Becoming Vaishnava in an Ideal Vedic City centers on a growing multinational community of ISKCON devotees in Mayapur, West Bengal. Paying particular attention to devotees' failure to consistently live up to ISKCON's ideals, and the ongoing struggle to realize the utopian vision of an `ideal Vedic city'.

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on Names, Language and Transliteration Introduction: A Tale of Two Countercultures Chapter 1. Land of the Golden Avatar Chapter 2. Changing the Subject Chapter 3. Practices of Knowledge Chapter 4. Learning to Love Krishna Chapter 5. Simple Living, High Thinking Conclusion: Failing Well Glossary References Index

“This research clearly stimulates the study of (Asian) new religious movements, which is often guided by an East–West binary due to a lack of expertise in regard to their origin in the Asian context. It is highly recommended to anyone interested in the history of new religious movements as well as contemporary South Asian religious history in general.” • Regional Studies Review “Overall, Fahy’s book is a valuable contribution to the ongoing study of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism, and it illuminates several doxastic attitudes of contemporary ISKCON devotees that could not be attained through other methodological approaches such as theological or textual analyses.” • Journal of Dharma Studies “This book is an important contribution to the ethnographic and theoretical literature. It is very well written and deals with an intrinsically interesting ethnographic context. It is theoretically ambitious in its engagement with the literature on anthropology of ethics.” • Jonathan Mair, University of Kent “The book offers the first ethnography of the Mayapur phenomenon, presenting an account of its development, of the political and economic issues involved, the conflicts over building and so on, along with an account of the devotees who live there or visit, based on qualitative interviews and participant observation. The lives and aspirations of devotees are brought to life in this book.” • Gavin Flood, University of Oxford