Hare Krishna Group Patiala welcomes His Holiness Bhakti Vikāsa Swami
Shyam Sunder Dass / Patiala/ March 27,2025
Hare Krishna Group Patiala is extremely fortunate enough in welcoming him in Patiala on 28th March 2025 at SDSK Bhawan, Rajpura Road, Patiala from 6:30PM PM to 9:30 PM. The program includes Kirtan, Aarti, Bhajan, Katha and prasad. You all are cordially invited to get blessings from such a great spiritual leader.
His Holiness Bhakti Vikāsa Swami appeared in this world in 1957 in England. He joined the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in London in 1975 and was initiated in that year with the name Ilāpatidāsa by ISKCON’s founder-ācārya, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedānta Swami Prabhupāda. From 1977 to 1979 His Holiness was based in India, mostly traveling in West Bengal preaching Kṛṣṇa consciousness and distributing ŚrīlaPrabhupāda’s books. He then spent the following ten years helping to pioneer ISKCON’s preaching in Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, and Malaysia.
In 1989, he was granted the order of sannyāsa, receiving the name Bhakti Vikāsa Swami, and again made his base in India.He has since travelled widely throughout the subcontinent, lecturing in English, Hindi, and Bengali. His Holiness also travels to and preaches Kṛṣṇa consciousness in other parts of the world.
He continues to write books and magazine articles. Bhakti Vikāsa Swami writes extensively on Kṛṣṇa conscious topics. His books have been translated into over twenty languages, with one and a half million in print. He is also involved in developing several gurukulas and also Vedic rural projects based on simple living and high thinking.
Bhakti Vikasa Swami is not the usual ex-Hemel resident. Born Hugh Turvey, he is now a 68-year-old Hare Krishna monk, who travels the world, spreads his faith, and lives a life of prayer and devotion. He told the Gazette: “I wanted to do the something good with this life. I wanted to do the best thing I can. “So I thought the best thing was to find out God. But where to go? What to do?”
Hugh describes his A Level results as “just about good enough” to go to university but as this held no interest for him.He got a number of brief jobs before going searching for spiritual enlightenment. This led him first to a monastery in Ireland before he found a book called ‘Krishna’, a topic he had heard about from a friend some years earlier but only know piqued his interest. “But I was just wearing a shirt and about a mile before I got there it started to snow and I got a puncture. “I was in this small village so I was stuck there at the temple overnight. “We went to the temple and everyone was singing and dancing. It really struck me – they were really happy, they really had something going on, to do this every day they must really love it.” Four decades later and Hugh Turvey is Bhakti Vikasa Swami, a guru of over 3,500 disciples worldwide. He has preached across Asia, Europe and the USA, and has written number of books on Krishna bhakti which have been printed 2 million copies.
Note: Hare Krishna Group Patiala welcomes His Holiness Bhakti Vikāsa Swami. The writer Shyam Sunder Dass is associated with Hare Krishna Group, Patiala. The views expressed are personal.
