Of the colorful and exotic features of the American urban landscape during the hippie era in the late 1960s and 1970s, none, perhaps, was so striking as the small bands of men with shaved heads and saffron robes and women in saris gathering at love-ins or on street corners. Together they danced to the sound of Indian drums as they recited their mantra—"Hare Krishna, hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, hare hare; hare Rama, hare Rama, Rama Rama, hare hare"—and solicited alms.

The worldwide Krishna movement was founded by one elderly man from India who came to America with a vision, determination, and hardly a penny to his name. Born in 1896, Abhay Charan De had already studied economics and English at the University of Calcutta when he became a disciple and the eventual successor of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Swami, the tenth in a line of gurus beginning...