The Barsana Eye Camp is the rarest of social work efforts—Krishna conscious doctors administering to Krishna conscious patients, in Krishna’s land. Or, rather more specifically, the land where Srimati Radharani, Lord Krishna’s eternal consort, spent her childhood.

It all began in 1989, when a group of young medical students from Mumbai, who had just gotten their degrees, visited the holy town on pilgrimage.

“We saw that many people there suffered from cataracts, a clouding of the clear lens in the eye that causes deterioration of vision, and, if untreated, eventually blindness,” says Barsana Eye Camp Deputy Director Vishwarup Dasa, who is also the head of spiritual care at ISKCON’s Bhaktivedanta Hospital in Mumbai. “At the time, we were already doing small eye camps to help the poverty stricken in Mumbai and its suburbs. So we thought, “Why not do one in Barsana?”

In 1992, Bhaktivedanta Hospital doctors operated on 185 patients at the first Barsana Eye Camp. The program was repeated in 1993, then put on hiatus from 1993 to 2002, while staff focused their energies on developing Bhaktivedanta Hospital. But it was revived in 2002, and has gone on annually since then, enhancing the eyesight of 8,000 patients in total.

All the while, the same core team has remained, as the project expanded around them. While the first Barsana Eye Camps were staffed by only fifty volunteers, this year’s Camp, running from January 13th till February 20th, has drawn 300 skilled workers. There’s fifteen experienced doctors, mainly eye surgeons, as well as anesthesiologists, nurses, and medical students, from the Indian cities of Mumbai, Pune, Belgaum, and Delhi, as well as from the US and the UK.

“This year, ten professional nurses from the UK are joining us,” Vishwarup says. “Four of them are devotees, while the others are philanthropic workers who were inspired by the project and wanted to learn more about the spiritual care unique to it.”

The volunteers have their work cut out for them. Barsana and its surrounding 120 villages have a population of 300,000, out of which around 4,200 people develop cataracts every year.

Cataracts, Viswhwarup explains, are simply part of the aging process, like graying hair, and are easily detected and treated in big cities. But in rural, poverty-stricken areas like Barsana, where there are no good medical facilities, and residents are too poor to travel to the nearest city, they can progress and lead to blindness.

In a town like Barsana where the average literacy rate is only 53%, lack of knowledge is also a major cause of residents continuing to bear the inconvenience without taking action.

That’s why Vishwarup and his team spend four days before each Camp traveling through the 120 villages in the area and creating awareness. As a result, 1,900 people were screened this year, and 900 selected for surgery—a big leap from 1992, when only 185 patients were treated. And all for free! Most of the patients are elderly, with an average age of sixty, although some are children who have gotten cataracts due to an injury, or have had them from birth due to harmful pregnancy medication taken by their mothers.

Barsana Eye Camp volunteers work 16 hour days from their base at Radha Madhava Ashram in Barsana, where trustees of the Ashram built them a permanent clinic in 2007 after seeing their ten years of dedicated work in the area. Equipped just as well as any major hospital, it includes an operating theater, inpatient area, and residential quarters for volunteers and staff members.

Spiritual care is a major part of the Barsana Eye Camp, just as it is at Bhaktivedanta Hospital. From 6am until 10pm, as the staff work tirelessly, a kirtan party chants the Holy Names of God, which can be heard throughout the operating theater, examining area, and wards.

“We firmly believe that, while we have all our professional equipment and protocols in place, the staff and doctors will be empowered by the Holy Names to perform their operations well,” says Vishwarup.

Patients are fed prasadam, and a spiritual counseling booth is available for those who feel anxiety about their health and upcoming surgeries.

“We tell them that disease, along with birth, old age, and death, is simply part of material life, and that these situations will come,” Vishwarup says. “But that chanting the Holy Names and rendering service can save us from these difficulties and the world they reside in. We request the patients not to worry, telling them that we will treat them to the best of our professional ability, that the Holy Name will be chanted throughout their operation, and that they should have full faith in the Lord that by the power of his Name the operation will be successful.”

When staff remove the bandages from patients’ eyes after surgery, they test their eyesight by showing them a picture of Krishna and asking them to identify minute details of his lotus feet, peacock feather, flute, and eyes.

“If they can do it correctly, that means the surgery is successful,” Vishwarup says.

Patients are given forty days of medication upon being discharged, along with instructions about how to take care of their eyes. Spiritual advice is mixed in with the medical—don’t watch television or movies; read the scriptures and take darshan of the Deity in the temple.

Of course, as the patients are residents of Braja, the land of Krishna, and are deeply devoted, the reminder isn’t necessary: Vishwarup says that the moment their vision is returned to them, most head straight for the temple to drink in the Lord with their eyes.

And that’s just a fragment of their devotion. Even as they wait in the ward, or head to the operating theater, these simple Brijbasi people dance and sing songs praising Radha and Krishna.

“They go into their operation singing, come out singing, and then dance home,” Vishwarup says, laughing. “It’s a very unique experience that you would see only in Barsana.”

Eye Camp staff are constantly amazed and inspired by the deep devotion of the Brijbasis, who are clearly not ordinary people.

“Sometimes, when doing our rounds during the night to see if everybody is all right, we hear loud calls of ‘Radhe, Radhe!’” Vishwarup says. “We approach the person, thinking they must be in pain, and that’s why they’re calling out. But when we get close to them, we see that they are fast asleep, even as their mouth chants Srimati Radharani’s name. These are very special people.”

No wonder, then, that the Barsana Eye Camp volunteers are eager to offer service to them, and keep expanding their efforts.

In 2007, when the permanent clinic at Radha Madhava Ashrama was built, they began a monthly camp along with the annual camp. And in October 2011, some members of the team moved to Barsana where they now run a permanent hospital.

The facility is still relatively small, with around twenty-five patients seen every day, and only three to four working hours, as opposed to the sixteen-hour days of the annual camp.

“Altogether, we operate on 2,000 patients in a year, while some other voluntary organizations do a further 1,000,” Vishwarup says. “Unfortunatley, the rest of the 4,000 or so cataract sufferers in the area all go blind.”

To solve this problem and reach their goal of treating all 4,000 patients ever year, the Barsana Eye Camp has purchased a two-and-a-half acre plot of land in Barsana, where they plan to build a full-sized eye hospital.

The hospital will have many more operating rooms than the current clinic, and will include an inpatient area, residential quarters and a prasadam hall. The project will be completed in stages: in the first phase, it will have fifteen beds, in the second twenty-five, and in the third, forty. The first stage is expected to be completed within two years, and the whole project finished in four.

After this, the group also plans to build a birthing center and children’s medical facility, as well as a center for corrective polio surgery.

In the meantime, they’ll continue to work on the annual camps, which are a tremendous inspiration and boost to their spiritual life.

“Our service here is a great privilege and honor, and is part of our sadhana (spiritual practice),” Vishwarup says. “The spiritual upliftment that we get from the Barsana Eye Camp is tremendous. When it’s time go, our volunteers cry, longing for the time when they get to return and have this amazing experience again.”