By Satyaraja DasaOur tale goes back to one of the first Indian benefactors of the Hare Krishna movement in America, Sajjan Singh Sarna (1897–1978), who is more or less unknown to most devotees. He ran a major Indian handicraft/importing business called “Bells of Sarna.” Its first warehouse was founded in New York, just as a fledgling ISKCON was gaining steam. Sarna, originally from Rawalpindi, a city in the Pothohar region of Pakistan, was a Sikh from the Punjab who had come to America in 1920. He was eager to learn about Western culture and was surprised by the country’s fascination with India and her spiritual riches. Western interest in the holy land, in fact, had increased with the first major wave of immigrants from India in the first decade of the twentieth century.
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