RUSSIAN COURT REFUSED TO BAN BH AGAVAD GITA

RUSSIAN COURT REFUSED TO BAN

BH AGAVAD GITA

A court in Tomsk has turned down a petition that asked for a ban on a translated version of Bhagavad Gita.The petition was originally filed in June in Siberia and has created a diplomatic stress point for India and Russia.India's External Affairs Minister S M Krishna met the Russian Ambassador Alexander Kadakin earlier this week to discuss the matter.Prosecutors in the Siberian city of Tomsk have argued that the Russian translation of "Bhagavad Gita As It Is" promotes "social discord" and hatred towards non-believers. The text is a combination of the Bhagavad Gita, one of Hinduism's holiest scriptures, and commentary by A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) that is often called the Hare Krishna movement.The prosecutors had asked  the court to include the book on the Federal List of Extremist  Materials, which bans more than 1,000 texts including Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kempf" and books distributed by the Jehovah's Witness and Scientology movements.Yuri Pleshkov, a spokesman for ISKCON in Russia, said the book in question has existed in Russia for 25 years and has never inspired violence or extremist activity."On the contrary, this book teaches humane attitude towards all living beings," Pleshkov said.The trial follows this year's ban on the construction of a Hare Krishna village in Tomsk and is based on an assessment by professors at Tomsk University, who concluded that "Bhagavad Gita As It Is" includes strong language against non-believers and promotes religious hatred and discrimination on the basis of gender, race, nationality and language.

                                                                                        Prof. John Kurakar