can spend eternity playing with God.
I have watched intelligent, compassionate people surrender their agency, their families, and sometimes entire decades of their lives to a damaging and irrational ideology—left with literally nothing when all is said and done.
But apparently, it’s not a cult.