A Remote Spiritual Disneyland

In the West Virginia hills, the Hare Krishnas build a palace

The Hare Krishnas are known for their bald heads, saffron robes and their own showy style of Hinduism. Known, but not necessarily beloved. Since 1966, with beads, drums and clanging cymbals, they have chanted and boom-cha-boomed their way down the streets of American cities and harried hordes of airport travelers with pleas for donations. So importunate are they, in fact, that a federal district judge in Syracuse has just declared that some of their fund raisers "engaged in a widespread and systematic scheme of accosting, deceit, misrepresentation and fraud on the public."

Now they are showing off some of their acquired wealth, and in an unlikely setting. Above Moundsville, in the West Virginia hills four miles up a rutted road from the nearest highway, 60 Hare Krishnas, who taught themselves to be artisans by trial and error, built an incredible peacock-hued "Palace of Gold." It is the first installment of what the settlement's leader envisions as a "spiritual Disneyland where people can come and be amazed." Amazed was one word for the 15,000 disciples and tourists attending the Labor Day weekend "grand opening." The festival also marked Janmastami, birthday of the Lord Krishna, who is the object of the movement's ceaseless chanted devotions.

The fussily decorated palace consumed 63 tons of imported marble, ten tons of wrought iron, three tons of carved teakwood from India, onyx for inlaying, thousands of square feet of gold and copper leaf, 42 crystal chandeliers, as well as enough stained glass for 80 windows. Claimed cost of the materials: $500,000.

The palace was begun in 1973 as a part-time residence for His Divine Grace

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the Indian businessman who, late in life, took monastic vows and in 1965 arrived in New York City to launch the Hare Krishna movement. But the swami died three years ago, and the building was turned into a samadh (shrine) in his memory. Two devotional rooms contain life-size (and unnervingly lifelike) statues of the founder made of resin.

The palace is set on a 2,000-acre spread that includes a working farm and is called New Vrindaban, after the town in India where the incarnate Krishna lived five millenniums ago. Life among the grazing cows has not always been peaceful. After a shooting incident in 1973, the swami's flock collected dozens of firearms for self-defense, a practice that spread to West Coast Krishna communities. When a visitor died of hepatitis in 1976, West Virginia authorities quarantined the place, citing poor sanitation.

To help draw friendly visitors, the leader of New Vrindaban, Swami Bhaktipada, plans to add a vegetarian restaurant and museum next year, and a ten-acre formal garden in 1982. Eventually, there are supposed to be seven temples. But Sergeant Thomas Westfall of the county sheriffs department doubts it will ever be, so to speak, a tourists' mecca. "There's just no way that tour groups are going to include that place out there. The roads are terrible."

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