The ISKCON Atlanta Panihati festival, which celebrates its 35th anniversary this year with a three-day event from June 3rd to 5th, was born in a remarkably spontaneous and sweet way.

In 1974, Srila Prabhupada had named the Atlanta branch of his ISKCON society “New Panihati Dhama,” after a small village in Bengal described in the biography of 15th century Gaudiya Vaishnavism founder Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.

As the story goes, Vaishnava saint Raghunath Dasa Goswami organized a feast in Panihati at the order of Chaitanya’s closest associate Nityananda Prabhu, comprising of hundreds of chipped rice dishes in clay pots. When the brahmanas and other villagers heard of this, a crowd soon gathered.

“In 1976, when some of the devotees got to visit India, we naturally wanted to visit the real Panihati our temple had been named after,” says Balabhadra

Bhattacharya Dasa, a disciple of Srila Prabhupada who joined ISKCON in Atlanta in 1973, and has served there ever since.

“So there were nine of us, sitting under the tree were Raghunatha Dasa had once served his chipped rice—and we just spontaneously decided to hold our own little Panihati festival,” he continues. “We bought some bananas and some of those ‘glucose biscuits’ that they sell in India, and started giving them to the villagers. When they heard that there were some Americans there giving out food, several hundred people gathered, just as they had 500 years ago. Then we all heard the original story from the Chaitanya Charitamrita together, with a local man reading the Bengali, and Balavanta Prabhu—the Atlanta temple president at the time—reading the English translation.”

From then on, the Atlanta devotees began celebrating a small Panihati festival at their temple, offering eight pots of chipped rice to the Deities.

But the celebration was taken to another level in 1981, when ISKCON guru and leader Jayapataka Swami visited Atlanta.

“He explained to us just how important the Panihati Festival is in Vaishnava culture,” says Balabhadra. “And he inspired us to expand our vision. He said, ‘Why offer only eight pots? Offer enough to have a grand festival. Invite devotees from all over North America and feed them chipped rice.’”

The community set to work, and every year, the festival grew. Today, it is a three-day event which incorporates the Atlanta Ratha Yatra and sees nearly 500 pots of chipped rice offered to the Deities and the assembled devotees and guests.

Meanwhile, Jayapataka Swami remained directly involved in the festival, developing a system to give each pot of chipped rice its own specific flavor by mixing it with yoghurt, condensed milk, or Cajun spices, to name just a few of the hundreds of flavor combinations. To this day, he has also personally supervised the forty or so devotees who prepare the chipped rice every single year.

“He hasn’t missed one Panihati festival in thirty years,” says Balabhadra, who was the festival coordinator for many years and is also a former temple president of New Panihati Dhama. “His dedication to this event is incredible. He attended even when he was attacked and stabbed in Spain in 1989; even when he suffered two brain hemorrhages in 2008; and will attend this year despite his continued serious health condition. He just will not miss it.”

The festival certainly sounds like an event not to be missed. Featuring a kirtan theme this year, it will kick off on Friday June 3rd with much inaugural chanting of Krishna’s names on the main stage on the temple lawn. Seven to eight hundred people, including devotees and guests, will mill about amongst the colorful

Festival of India tents, buying prasadam, devotional clothes, incense and other paraphernalia and engaging their children with the activities provided.

On Saturday morning, devotees will honor Jayapataka Swami for his thirty years of dedication to the festival, followed by initiation ceremonies. Rathayatra, in which Deities of Jagannath, Baladeva and Subhadra are pulled around the neighborhood in a colorful chariot, will follow at 1pm, and will be attended by Bhakti Vikas Swami, Ritadhvija Swami, GBC members Tamohara Dasa and Malati Dasi, and others.

From 3pm until 10 o’clock at night, a long list of kirtan performers will light up the main stage, including Uttama Bhakta Dasa, Bhakti Messenger, North Carolina’s Samadhi Band, and Balabhadra’s group The Murari Band.

“Then on Sunday morning at 11am, we’ll have what is the biggest highlight of the festival for me—Srila Prabhupada Lila Smaranam,” says Balabhadra. “For two and a half hours, we’ll share memories of Prabhupada’s visit to Atlanta in 1975, which had a deep impact on us back then, and seems to very much inspire newer devotees when they hear about it now.”

Balabhadra describes how at least four hundred devotees packed into the small temple room, and Prabhupada played mridanga and led kirtan, which he had not done for years. Then, less then a minute into his talk, he was so moved that he began to cry and could not speak any further.

“It was a very powerful experience,” Balabhadra says. “And having been there, I feel that it’s my duty to pass that experience on to the second and third generations; to help them remember Srila Prabhupada, and in so doing increase their enthusiasm for Krishna consciousness.”

In the meantime, many devotees including Jayapataka Swami will have spent the entire day from Mangala Arati at 4:00am on preparing hundreds of differently flavored chipped rice dishes in decorative clay pots. And at 1:30pm, they will all be offered to the Deities, to the accompaniment of a tumultuous kirtan.

“After the kirtan, we’ll auction off the largest, most decorative pots—an idea actually suggested by Jayapataka Swami’s mother when she first attended Panihati about fifteen years ago,” says Balabhadra. “That’s another fun, exciting part of the festival, with people frantically bidding for the pots, which are handed out to the winners by Jayapataka Swami. A single pot has gone for as much as $2,000.”

Then it’s time for the feast, served outside and honored in a joyful mood, with people running back and forth, sharing their pots of chipped rice with each other. Finally, more kirtan on the main stage will continue until 8pm, concluding the celebration of one of ISKCON North America’s most beloved festivals.

“ISKCON Atlanta has been a part of many landmarks of ISKCON’s history,” Balabhadra says. “We were one of the top book distributing temples in the world for many years; we kicked off ISKCON’s mid-seventies foray into politics when Balavanta ran for Mayor of Atlanta; and we’re well-known for our kirtan. But it’s the

Panihati festival that is synonymous with ISKCON Atlanta, and that has been our most consistent offering to the devotee world, year after year.”

Next year, residents of New Panihati Dhama hope to take their festival to Centennial Park, in the heart of downtown Atlanta, and to introduce the general public to it.

“The goal of Krishna consciousness is to expose as many people as possible to the sublime culture of chanting, dancing and feasting,” says Balabhadra. “And with the blessings of the Vaishnavas, that’s just what we hope to do.”

For more information, please visit http://atlantaharekrishnas.com