Prosecutor General: Extremism contain only comments on Bhagavad-Gita

The Prosecutor General’s Office said that she was only for a ban on comments on the Russian-speaking version of the book “Bhagavat-Gita as it is”, and not for recognizing the extremist material of the ancient Hindu poem, Gazeta.ru reports. "It is important to separate the grains from the chaff, because in society this issue seems to be in such a way that the prosecutor’s office is generally opposed to the foundations of this religion. But this is not about that, but just about the fact that some points appeared in Russian, which either borders or are close to extremist manifestations, in connection with which the prosecutor’s office turned to the relevant authorities," the publication quotes the first Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Buksman, who commented on the initiative of the Tomsk prosecutor's office.

RIA Novosti cites the words of another deputy prosecutor Ivan Semchishin that "in fact, the prosecutor demanded that the canonical text of the Holy Scripture of the Hindus, but the Russian -speaking version of the commentary on this book, previously published in English, demanded as extremist. “For this reason, the prosecutor is forced to defend his requirements in the Court of Appeal today,” the agency quotes him.

The Tomsk prosecutor’s office went to court in June 2011 after checking the activities of the religious organization “Tomsk Society of Consciousness of Krishna”, which is engaged in the preaching of the Vaisnavian teachings, including in “Bhagavat-Gita as it is”. The examination of the poem was ordered by Tomsk State University. During the study, experts found that the creed described in the book contains signs of inciting religious hatred, humiliation of human dignity according to the grounds of gender, race, nationality, language, origin, attitude to religion.

At the end of last year, the Leninsky District Court of Tomsk refused to recognize the book extremist, in January the prosecutor's office filed an appeal.