Lokanath Swami
Lokanath Swami is an ISKCON guru from India. He is a senior disciple of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Lokanatha Swami oversees ISKCON activities and preaching in Maharashtra and Noida, and serves on the Governing Body Commission of ISKCON as a Minister of Padayatra. Lokanatha Swami is involved with various worldwide ISKCON preaching activities. He travels in India and in the West, giving discourses on Bhagavad Gita and other Hindu texts.
Lokanatha Swami was born in Aravade, a small village Maharashtra, India. He pursued his secondary education from Willingdon College, Sangli moved to Bombay to study Chemistry at Kirti College. In the year 1971, after meeting A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada and his western disciples at a preaching program in Mumbai, he "forsook his study of chemistry in favour of studying the Bhagavad Gita" and joined ISKCON. He took sannyasa in 1975. In 1976 he inaugurated the Padayatra walking pilgrimage tour of India where, together with a group of Hare Krishna devotees, a cart and religious books, "he treaded his way on foot across India, preaching the knowledge of sanatana dharma". In 1989 he inaugurated the same preaching program in America. Since then, Padayatra has become instrumental in propagation of Krishna consciousness. In 1986 Lokanatha Swami was appointed an initiating guru in ISKCON. In 1996 he was responsible for organising a celebration of 100th Anniversary of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada in India.Footnotes
