by Madhava Smullen
An app for Android smartphones, entitled “Krsna – The Sweet Lord,” is now available on the Google Play Store for free and promises to place the best of what ISKCON has to offer in the palm of your hand.
The app, developed by ISKCON Juhu of Mumbai, received a soft launch for an internal devotee audience on December 14th, when it was unveiled by Radhanath Swami at Mumbai’s Chowpatty temple.
Bollywood actress and Mathura MP Hema Malini then launched it for the general public on February 7th, during the Mumbai ISKCON 50 celebrations, with the aid of a life-size smartphone imprinted with the app’s name.
“Our ISKCON Juhu Facebook page has 3.8 million followers, with around 1.5 million – many of them young people — engaging weekly and liking our darshan photos of Sri Sri Radha Rasabihari,” says Communications Coordinator Parijata Dasi. “So we realized that people are really looking for Krishna, and we wanted to give them more.”
The Krsna app has a variety of different sections to explore. The darshan section features daily photographs of beautiful Deities in ISKCON temples around the world, including Vrindavana, Mayapur, London, Sydney, Chicago, New York, and New Vrindaban. Each photo is shareable and downloadable, while users can “offer” an animated lotus flower to their favorite Deity photo in place of Facebook’s “like” button.
