Russian court refuses to ban Gita- says reports

Moscow:  Press Trust of India says that 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 SM 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 toward 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.
The trial began in June and was scheduled to conclude on December 19, just after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's two-day visit to Russia. That day protesters gathered outside the Russian consulate in Kolkata, and the speaker of the Lok Sabha adjourned the House for several hours after members began shouting in anger over the proposed ban.
Indian officials last week appealed to high-level Russian authorities to intervene. The Bhagavad Gita "is not merely a religious text, but one of the defining treatises of Indian thought," said Indian Ambassador to Russia Ajai Malhotra in a statement. "The Bhagavad Gita has circulated freely across the world for centuries and there is not a single instance of it having encouraged extremism."
The Foreign Ministry insisted that the Tomsk court was concerned not with the Gita but with the author's commentary and poor translation in "Bhagavad Gita As It Is."
"I would like to emphasize that this is not about 'Bhagavad Gita,' a religious philosophical poem, which forms part of the great Indian epic Mahabharata and is one of the most famous pieces of the ancient Hindu literature," ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said at a briefing in Moscow on Thursday, adding that the book was first published in Russian in 1788.
Still, followers of the Hare Krishna movement in Russia see the proposed ban as a result of continued intolerance of minority religions by the Russian Orthodox Church. Pleshkov estimates there are at least 150,000 Hare Krishna devotees in Russia.
"The current problem is, above all, the misuse of the law on combating extremism," Pleshkov said. "It is used to search for enemies where they cannot even be defined."
In 2005 a Russian Orthodox archbishop asked the mayor of Moscow to ban the construction of a proposed Hare Krishna temple, calling the Hindu deity Krishna "an evil demon, the personified power of hell opposing God," according to Interfax. The temple was later allowed in a Moscow suburb.

Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/russian-court-refuses-to-ban-gita-report-161516&cp

Read More

‘As It Is’ Focus of Bhagavad Gita Trial

New York Times:- The Bhagavad Gita was first translated into Russian in 1788, but if a court in the Siberian city of Tomsk rules against it this week, one version of the ancient Hindu text will be added to Russia’s 1,057-item list of banned material deemed extremist.

Prosecutors in Tomsk say a 1968 edition of the book, “The Bhagavad Gita As It Is,” which includes commentary by the founder of the Hare Krishna movement, is hostile toward other religious groups and contains extremist language. The case has caused outrage in India and has put the Russian government on the defensive.
In the face of mounting outrage from India, Alexander Lukashevich, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, tried to clarify the situation late last week. The case focuses not on the Bhagavad Gita text, but on the specific commentaries in the Hare Krishna version by the movement’s founder, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Mr. Lukashevich said in a statement released on Thursday.

“This is not about the book per se, but about the unsuccessful translation and the preface written by the author,” he said.

The case relies on testimony from several university professors who read the text for an audit by Russia’s Federal Security Service.  According to a report in the Moscow Times, while the experts have said the book expresses religious hatred, one university dean included in the audit also said it “depends on perception” and another professor said the text is not “extremist,” but polemical.

The defendants, the Tomsk chapter of the “Russian Society of Krishna Consciousness,” say the potentially offensive quotes were taken out of context. On Monday, the national organization released a statement on a Russian Web site, “World Religions,” claiming that quotes under scrutiny, like one calling it a sacred duty to fight, “even if you have to fight with friends,” were taken out of context.

One of the quotes in question comes from Chapter 2: “Contents of the Gita Summarized,” from Text 15. It states (in the English translation):

“But one who is serious about making his life perfect surely adopts the sannyasa order of life in spite of all difficulties. The difficulties usually arise from having to sever family relationships, to give up the connection of wife and children. But if anyone is able to tolerate such difficulties, surely his path to spiritual realization is complete. Similarly, in Arjuna’s discharge of duties as a ksatriya, he is advised to persevere, even if it is difficult to fight with his family members or similarly beloved persons.”

The preface of Bhagavad Gita: “As It Is” was written in 1971 and contains, among other things, Swami Prabhupada’s reasons for writing the translation (he felt other English translations were “introduced to fulfill someone’s personal ambition”) and advice on following Lord Krishna, including:

“Lord Krsna first spoke Bhagavad-gita to the sun-god some hundreds of millions of years ago. We have to accept this fact and thus understand the historical significance of Bhagavad-gita, without misinterpretation, on the authority of Krsna.”

and,

“Generally the so-called scholars, politicians, philosophers, and svamis, without perfect knowledge of Krsna, try to banish or kill Krsna when writing commentary on Bhagavad-gita. Such unauthorized commentary upon Bhagavad-gita is known as Mayavadi-bhasya, and Lord Caitanya has warned us about these unauthorized men.”

The Tomsk Hare Krisha group disputes the contention that the trial is directed not at the Baghavad Gita, but against the Krishna version, noting that texts labeled as extremist include quotes from the original book, as well as commentary by Swami Prabhupada.

The organization, which has grown in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, has battled charges of extremism before. For almost a decade, the Moscow branch struggled to gain permission to build a new temple, facing opposition from some members of the Russian Orthodox Church. In 2010, the city’s new mayor gave the movement permission to build on a five-acre plot of land near Moscow’s largest airport.

In an interview last week on Indian television, Russia’s ambassador to India, Alexander Kadakin, harshly criticized the complainants, calling them “madmen.”

“It is not the Russian government that started the case,” he told IBN TV. “These are some petty people in a far away, though very beautiful, city of Tomsk who did it. The government has nothing to apologize for. The government can only testify and reiterate the love and affection and highest esteem our nation has for Bhagavad Gita.”

Read More

Infosys Founder Lauds Akshaya Patra’s Efforts at Benefit

At the Akshaya Patra Foundation Food for Education benefit event.

Infosys Limited founder and chairman emeritus Narayana Murthy, the guest of honor at the Nov. 13 annual Akshaya Patra Foundation Food for Education benefit event here, spoke of his personal experience with hunger and how it turned him from a confused socialist into a determined compassionate capitalist.
The Akshaya Patra’s meal program, he said, “is not only a great example of a private-government partnership but also that of compassionate capitalism,” according to a press release.
Speaking to over 300 guests, Murthy pointed out that over 350 million people in India live below the poverty line, 250 million do not have access to clean drinking water and over 26 million children are not able to go to school because they have to work to help their families get minimum sustenance.
“Only a gentle but persistent social entrepreneurship such as Akshaya Patra can bring out a huge change across India and make the country ‘safe’ unlike other nations witnessing catastrophic upheavals,” he said.
Inspired by Murthy’s words and compelled by presentations from board chairman Dr. Desh Deshpande and president and CEO Madhu Sridhar, the audience at the event here responded by donating $291,000 to further the mission of the NGO to expand its program.
Akshaya Patra, the largest NGO-run mid-day school meal program in the world, leverages technology to deliver freshly prepared nutritious meals to 1.3 million underprivileged children in over 9,000 schools across India through 19 kitchens. The vision of the organization is that no child in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger.
Deshpande told the gathering of some of the new initiatives that Akshaya Patra is implementing, including route simulation software developed to optimize the driving routes with the help of the students and faculty from the Indian Institute of Management–Bangalore.
A pilot run of this tool has helped reduce the number of routes in the Bangalore south kitchen by ten percent. A vehicle tracking system is also being used to manage the fleet better.
It costs Akshaya Patra, a public-private partnership, only $15 to feed a child all through the school year because the government subsidizes the program. Akshaya Patra’s next milestone is to serve five million children daily by 2020.
In closing remarks, Murthy stated, “Life is worth living for all of us thanks to your extraordinary contribution to this cause. What Akshaya Patra is doing in India is nothing but short of a revolution."
The primary focus of the benefit event was to raise awareness and funds for Akshaya Patra and its program for fighting hunger and promoting education simultaneously.
“We are touched by the generous support of the community to help build this program of highest relevance for the bottom of the pyramid. Akshaya Patra is an inspiring movement that is bringing smiles of hope to the deserving children in India with support of NRIs,” Akshaya Patra USA CEO Sridhar declared.
Navneet Chugh, Sonal S. Ladva and Anil Churiwal served as co-chairs of the event.

Read More

Indian minister steps into Gita row in Russia

Protest against Russia's ban on Bhagvad Gita in Kolkata on December 19, 2011

 India’s External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna met with Russian Ambassador to India Alexander Kadakin on Tuesday, a day before a Siberian court rules on whether to ban a Russian translation of the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita, Indian media reported.
Krishna told Kadakin that India is concerned over the “sensitive” issue of the Siberian court hearing and that the Russian government should provide all help to resolve the issue expeditiously.
The final hearing on whether to impose a ban on the Russian translation of “Bhagavad Gita As It Is,” written by founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, is scheduled for Wednesday in Tomsk district court. Prosecutors claim that the scripture promotes extremism.
After the meeting, the Russian Ambassador told reporters that the Russian government will do everything it can. “You understand that it is a court case but the Russian government can do one thing. It can ask people to express their love and admiration for the Gita. That (assurance) you can get from anyone in Russia,” The Times of India reported, quoting Kadakin.
Kadakin had denounced last week those seeking the ban on the Gita as “madmen”.
The trial has prompted a flurry of highly critical publications in the international media.

Read More

Gita ban in Russia by the court- protest march by ISKCON Bellary devotees

The conclusion of the petition was objecting such a ban of the great literature and suspecting bias in the minds of those who are saying that Bhagavad Gita As It Is creates social discord.
Bhagavad Gita, one of the holiest scriptures, is facing a legal ban and the prospect of being branded as "an extremist" literature across Russia. A court in Siberia's Tomsk city is set to deliver its final verdict in a case filed by state prosecutors.
ISKCON Bellary devotees organized a peaceful protest march rally along with samaj activists during the early morning hours on Dec 23, 2011, summing more than 500 people and concludedby handing in a petition by ISKCON Bellary President, Sriman Yudhistira Krishna Dasa to representatives of the Deputy Commissioner, which in turn shall be submitted to Her Excellency, Smt. Pratibha Patil, President of India by the respected Deputy Commissioner.
The petition contained contributions of the literature by HDG Srila Prabhupada since published: How it’s transformed hundreds and thousands of lives to a simple yet sublime living. Universities, in the western countries making the Holy book as one of the core subjects of their academics, which has been appreciated, lauded and praised by scholars across the globe. The petition also consisted how author cum Acharya HDG Srila Prabhupada has presented the message of Gita with utmost sensitivity and the ultimate message is to develop love of God and to respect all of the Lord’s creations through their own religious instructions. Personalities like MK Gandhi, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and many more professors, philosophers praising the literature composed by HDG Srila Prabhupada.
We request all of you to join your nearest ISKCON Center/ Hare Krishna Movement and protest along with the devotees against the ban of the Holy literature composed by our beloved Acharya His Divine Grace A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada.

Read More