In response to an earlier comment.....

This morning we again went to the mandir. This time we prayed to the Sun God, Surya. It was the ending of a three nights reading of Hari Katha. Actually the specific text that the older pundits use is the Ramayana since it was the text that our ancestors referred to. So we worship Lord Vishnu in the form of L. Raama more often than Lord Krsna.
When i mentioned the ISKCON, I was referring to how available texts on Hinduism became to the common man. Before that, the texts were in Hindi and there were precious few who had been taught Hindi, far less for Sanskrit by their parents and grandparents. Our main text, the Ramcharitmanasa, was originally written in Hindi by Tulsidas. For my parents, their only language was English (when their grandparents spoke in hindi to them, the answered in english) and there were not many english copies of texts available to them until the 1970s with the growth of these movements. Although there are some followers of the Hare Krsna sect in Trinidad, many Hindus stuck to their traditional Hinduism while incorporating the teachings of Swami Vivekananda and Swami Sivananda, Ramakrishna Paramahansa and also Paramahansa Yogananda.
For me, to leave mainstream Hinduism to follow another sect that is taking the teachings of Hinduism makes no sense. Everytime someone tried creating a new, corrupt-free form of worship, it never worked...something always went wrong along the way so therefore, i would stick it out with Hinduism. Nothing created by man is perfect and I would much rather follow the direct sayings of Krsna rather than someone else's interpretation of what he said. In that way, the interpretation becomes my very own interpretation.
And yes, the greatest gift of a human birth is the gift of free will.........