Srila Prabhupada presents Krsna consciousness in a very simple and practical way in his books. His spiritual master, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saravati Thakur referred to distribution of Krishna conscious books as Brihad Mridanga, the greater drum and instructed Srila Prabhupada to print books whenever he got money. In accordance with that instruction Srila Prabhupada wanted books to be distributed in every town and village.

Sankirtana department

During the 1970’s Jayapataka Maharaja and other devotees residing at Mayapur set off on book distribution in a Mercedes van. Gitar-gan, Srila Prabhupada’s poetic paraphrase of the Bhagavad-gita in Bengali, was the only Bengali book published at that time. Years later a travelling sankirtan party was formed and this party began to travel in a Tata van. By its intensive and continuous preaching, this traveling sankirtan party recruited many new devotees and the number of buses rose steadily. At present there are 8 traveling sankirtan parties with 90 brahmachari devotees in serving them. The Sankirtan department handles the operation of these parties and takes care of the devotees serving in them. A Sankirtan Bhavan has been constructed to accommodate these devotees during their intermittent visits to Mayapur in the course of their extensive travels.

The department plans to have a 100 travelling sankirtan parties with 1000 devotees serving in them before the Temple of Vedic Planetarium is completed. Srila Prabhupada instructed Jayapataka Maharaja to organise the distribution of 10,000 Maha Big books and 1,00,000 small books from Mayapur every month. The devotees are working hard to achieve this huge target in the long run.

The department also operates four bookstalls in the campus. A group of senior devotees in the department cultivate people who buy books.

The book distribution marathon during December is an important annual feature of this department. It was first started in 1992 by the combined efforts of Naresvara Prabhu from BBT, Jayapataka Maharaja, Bhakti Caru Maharaja and Bhakti Purusottama Maharaja.

The Sankirtan devotees seek blessings from Vaishnavas from all over the world to help establish Krishna consciousness through Srila Prabhupada’s books wherever they travel.

Head: Sachi Kumar Das
E-mail: sachikumar@pamho.net
Phone: +91-3472-245290, +91-9434-055853
Office: Sankirtana bhavan