Jon Chapple's work on Sri Krishna Prem (1898-1965) brings light to a little-known spiritual giant
of the 20th century. Ronald Nixon left his native England for India after traumatic service as a fighter
pilot in World War I. After serving as a professor of English at Lucknow and Banaras Hindu Universities,
he established the still-active Mirtola Ashram with his guru Monica Chakrabarti (Sri Yashoda Mai) in
the Himalayas. This remarkable biography reads like Gurdieff's Meetings with Remarkable Men. Krishna
Prem met with Sri Aurobindo, Ramana Maharshi, and Timothy Leary. His interests in India began
through his study of Buddhism with Christmas Humphreys, founder of the London Buddhist Society,
and with the Theosophists. In Lucknow he embraced the Vaisnava faith without losing sight of insights
from other traditions. This book traces his spiritual path in the context of key historical moments that
shaped the 20th century, including the end of colonialism in India and the rise of the counter-cultural
and cross-cultural movements, making for compelling, edifying reading.
By truly evoking the life and path of a seeker in technicolor, this book rivals the groundbreaking
work of Romain Rolland on Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, and perhaps even Isherwood on Swami
Prabhavananda. Filled with anecdote and insight, it is a must-read for all persons interested in India's
spiritual past and present.
-Christopher Key Chapple, Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology at Loy-
ola Marymount University (He is not related to the author.)
Most residents of Western countries have by now encountered the orthodox form of Gaudiya
Vaishnavism [in the form of] the Krishna Movement. Few, however, have heard the remarkable story
of an earlier convert, the Englishman Ronald Nixon, known as Krishna Prem.
Unlike the [1960s] countercultural context that featured the breaking of norms and welcomed
Eastern spirituality, Nixon's conversion took place in colonial India itself, where Western norms are
upheld even more rigorously than in the homeland. Coloniality in general must resist too much 'frat-
ernizing with the natives,' lest sympathies be diverted from English interests. So one can only imagine
how shocking the spectacle of a World War I veteran and university professor's complete adoption
of a Gaudiya lifestyle and worldview would have been in most British social circles. And this is not
a conversion into one of the modern, intellectualized faces of Hinduism which could find Western
interlocutors; Nixon's was a complete submersion into the ... emotionally extravagant world of Kr-
ishna and his gopī lovers. Indeed, characterizations of Bengali Krishna devotionalism had a long and
frowned-upon history in British representations of Hindu licentiousness and theological perversion.
After years of painstaking research, Jon Chapple's masterful narrative of Nixon's spiritual odyssey
makes for fascinating reading. The very fact that his guru was a female renunciate from a noble
family is unconventional even within pre-modern Gaudiya communities. It is the sort of captivating
and unexpected information one encounters in every chapter of this biography. Chapple has avoided
the tendency ... to veer towards hagiography; this is a historical document, even as it astonishes and
fascinates. The book is very well written, free of both academic jargon and the coinages of High Street
spiritualities, and so engrossing that one is hard-pressed not to read the entire account in one sitting.
Indeed, Sri Krishna Prem: A Wing and a Prayer is one of the best reads in this genre of East/West
spiritual biography.
-Edwin Bryant, Professor of Hindu Religion and Philosophy at Rutgers University
