Krishna punks, fuck off.

On a mid-June Sunday, Washington Square Park was overrun by undulating, sarong-swaddled throngs of Hare Krishna devotees. Hundreds of men and women from ISKCON (The International Society for Krishna Consciousness) sang and danced in the grass, celebrating the kind of soft emotions that non-Krishnas might assume would be squashed into syrup by even the lightest contact with reality.

From 2 p.m. until nightfall, the Krishnas turned the park into a self-contained alternate reality. Passersby dealt with their numbers, the low booming hum of chanting and the distinctive aroma of nonviolent vegetarian food. Like an airborne virus, the spirit of the Krishnas affected everyone it touched, regardless of their willingness to receive it. The germ was spread, and the germ was joy. Krishna, Hare, Hare, Hare Krishna.

The happy New York scene gave no indication of the recent troubles endured by the Krishnas nationwide. Last March, 11 Krishna temples filed for bankruptcy in response to a $400 million lawsuit filed in a Texas state court in October 2001. (The case was originally dismissed from a Dallas court in June 2000.) "The suit threatens to close places of worship and punish innocent families that had nothing to do with these allegations," spokesperson Anuttama Dasa said. While ISKCON lawyers claim the suit threatens to destroy their religion, the claimants state that, for a time, the Krishna religion threatened to destroy their lives.

The 91 plaintiffs accuse the Krishna organization of ritual child abuse, the most viscerally awful crime an organization can commit for the public, and deep-fat-fried grist for the scandal media mill. In the 70s and 80s, several Krishna children's boarding schools opened across America, and rumors of abuse and cruelty at the schools have abounded since the beginning. Even if no abuse occurred, the Krishna boarding school system would be weird and awful on a Dickensian level, as the children saw their parents less than five times a year.

In April, ISKCON appeared to admit the organization's history of abuse, releasing media notices to international print and online publications asking abuse victims to contact ISKCON in order to be compensated. Anti-abuse programs have been implemented at remaining schools. In an unusual move, ISKCON is offering to pay abuse victims, even if they do not sue. Oddly, this made-for-tabloid event has gone unreported.

There are an estimated 75,000 Krishna devotees in North America. This number is surprisingly small?Santeria devotees are estimated to number between 500,000 and 800,000?particularly in light of their widespread recognition. As the Airplane! movies attest, the Krishnas were recognizable enough to be punch lines for the broadest imaginable farce. It's easy to see why. They love music and love to sing. They have an immediately recognizable look, a well-known chanting shtick and a complete absence of shame. They are the Elvis impersonators of spirituality.

Hare Krishna began in New York in 1965 when Srila Prabhupada established the first Krishna temple in a Lower East Side storefront. Struggling for a platform to launch his nascent religious movement, Prabhupada made recordings of his Krishna chanting and sold them. In 1969, the two now-dead Beatles got involved.

Soon thereafter, Krishna devotees were featured prominently in John and Yoko's bed-in for peace, and George incorporated the Krishna chant into "My Sweet Lord." John dropped his Krishna baggage before the Goldman years set in, but George kept with it for much of the rest of his life. In a 1982 interview widely disseminated on a Krishna website, the quiet Beatle extolled the virtues of the Krishna faith, and ascribed surviving a near-plane crash to his belief. According to the Times of India, many devotees were surprised and hurt because of Harrison's death?and not just because they lost their most famous adherent. Harrison's will was rumored to grant ISKCON $30 million, but instead placed the entirety of the $150 million estate in the hands of Harrison's wife and children.

Many early punk rockers viewed the Beatles as enemies. Johnny Rotten went on the broken record as hating them, and the Clash derided "phony Beatlemania" in "London Calling." Early-80s hardcore band the Meatmen celebrated John Lennon's assassination with the short burst of "One Down, Three to Go." Yet, less than a decade later, a sizeable punk rock faction adopted the Fab Four's favorite faith.

Despite their limited output, the Krishna-inflected Cro-Mags are one of the most important New York punk bands to come after the Ramones. Combining the sludge and crunch of thrash metal with the urgency, speed and ethos of punk, the Cro-Mags' legendary "Age of Quarrel" set the template for NYC hardcore. Their lead singer and chief lyricist, John Joseph, had come into the Krishna faith before the album's recording, and he incorporated his faith into the band's musical assault. Creative differences (over heroin, the Hare Krishna faith and the guitar player's alerting the authorities to Joseph's AWOL army status) broke up the band. In their wake rose a micro-genre: Krishna Core.

A Minor Threat-influenced straight-edge band from suburban Connecticut called Youth of Today morphed into Shelter. Whereas the Cro-Mags hid their Krishna content in the subtext of their songs, Shelter was overt in their allegiance to Krishna consciousness. Offering crowd-pleasing, anthemic popcore, Shelter stated its beliefs clearly and asked that the audience sing along. A 1995 SPIN magazine article charted the moment when the movement more or less peaked. Krishna-rock also-rans 108 and Prema received attention outside of whatever three-county metro area they called home, while Maximumrocknroll wrote a scathing editorial. Then, somehow, life went on.

The hardcore kids attracted to the Krishna movement by the urgency and popularity of mid-90s Krishna have by now either left the movement or developed a relationship with Krishna not involving the propulsion of punk rock. Especially in the shadow of the abuse scandal, it seems natural to assume that the Krishna membership would stagnate, or level off at a median age of 30?at the lowest. Where do these kids between the ages of 18 and 24 with shaved heads and ponytails come from? How can an organization as patently goofy and now as tainted with scandal as the Hare Krishnas hold such sway over MTV's sweetest demographic?

Pyari, a 44-year-old Krishna priest whose temple broke ties with ISCKON in the 80s, thinks that young people have always been the cornerstone of the Krishna movement. "Once you're old, you're too set in your ways to change," he says.

One Krishna in his early twenties forces back an impious grin as he tells me about sleeping in a van across the street from the Krishnas' Brooklyn compound. They wear the institutionalized poverty of the organization like a badge of honor. It is a pride in senseless self-deprivation familiar to anyone who has spent a summer following Phish, never knowing where the next shower and organic cheese-and-bean burrito were coming from. This smirking Krishna, like those overfed crunchy thrill-seekers, thinks he's lucked onto the world's cheapest ticket to tranquility.

There are at least 91 people who'd disagree with that conclusion.