India’s foreign minister condemned Tuesday a “patently absurd” court case in Russia seeking to ban a version of one of Hinduism’s most important and scared texts, the Bhagavad Gita. The case filed by state prosecutors in the Siberian city of Tomsk claims that a renowned translation of the text, titled “Bhagavad Gita As It Is” is “extremist literature” and should join Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf on a list of banned books.
Speaking in parliament, Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna said the lawsuit was the work of “ignorant and misdirected or motivated individuals” and an attack on a religious text that defines the “very soul of our great civilisation”. “While this complaint is patently absurd, we have treated this matter seriously,” Krishna said, adding that formal protests had been registered with senior government officials in Moscow.