This study reads the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) not as “mere spirituality” but as a relatively autonomous Ideological State Apparatus whose Indian career after liberalization is a textbook case of Gramscian trasformismo: a 1960s–70s counter-cultural mission, founded in New York in 1966 by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda on Gauḍīya personalism and initiation without birth-caste, absorbed into the bloc of concentrated capital, competitive religious patronage, and majoritarian cultural weather. Weber’s routinization of charisma explains the unfinished succession of 1977–78—the 9 July ṛtvik letter converted into eleven zonal ācāryas—and the harvest of that office: New Vrindaban’s RICO commune and two murders; a gurukula system that isolated minors under a theology of surrender, producing the 2000 Dallas suit, Chapter 11, and a $9.5 million settlement for 535 claimants, while Lokanātha and other cases show reputation still outranking the child. Three evidentiary drawers hold the CIA question: documented Agency use of clergy; documented Indian and Soviet naming (Parliament, Blitz 1976, Nedelya 1983 / Times 31 July, Andropov); no released operational file that the Agency ran the GBC—voluntas celandi, not a closed cryptonym. In India the same prestige consecrates Piramal Vaikunth and Ambani rooms; takes TMC ceiling-waiver and highway at Mayapur and BJP–RSS blessing (Modi at Kharghar 2025, Shah at Mayapur 2026, Suvendu’s gau-pūjā, Bhagwat at Second Avenue); stages Ayodhya 2024 as Communications policy while staying silent on gau-rakṣā lynching and communal violence; and locks Bhaktivinoda’s nineteenth-century Mayapur map against Navadvīpa’s older hagiographic name (Das 2023), a claim a 2025 film authenticates and a planetarium concretizes. Bangalore v. Mumbai (SC 16 May 2025) proves “ISKCON” is not one legal person. The founding vision did not entail the gate. The unfinished office, plus a republic that buys sacred cover, did. Devotees may keep the Name; the institution cannot keep the alibi.