Bhagavad Gita As It Is trial in Russia

The scholars appealed to President Dmitry Medvedev and Premier Vladimir Putin for intervention and warned them of the trial's negative consequences for India-Russia relations and for Russia's international reputation.

[13] Its authors, three professors of Tomsk State University, Sergei Avanesov, Valery Svistunov, and Valery Naumov, concluded that Bhaktivedanta Swami's commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita contain "signs of fomenting religious hatred, denigration of human dignity on grounds of gender, race, nationality, language, origins, and religious conviction",[6][14] claim exclusiveness of the Krishna religion,[5][14] use derogatory terms against those who were not devotees of Krishna,[5][14] and foster "social discord", "gender, race, nationality, and language" discrimination.

[5][6] The judge consequently postponed the next hearing until December 2011, as the prosecution requested a new assessment of the book by a panel of three professors of Kemerovo State University, including linguist Michael Osadchy, psychologist Sergei Dranishnikov, and religious studies expert Alexei Gorbatov.

[30][36] On 21 February 2012, at a press conference at the Interfax office in Tomsk, anti-cult activist Alexander Dvorkin stated that the "manifesto book of the Krishna Consciousness Society, Bhagavad Gita As It Is, is not immediately related to the original, being a free and not quite skilled translation.

[47] This display of political unity surprised the media and prompted a Rajya Sabha member to call the 19 December parliamentary session "a golden day in our history when all differences were deleted to express solidarity for Gita, the book of India".

[52][54] Following the Parliament's demand for a report from the External Affairs Ministry on the issue, Foreign Minister S. M. Krishna said that ISKCON had been advised to take legal recourse and put the controversy in the light of Russia-India relations.

[58] On 19 December, dozens of ISKCON followers organized a rally in front of the Russian Consulate in Kolkata, holding up copies of the Bhagavad Gita As It Is in various languages and demanding to stop persecution of their most important scripture.

[59] On 21 December, a highly respected Islamic seminary Darul Uloom Deoband issued a statement signed by its vice-chancellor Abul Qasim Nomani in defense of the Bhagavad Gita, in which he condemned "Russian diktat against the Hindu holy scripture".

[61] On 22 December 2011, Isai Mahasangh organization representing Christians in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh addressed the President of India Pratibha Patil and the Pope Benedict XVI, asking for their intervention in the Bhagavad Gita trial.

VHP General Secretary Pravin Togadia said in a statement that the Bhagavad Gita is held sacred by all Hindus and that its principles have universal appeal and "touch humanity so very deeply", citing Albert Einstein's fascination with the book as an example.

[65] On 23 December, dozens of activists of Rashtrawadi Sena, a hardline Hindu group, burned a Russian flag and shouted anti-Russian slogans during a protest march in New Delhi over the proposed ban.

[citation needed] In a similar move, a Jammu unit of Sri Ram Sena appealed to Indian and Russian authorities to forestall the impending Gita ban "for the betterment of Indo-Russia relations".

[67] Sanal Edamaruku, the president of the Indian Rationalist Association, opposed the ban calling for the right to read any literature under the freedom of expression, even if he considered the book to be promoting the caste system.

[63] Janata Dal party leader Subramanian Swamy wrote on Twitter: "Happy to inform that Russian Ambassador will tell my daughter on TV that he is a student of Gita and Russia will rectify matters soon.

[71] A vocal anti-fundamentalist Ram Puniyani of the EKTA Committee for Communal Amity called the move to ban the Bhagavad Gita translation "irrational",[71] suggesting that possible questionable passages should be analyzed and debated, but they do not warrant the legal action.

[71] Ram Madhav, national executive member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh termed the attempted ban "a shameful act" planned by some "fundamentalist groups in Russia" to portray the Bhagavad Gita as a "terror manual".

He also opined that, while Prabhupada supplemented his version of the Bhagavad Gita with his own ideas and beliefs, his followers "have the same right for the freedom of conscience as believers of other religious confessions that observe the laws of the Russian Federation".

Vanina also argued that charges of extremism against Prabhupada's "copious" commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita are fallacious and based on a "primitive" screening of the religious text for negative words (such as "fool," "enemy," "demon", "kill").

[6] Historian and full professor of the Diplomatic Academy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia Andrey Volodin opined that the move to ban the Gita was "contrary to the basic principle of tolerance inherent in Russian civilisation".

[76] [77] [78] and commended the Indian Parliament and government for their resolute stance on the Bhagavad Gita trial in Russia, opining that both countries nations, being secular, democratic, and multi-confessional, "should not allow such things to happen".

[76] He assured that the Russian government is using all means to end the Bhagavad Gita scandal and added that he thought it "categorically inadmissible" to take any sacred scriptures "for examination to ignorant people" to the courts rather than to academic forums.

The Tomsk court case is about classifying as extremist material the Russian-language edition of 'Bhagavad Gita As It Is', written in 1968 by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

Shukla added that, "[b]y promoting a narrow and intolerant agenda that demonizes a sacred scripture revered by more than one billion Hindus worldwide, Russian officials are acting contrary to the principles of a free democratic society".

[86] Another protest was expressed by a Nepali Shreemadbhagawat Publicity Service Association (SPSA), which emphasized that rather than being extremist, the Gita "guides one for the self-discipline and responsibility to human duties" and informed of plans to hold rallies against the potential ban.

[89] Philosopher Tatyana Lyubimova, chief researcher of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that most ancient scriptures, including the Bhagavad Gita, were revised or adapted over the years so that modern people could better understand them.

[35] They emphasized that, contrary to the prosecutor's accusations, the Bhagavad Gita As It Is was considered sacred by a section of Hindu followers as belonging to the commentary tradition of Bengali Vaishnavism, "one of the most popular branches of Hinduism",[35] and "did not contain any signs of extremism and did not incite hatred on ethnic, religious or any other grounds".

[35] Maxim Osipov, a representative of ISKCON's Governing Body Commission, said that the commentary to Bhagavad Gita As It Is is "a precise and clear reflection" on the religious tradition taught by Prabhupada, the founder-acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

This demonstrates yet again that the people of India and Russia have a deep understanding of each other’s cultures and will always reject any attempt to belittle our common civilizational values", said Indian foreign ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash.

He also called Krishna devotees in Russia marginal pseudo-Hindu cult members with "extremely nasty reputation" and condemned their charitable food distribution programs saying it was unacceptable for Orthodox, Muslim, Jews and Buddhist believers.

Mufti Muhammedgali Huzin, head of All-Russian Muslim Board executive committee, said, "I believe that Russian authorities should be principally tough in the question and shouldn't give way to any provocations and pressure.