The Bhagavad Gita, one of the holiest Hindu scriptures, is facing a legal ban and the prospect of being branded as “extremist” literature across Russia. A court in Siberia’s Tomsk city is set to deliver its final verdict Monday in a case filed by state prosecutors.
The final pronouncement in the case will come two days after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, during his December 15-17 official visit for a bilateral summit with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, consolidated bilateral trade and strategic ties and personal friendship.
The case, which has been going on in the Tomsk court, seeks a ban on a Russian translation of Bhagavad Gita As It Is, written by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Iskcon). It also wants the Hindu religious text banned in Russia, declared as a literature spreading “social discord”, and its distribution on Russian soil rendered illegal.
In view of the case, Indians settled in Moscow, numbering about 15,000, and followers of the Iskcon religious movement here have appealed to Dr Singh and his government to intervene diplomatically to resolve the issue in favour of the scripture, an important part of the Indian epic Mahabharata, written by sage Ved Vyas. Iskcon followers in Russia have also written a letter to the Prime Minister’s Office in New Delhi calling for immediate intervention lest the religious freedom of Hindus living here be compromised.
“The case is coming up for a final verdict on Monday in Tomsk court. We want all efforts from the Indian government to protect the religious rights of Hindus in Russia,” Sadhu Priya Das of Iskcon and a devotee of a 40-year-old Krishna temple in central Moscow, said. The court, which took up the case filed by the state prosecutors, had referred the holy book to the Tomsk State University for “an expert” examination.
But Hindu groups in Russia, particularly Iskcon, say the university was not qualified as it lacked Indologists who study the history and cultures, languages and literature of the Indian subcontinent. The Hindus pleaded with the court that the case was inspired by religious bias and intolerance from a “majority religious gro-up in Russia”. — IANS