Recognised as a "profound thinker" and "learned representative of the theistic conception of Gaudiya Vaishnavism",[1] Sridhar was a senior disciple of Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati and elder "godbrother" (i.e. received initiation from the same guru) to A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada,[2][3] founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (the ‘Hare Krishnas’), to whose young disciples he provided spiritual guidance after Prabhupada's passing in 1977.[promotion?]

Born Ramendra Chandra (Rāmendra Candra) into a family of a high-class Bengali brahmins (his family bore the aristocratic title, or upādhi, of Bhattacharya), Sridhar joined his guru's mission, the Gaudiya Math, in 1926, taking diksha initiation from Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati as Ramendra Sundara (Rāmendra Sundara).

[citation needed] In 1941, after the death of his guru, Sridhar founded his own international mission, becoming acharya of the monastic and missionary society "Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math," in Nabadwip, now in West Bengal.

"[10] After Prabhupada's death in 1977, Sridhar Maharaja gave instruction to Prabhupada's disciples,[11] with Americans Bhaktivedanta Tripurari[10] and Jayatirtha Swami and Hungarian devotee Dvarakesa Swami (Bhakti Abhay Narayan)[12] among the prominent ex-ISKCON members to take shiksha or sannyasa initiation from Sridhar.

He had previously asked Sridhar to be president of the new institution he planned to set up following the disintegration of the original Gaudiya Math.