1. Kirtanananda Swami, known as Swami Bhaktipada, was a Gaudiya Vaishnava guru, the co-founder of New Vrindaban, a Hare Krishna community in Marshall County, West Virginia, where he served as spiritual leader from 1968 until 1994, and a convicted criminal.
Kirtanananda Swami received a Woodrow Wilson fellowship to study American history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he remained for three years.
Later Kirtanananda acknowledged that, before becoming a Hare Krishna, he had a homosexual relationship with Wheeler for many years, which was documented in the film Holy Cow, Swami, a 1996 documentary by Jacob Young.
Kirtanananda Swami enrolled at Columbia University in 1961, where he received a Waddell fellowship to study religious history with Whitney Cross, but he quit academic life after several years when he and Wheeler traveled to India in October 1965 in search of a guru.
Kirtanananda Swami lived with Wheeler, by then known as Hayagriva Dasa, who was teaching English at a community college in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania.
In July 1968, after a few months of Kirtanananda Swami's living in isolation, he and Hayagriva visited Prabhupada in Montreal.
Kirtanananda Swami eventually established himself as leader and sole authority of the community.
Thirteen members voted for the resolution, two abstained, and one member, Bhakti Tirtha Kirtanananda Swami, voted against the resolution.
Kirtanananda Swami then established his own organization, The Eternal Order of the League of Devotees Worldwide, taking several properties with him.
On March 29,1991, Kirtanananda Swami was convicted on nine of the 11 charges, but the Court of Appeals, convinced by the arguments of defense attorney Alan Morton Dershowitz, threw out the convictions, saying that child molestation evidence had unfairly prejudiced the jury against Kirtanananda Swami, who was not charged with those crimes.
Kirtanananda Swami lost his iron grip on the community after the September 1993 "Winnebago Incident" during which he was accidentally discovered in a compromising position with a teenage boy in the back of a Winnebago van, and the community split into two camps: those who still supported Kirtanananda Swami and those who challenged his leadership.
In 1996, before Kirtanananda Swami's retrial was completed, he pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering.
Kirtanananda Swami was sentenced to 20 years in prison but was released on June 16,2004, because of poor health.
On September 10,2000, the ISKCON Child Protection Office concluded a 17-month investigation and determined that Kirtanananda Swami had molested two boys.
Kirtanananda Swami was prohibited from visiting any ISKCON properties for five years and offered conditions for reinstatement within ISKCON:.
For four years after his release from prison, Kirtanananda Swami resided at the Radha Murlidhara Temple at 25 First Avenue in New York City, which was purchased in 1990 for $500,000 and maintained by a small number of disciples and followers, although the temple board later attempted to evict him.
On March 7,2008, Kirtanananda Swami left the United States for India, where he expected to remain for the rest of his life.
At the time of his death Kirtanananda Swami still had a significant number of loyal disciples in India and Pakistan, who worshiped him as "guru" and published his last books.
Kirtanananda Swami continued preaching a message of interfaith: that the God of the Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Vaishnavas is the same; and that men of faith from each religion should recognize and appreciate the faith of men of other paths.
Kirtanananda Swami died on October 24,2011, at a hospital in Thane, near Mumbai, India, aged 74.
Kirtanananda Swami named Madhusudan Das, of Anand Vrindavan Dham in Ulhasnagar, Mumbai, as his material and spiritual successor.
Kirtanananda Swami authored two dozen published books, some of which were translated and published in Gujarati, German, French and Spanish editions.
Articles and poems by, and interviews with Kirtanananda Swami published in Back to Godhead magazine:.