Who is Amogh Lila Das, monk ISKCON banned for a month?

ISKCON ‘Monk’ Amogh Lila outrageously Insults two of Bengal’s biggest Hindu spiritual Monk Swami Vivekananda & Ramakrishna Parmahansa & feels everything about them is wrong . pic.twitter.com/H7j5kLRpp0

— সত্যান্বেষী (@satyanewshi) July 10, 2023

Who is Amogh Lila Das?

Born Ashish Arora in Lucknow, Das completed his B. Tech in computer science from the Delhi College of Engineering, now the Delhi Technological University, and joined a US-based multinational company in 2004. He rose to the position of project manager before quitting in 2010, at the age of 29, to fully immerse himself in the Hare Krishna movement.

Today, Amogh, 43, is one of the popular faces of ISKCON and holds the position of the vice-president at ISKCON Dwarka. His twitter profile says that he is a “youth counselor” and “corporate advisor”.

However, apart from being one of the prominent faces of ISKCON, Das is also among the new wave of spiritual personalities, who found fame through social media. His Youtube channel, ‘Reviving Values’, has 1.43 lakh subscribers and has received nearly 1.3 crore views since he started it in 2018.

Das mainly communicates in Hindi, while regularly adding English words and phrases in his videos – mostly terms that are easily understood by his audience.

Das claims to have felt a deep spiritual calling very early in his life. On his YouTube channel, he speaks on various issues, mostly of religious nature. From discussing the “morality” of live-in relationships to talking about the need for the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, Amogh seldom misses an opportunity to touch on hot button issues.

For example, he made a video dissecting the recently-released movie, Adipurush, that garnered 24 lakh views on YouTube. In the video, Das criticizes the movie, saying that “if you mess with our epics, get ready for trolling, heavy-duty trolling”.

Das is a self-proclaimed “motivational strategist” and Indian lifestyle coach”. He is a spiritual guru of the TikTok age, with snippets of his lectures gaining immense popularity on Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and other short-form media sharing platforms. For example, one of his videos that went viral was a 15-second clip in which he criticises people for marrying late, blaming the unrealistic standards they set.