Thaindian News

New Delhi, Dec 27 (IANS) A day before a Siberian court delivers its verdict on a petition seeking to ban the Bhagavad Gita, External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna Tuesday met the Russian envoy here and conveyed that Moscow should provide all help to resolve this sensitive issue.

Krishna called Russian ambassador to India Alexander Kadakin to Hyderabad House and conveyed the sensitivities involved in trying to ban the religious scripture, an issue which has outraged the sentiments of Indians here.

In his talks, Krishna underlined that the Russian government should provide all possible help to resolve the issue, said a well-placed source.

Kadakin told Krishna that although the case was sub-judice, the Russian government will do all it can within its powers.

“You understand that it is a court case but the Russian government can do one thing. It can ask the people to express our love and admiration for the Gita. That (assurance) you can get from anyone in Russia,” Kadakin told reporters after the talks.

“I am of the opinion that no religious scripture can be judged in a court,” the envoy said. He added that “no holy scripture, whether it is the Bible, Quran or Gita can be brought to a court.” The envoy stressed that he had himself read Gita and that any human being can have only one opinion on the scripture: that the Gita is a great scripture and it is a scripture of the world.

Last week, Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai had met the Russian envoy to convey India’s concerns on the issue.

A case was filed by the state prosecutors in Siberia’s Tomsk district in June this year for banning the Bhagavad Gita and branding it as “extremist”literature. The verdict was deferred last week as the court agreed to seek the opinion of the Russian Ombudsman on Human Rights in Tomsk Region and of Indologists from Moscow and St. Petersburg. The final hearing on the issue is scheduled Wednesday.