The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), popularly known as the Hare Krishna movement, was founded in New York City in 1966 by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977), who had arrived from India the previous year to bring the devotional worship of Krishna to the West. ISKCON is a modern, missionary expression of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, the Bengali devotional tradition tracing itself to the sixteenth-century saint Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who is revered as an incarnation of Krishna and who taught salvation through the ecstatic chanting of the divine names. Its theology, in the line of Chaitanya, is one of achintya-bheda-abheda, the "inconceivable oneness and difference" of the soul and God, and it identifies Krishna not merely as an avatar of Vishnu but as the supreme, personal Godhead himself.
The movement's central practice is the congregational and private chanting of the Hare Krishna maha-mantra, together with temple worship of Krishna and Radha, study of scripture, and a disciplined devotional life. Prabhupada's prolific translations and commentaries, above all his edition of the Bhagavad-gita As It Is, remain the doctrinal foundation of the society.