Devotee Family Shares the Challenges and Joys of Spreading Bhakti in Beirut

The famous Cedars of Lebanon have been prized for thousands of years for their resiliency and strength.  Most famously, they were used in the building of ancient houses of worship (temples). Today, the modern republic of Lebanon,  bordered by the Mediterranean Sea and Syria, is home to nearly four million people, including a pioneering devotee family who moved there in 2010. Like the Cedars of Lebanon, their service to Krishna has shown great resilience and strength through many difficult circumstances.

Prema Dhana Das, Lebanese by birth, moved back to his homeland after living in Canada for several years to help with a family business. His wife, Tulasi Bhava Devi Dasi, born and raised in Montreal, joined him in the adventure. Both became devotees while in Canada and attended the ISKCON Temple in Montreal. 

“After arriving in Lebanon, by a ‘Krishna miracle,’ we met another devotee originally from Ukraine who was married to a Lebanese man, and we started having small kirtan programs together in our homes,” said Tulasi Bhava. Nearby, there was even a small Hindu Temple with altars to many deities and demigods, which they would sometimes visit to perform kirtan. One of the Indian worshippers soon joined them for kirtan regularly. Eventually, a Lebanese local became interested and introduced them to the Beirut yoga scene. “Through this connection, we slowly started having kirtans at various yoga events and even participated in Lebanon’s first-ever yoga festival in 2015,” said Prema Dhana. “It was from this yoga festival that we decided to start calling ourselves “Bhakti Beirut” and began our social media presence with Facebook.”  

Around this time, they shifted their focus toward the growing yoga scene, having weekly programs at various locations or at home. Their daughter Karuna was born in 2013 and from infancy, would be with them for all their kirtans. 

In 2016, Prema Dhana traveled to Mayapur, where he met with Govinda Swami, the GBC of Lebanon at that time. He invited Maharaj to Lebanon, and in September of that year, Govinda Swami arrived with a team of kirtaniyas. “We arranged various kirtan programs for him, and although the number of guests was certainly nothing compared to the crowds he was used to chanting for in other places, he appreciated the sincerity of the Lebanese people,” said Tulasi Bhava. Govinda Swami continued visiting Beirut twice a year. In 2018, he gave the devotee couple two instructions: open a center and organize a kirtan festival. With his generous support and kind blessings, they did both. In October 2018, Lebanon had its first even kirtan festival with about thirty attendees, and simultaneously, they opened a small center near Beirut.

“Where we had been a bit like traveling kirtan nomads before, now we had our own space. We started with a few yoga classes and weekly kirtan and Bhagavad Gita discussions. Our community was small, perhaps 5 -10 people usually, but we kept going,” said Prema Dhana.

Soon, a devotee from France visited them and connected the couple with the BBT, who wanted to start translating Prabhupada’s books into Arabic. “We didn’t have any professionals in our community or even scholarly Arabic-speaking devotees, but we made a small team of two people, including a Lebanese devotee, Mohini Radha devi dasi, and translation work began,” said Tulasi Bhava. So far, the Bhagavad Gita and four other small books have been published and are currently being distributed around the world. Their latest project – and biggest one so far – is the translation of one of Prabhupada’s most monumental works, the Srimad Bhagavatam.