From New York to Amsterdam: A Movement Crosses the Atlantic

In 1965 an elderly monk from India arrived in New York. A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada had come to teach Krishna consciousness, its philosophy and its devotional life, and he began wherever he could: on city sidewalks, in a modest storefront, among young people who no longer believed much of what mainstream society told them. Nothing about it looked like the start of a European story.

Yet within three years the chanting had reached Amsterdam. By 1968 devotees were singing the holy names on Dam Square, in the middle of a city that was busy questioning almost everything about itself. Amsterdam had seen street performers before. Few passers-by had heard anything quite like this.

Then the music moved indoors—and upmarket. The Radha Krishna Temple appeared at the Concertgebouw, one of Amsterdam’s most celebrated halls, carrying devotional song onto a stage with a formidable reputation. For a movement still finding its feet in the West it was a remarkable billing. For the audience it was a first glimpse of a tradition at once very old and suddenly very present.

None of this was bound to happen, and the chapter never pretends it was. It follows the people, the decisions and the lucky circumstances behind each step, as Prabhupada’s mission, the Dutch counterculture and a first handful of Amsterdam devotees began to find one another. The practical struggles come next.