Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda,
nama oṁ viṣṇu-pādāya kṛṣṇa-preṣṭhāya bhū-tale
śrīmate bhaktivedānta-svāminn iti nāmine
namas te sārasvate deve gaura-vāṇī-pracāriṇe
nirviśeṣa-śūnyavādi-pāścātya-deśa-tāriṇe
Please accept our humble obeisances at your lotus feet. All glories to Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Veṇimādhava. All glories to Śrī Śrī Jagannātha, Baladeva, and Subhadrā. All glories to Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu and Śrī Nityānanda Prabhu. All glories to Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī Prabhupāda. All glories to Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda. All glories to the Śrī Brahma-Madhva-Gauḍīya guru-śiṣya sampradāya. All glories to Śrī Gaṅgā-mayī, Śrī Yamunā-mayī, and Śrī Sarasvatī-mayī.
Our dear Śrīla Prabhupāda, we are fortunate to receive an opportunity to serve in the holy land of Prayagraj, the place of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu and Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī. This is also the place where you received initiation from Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura and served his mission for many years.
This year has been a mix of a lot of challenges, learning, innovation, and difficulties that helped us remain united, growing, and committed. We also got some good results for the Prayagraj temple and even ISKCON as a whole, by Your mercy. Your words and immense example for the same has been a great force helping us to forge ahead during these times.
Amidst the current war situation in the world, when all technological and scientific advancement is itself proving lethal to people, your words about “simple living and high thinking” are clearly showing your farsightedness. You are like the gardener who sees the forest by seeing a single seed. You could see that the future could only be sustained by living according to these principles. Your words in your books are the guiding light for the misdirected civilization, and thus many people are getting freed from this danger. Seeing such a situation in the world, many times we are reminded of your word in the preface to Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam: “[T]his movement will go down in history for saving the world in the darkest hour.”
In 2025, we had Mahā Kumbh, so we had the challenge of developing a big facility for serving Vaiṣṇavas. This year was challenging in terms of managing, maintaining, and refining that big facility.
Here are some highlights from last year:
Prabhupāda Ghat – a shelter for culture, festivals, and joy
By your grace, we were able to collaborate with the tourism department in Uttar Pradesh, where they offered us a ghat next to our temple. This ghat is named after Your Divine Grace as Prabhupāda Ghat and served as an opportunity to start a grand Yamunā ārati in the evenings to attract people to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. We also have a special Yamunā ārati on Sundays, which includes cultural performances, soothing kirtans, and engages the youth and families. We conducted a Snāna-yātrā festival, a beautiful Deva Deepavali, Vijay Dashami, graceful kirtan-melās, and through all that, Prabhupāda Ghat attracted thousands of people over the variety of festivals.
ISKCON’s hospitality in Prayagraj – staying along the Yamunā’s bank
By the hard work of His Grace Alok Nimāi Prabhu and Dhawal Prabhu, along with the devotees assisting them in fundraising, we have a high-class guesthouse facility on the bank of the Yamunā and within the temple campus. This helped us to facilitate and serve many Vaiṣṇavas and pilgrims. By this we are also able to generate major funds for temple expenses.
Your teachings entering mainstream education
Three of our brahmacārīs, His Grace Acyuta Mohan Prabhu, His Grace Satya Saṅkarṣaṇa Prabhu, and His Grace Prema Rūpa Prabhu got to offer credit courses based on the Bhagavad-gītā in IIIT A Prayagraj and MNNIT Prayagraj, which are two of the prominent engineering colleges in the country. The students were thrilled to get this wonderful knowledge of the Bhagavad-gītā. By your grace, many of the students even came with us to Delhi for UDGAR, a national ISKCON youth festival, and many of them came to attend our kirtan-melā and our Holi festival at the Prayagraj temple. The knowledge and the culture you gave us, Śrīla Prabhupāda, is the need for every jīva to experience pure joy.
Advancing devotees, growing community, and expanding service
This year, many devotees got hari-nāma dīkṣā. Some got brāhmaṇa initiation, and a few brahmacārīs accepted saffron. More than fifteen devotees are doing Bhakti Vaibhava, and many more are doing Bhakti Śāstrī courses. Many devotees are learning about the wisdom of the Bhagavad-gītā through temple programs. By the means of new preaching programs, many sections of society are getting connected. His Grace Rohiṇī-suta Prabhu is leading efforts to connect hundreds of kids. A good number of youths are getting connected to the temple through Sunday programs and online preaching programs as well.
Social media outreach – an innovative way to bring people to the temple
After Kumbh Melā, we experimented with how to connect with people. Instagram and other social media platforms gave us very good responses, through which hundreds of new people came to know about the temple activities. The temple footprint increased multifold in spite of our difficult-to-reach location.
We started promoting Yamunā ārati, and it clicked well. Later, many more events, like Snāna-yātrā and Jagannātha Ratha-yātrā became lively, attracting thousands of participants and volunteers, and became huge successes. This year’s Janmāṣṭamī celebrations attracted thousands of visitors. The majority of the credit for that goes to social media. Later festivals like Deva Deepawali, the Lord’s boat festival, kirtan-melā, New Year’s celebrations, and more, were promoted simply through social media. Recently, a grand flower Holi festival, with more than 1,200 paid registrations, was fully campaigned simply through social media. His Grace Śiva Kumāra Kṛṣṇa Prabhu put sincere and intelligent efforts into bringing the online reach and promotion to this level.
Many more initiatives, like a new goshala project for our more than fifty cows, and a Magh melā camp for Kalpavāsīs, were carried out. This year onward we extended our support in IIT Madras youth preaching for ISKCON Madras by sending our team there. Two devotees learned to do Pañcarātra yajñas from Govardhan Eco Village and are thus performing grand and elaborate yajñas. We have also been serving many traveling Vaiṣṇavas by supplying them with journey prasādam.
There are many more things we wish to do in your service in the upcoming years, and we earnestly seek your blessings and empowerment to accomplish them for your pleasure:
- Making a grand temple for the pleasure of Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Veṇimādhava.
- Increasing the congregation of devotees in and around Prayagraj.
- Completing the hospitality facilities and a Govinda’s.
- Developing a beautiful, green campus.
- Getting solar energy set up for the temple.
- Preaching to youths coming to the temple and encouraging them to chant
the Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra. - Creating leadership succession.
- Developing a plan to get more devotees to join the ashram.
We wish to especially thank you, Śrīla Prabhupāda, for having sent your loyal and able devotee His Grace Acyuta Mohan Prabhu as the spiritual mentor and exemplary leader for our community here. Under his guidance, our united team had been able to face many challenges.
Kindly bless all the devotees and especially the devotees taking the lead in various services here. Kindly bless all our endeavors and efforts and the projects we are taking up for your pleasure. May they be pleasing to you and your representatives.
Truly speaking, we feel extremely humble and unqualified to render this responsible service to Your Divine Grace at such a divine place, but your mercy and empowerment has been our true strength and saving grace. We apologize for the shortcomings in our personal practice as well as our service rendered, but at the same time, we are fully confident of bringing transformation through promotion of your teachings here in Prayagraj on the strength of sincerity and unity of our team and the inconceivable power of your desire and grace. Thank you very much.
Your servant,
Satya Saṅkarṣaṇa Dāsa, vice-president
On behalf of all the leaders and devotees of ISKCON Prayagraj