A small step for ISKCON UK, a big step in following Srila Prabhupada’s Instructions

A small step for ISKCON UK, a big step in following Srila Prabhupada’s Instructions

By Praghosa Dasa

On Saturday the 10th of November a rather unspectacular but noteworthy event took place in the UK National in Radlett, London.

The signing of a lease agreement between the original ISKCON charity of 1969 and the relatively new ISKCON London charity.

This was the final step after many years of painstaking preparation which means that ISKCON London is now effectively an independent separate charity with no legal ties to the original ISKCON charity set up in 1969.

The reason this is significant is that Srila Prabhupada instructed that all legal entities outside of India should be registered separately wherever possible. There were different reasons for this, one reason being that local devotees would become familiar and competent in all the necessary requirements of running an incorporated charity. Another reason was to not have all our centres legally connected in case one of them ran into some difficulties and other centres might then be negatively effected.

For one reason or another and without going into the details as it is all now on the historical record, the UK yatra did not fulfill this instruction of Srila Prabhupada, hence all UK centres were part of the one legal entity. Some years ago the UK yatra decided to rectify this and again without going into the details it proved to be quite a long and involved journey.

However last Saturday the first of the UK centres, ISKCON London, popularly known ISKCON Soho, became a completely separate charity. In due course of time all the other 12 or so current ISKCON UK centres will do the same.