At New Vrindaban In West Virginia, Hare Krishnas Abandon Religion, Environment In Favor Of Fracking Profits

Senior Correspondent

Posted on May 27, 2015, 11:07 AM

More: hare krishna, moundsville, new vrindaban, Prabhupada, wv

With all the attention Scientology has been garnering recently, what is not likely to cross the mind of the average American is: “I wonder what the Hare Krishnas are up to?” But it turns out that Scientology isn’t the only “religion” capable of maximizing profits and whipping up controversy.

Where Scientology is reported to exploit its members to squeeze money and influence, the agrarian Hare Krishnas are allowing the land they own to be squeezed for Oil in West Virginia. How did they get there from famously asking for money at the Los Angeles International Airport in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s?

In the years following the 1966 creation of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) by Swami Prabhupada it seemed the Hindu based religious movement must be based in Southern California.

That’s an understandable assumption with enough orange-robed Krishna’s selling religious tracts and recruiting members at LAX alone by the 1970s to warrant references in both movies Airplane I and II.

But those SoCal Krishna’s were only there to collect the money needed by leaders to build their home temple, and a palace for Prabhupada, outside the remote West Virginia town of Moundsville, WV called New Vrindiban.

The Hare Krishna fund drive approached so many hundreds of millions of travelers passing through LAX during the ’70s, ’80s and the ’90s that California passed a 1997 law targeting the Hare Krishna’s, that banned cash donations from the airport completely.

(Credit: Robert Johnson/Keith Estiler / Pixable)

The sums of money the Krishna’s were pulling in from LAX over the years was apparently large enough for them to fund a 13 year legal battle against the ordnance, where the California Supreme Court ruled finally against them in 2010.

By the time of the verdict ISKCON likely didn’t care nearly as much as it had; not with millions in tax-free cash from the sale of gas rights and royalty payments pouring in.

At that point Chevron was well underway fracking on Krishna land, pouring chemicals and water deep into the ground to reach billions of gallons of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale formation below.

That seemed like an interesting enough contradiction for a group dedicated to providing unspoiled land for protected cows and strict principles of purity.

We visited New Vrindiban in April where we were the only non-Indian guests filling the visitors lodge during their visits to the compound with families and friends.

This is what we found.

At New Vrindaban In West Virginia, Hare Krishnas Abandon Religion, Environment In Favor Of Fracking Profits

The Hare Krishna New Vrindaban compound was founded a few miles outside the small West Virginia town of Moundsville in 1968.

Devotees spent the early years here building a temple.

They constructed a palace for the movement’s founder to call home.

ISKON founder A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada died before the palace was finished.

But life size replicas of the man linger throughout the palace.

Prabhupada said he intended New Vrindaban as the place where members could lead a ‘simpler, more natural way of life‘.

He wanted it to be a sacred place known worldwide for its extensive cow sanctuary.

Cows are held sacred by the Hindu-based Krishnas.

Krishna devotee Sada Ruchi says he led fundraising efforts at the sanctuary for years.

Ruchi said his fundraising brought in more than $125,000 a year until he was released from his position in 2013.

He says that was when he was replaced with an Indian devotee.

2013 was also when the sanctuary applied for a new IRS status that made it an ‘auxiliary unit’ of New Vrindiban itself.

A move that kept its fracking royalties tax free and contributed to the group’s 2013 $350,000 income.

This was a reported increase of more than $300,000 from 2011 and could have gone to construction projects such as remodeling this cow barn.

The cow’s safety and well-being is a major part of the Hare Krishna religion and a tenet of its mission.

A mission that now appears to allow activities just like we found at the top of this hill: Fracking.

Up here, machinery fires away to pull natural gas from hydraulic fracturing wells that require immense amounts of chemicals and water to extract natural gas and oil.

This is where Chevron’s fracking well, the Snyder, sits amid the vast expanse of New Vrindaban lands.

New Vrindiban leaders have publicly explained their reluctance to allow fracking on their lands, but under the Rule of Capture they say their land’s reserves would have been taken from wells off their property and they would have been paid nothing.

So the Krishna leadership claimed they applied ‘the principle of yukta-vairagya, true renunciation‘ in their decision making process to choose AB Resources and allow fracking.

But the insight of yukta-vairagya failed to provide the knowledge that within three months of signing with AB Resources, it would allow 35,000 gallons of gas and brine into a WV forest over a period of 16 hours on June 3rd and 4th, 2010.

That spill occurred when AB Resources tapped into an existing coal mine that ignited pooled methane into a tower of flame 70 feet high that burned for five days and scorched seven workers.

AB Resources was sold to Chevron. AB Resources was one of many companies responsible for spilled fracking runoff. Such runoff and has been attributed to cattle deaths and reproductive problems for years.

From up here it’s easy to question whether the sanctuary’s newly approved tax status is more about profit than spiritual fulfillment.

An outspoken opponent of mining and industry it’s also easy to imagine that Krishna founder Prabhupada would not have approved.

Fracking is precisely the type of thing Prabhupada founded Vrindiban to avoid and denounce.

But he isn’t here to denounce it, and the work is very much rolling and keys to heavy equipment sit in the ignition, ready to bring the machines to life.

New Vrindiban was quick to point out that they do not own the Snyder well but they have been keeping a ‘close eye on it as far as they can’.

The group says it sold gas rights at New Vrindiban because it was going to happen around them whether they sold or not.

Either way, they do actually own 280 acres of the well that provides those tax-free royalty checks they felt were not arriving rapidly enough.

Sada Ruchi told us the hills were lit up all night for years after the Krishna’s sold drilling access to hydraulic fracking companies. With numerous wells already established, the drilling will continue.

And additional reports emerge that letting livestock graze near these type of wells is unquestionably deadly.

But the land has become a cash cow producing income that may have shifted Krishna focus to protecting fracking first, and everything else second.

It’s a question worth asking, especially as the repairs slated for fracking profits seem to get pushed farther into the future.

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