Moscow: Russia has rejected as misplaced India’s complaints about the trial in the Siberian city of Tomsk against a translation of the Bhagavad Gita.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said it was not the Bhagavad Gita as such that was on trial but some comments contained in a 20th-century Russian translation of the scripture.
Russian prosecutors are seeking a court ban on the book, which they claim is extremist and insulting to non-believers.
“I would like to emphasise 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. In Russia, the book was first published in Russian in 1788 and then went through many editions in different years and in various translations,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich.
