Russian court rules against Gita ban

A Russian court on Wednesday upheld a decision to permit the publication of the Bhagwad Gita, whose attempted ban sparked protests in India and threatened to strain Moscow’s ties with New Delhi.

A Russian court on Wednesday upheld a decision to permit the publication of the Bhagwad Gita, whose attempted ban sparked protests in India and threatened to strain Moscow’s ties with New Delhi.

A regional court in the Siberian region of Tomsk said in a statement it had decided “to leave unchanged” a December lower court ruling stating that the Bhagwad Gita did not contain extremist material.

Prosecutors had been trying to ban the text’s translation for months because it contained a prologue by Swami Prabhupada — founder of the Hare Krishna movement that has had repeated run-ins with the law in post-Soviet Russia.

“This is a completely just, reasonable and — most importantly — legitimate decision,” the movement’s court representative Alexander Shakhov was quoted as saying by the Vesti news channel.

Indian Ambassador Ajai Malhotra said: “I trust this issue is now conclusively behind us.”