Just noticed your comment. Funny - you think an eldery Bengali swami born in Calcutta was an American?? Or his teacher, whose teachings he brought to the west, the late Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur, was an American? Or maybe Saraswati Thakur's teacher and father, a noted scholar who, like his son, was fluent in Bengali, Oriya, Sanksrit, Urdu and English was a US citizen?
I am certainly no fan (to put it very mildly) of the ISKCON organization, but many religious teachers have had many idiot (or worse) followers. How people who claim to follow Jesus Christ have little or no understanding of his message?
Immigrants from India are immediately stripped of their old identities and put into Seven-Eleven shirts and directed to begin selling beer and cigarettes.
Gad.
Their own story is that Krishnaism has an ancient origin as a sort of rebellion against the ancient Hindu belief in the individual being part of the godhead. Which may or may not be true and may depend on the sources referenced. Still, whatever its roots, Abhay Charan De Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada founded ISKCON here, in the United Stes, in New York, in 1965.
He did not found ISKON "there". Besides, that was back in the bad old days in India when the Socialists still ruled the roost and individual initiative was frowned on.
Guess folks in India finally got tired of starving to death and threw Congress Party out in the streets.
Anyway, ISKON definitely has a flavor that is purely American.