Russian Religious Rows and Incendiary India

By Akshat Goel, courtesy of the University of Chicago Undergraduate Law Review

The religiosity of Indian politics makes me uncomfortable. Governmental meddling in issues of law makes me even more uncomfortable. The Indian government meddling in another country’s legal process and using dubious methods of diplomatic strong-arming makes me most uncomfortable of all. Combining these three things results in a bonanza of extreme discomfort for yours truly.

How, you may very well ask, does a government manage to mess up this badly? It must be impossible for an administration to systematically do discomfiting things with such startling regularity, right?

‘Right,’ I can see all of you nodding, probably thinking that if you nod hard enough, the inevitable rant might be postponed. I wish it were so.

Really, I do. But the real answer to the question is wrong, so very wrong.

Our story begins in June 2011 in the Russian city of Tomsk. The state prosecutor’s office initiated a proceeding against ‘The Bhagavad Gita As It Is’ for being ‘extremist literature.’ Russian law includes a list of certain such texts, whose reproduction and distribution, for fear of the social discord they might produce, are banned. On this list are other books which, the author would presume, make for not-so-pleasant reading. Such luminaries as Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ reside on the list.

The prosecutor’s case was centered on the assessment of three ‘experts’ from Tomsk State University. Observers speculated that the influence of the local Russian Orthodox Church had also played a hand in initiating the case. The judge — smart cookie that she was —found the assessment inadequate. The court subsequently ordered another assessment be conducted from another state university and postponed the final verdict till December 28th, 2011.

I’m only skimming the surface of the details, not because they do not deserve attention, but because the focus of this article is the Indian parliament’s, in my opinion, rather obscene reaction to the whole business.

On December 19th, 2011, the leader of a right wing party brought the issue up in parliament. Bhartruhari Mahtab, the parliamentarian in question, demanded to know “what the Indian government was doing to protect the religious rights of Hindus in Russia.”

Note the language here: not the religious rights of Indians, but the religious rights of Hindus. Angry members of parliament, across party lines, screamed such statements as ‘we will not tolerate an insult to Lord Krishna!’

Tad overdone, the whole thing, if you ask me. A particularly bright chap in the Rajya Sabha even let loose another beautiful example of characteristically mistimed Indian political rhetoric about the December 19th session of the House, ‘A golden day in our history when all differences were deleted to express solidarity for Gita, the book of India.’

Hold on a sec, right there, my man. The book of India. It may be a lot of things, but the book of India, it is not.

The next day, Sushma Swaraj, the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, asked that the Gita be declared India’s national book. Nothing interesting to the outside observer, but, this statement comes  from a prominent member of a Hindu right wing party. On December 21st, however, the situation escalated. The BJP sent a delegation to the Russian embassy to talk to the Russian consul, demanding that the Russian government ‘take suitable measures’ to dismiss the court case immediately as baseless. Jolly, the unfortunately named leader of said delegation, expressed high handed surprise that, given ‘how important Indo-Russian relations [were], that the Russian government had allowed the court case to go on so long.’

The government of India had a more muted, though no less forgivable, reaction. They sent over the ambassador to Moscow to the Kremlin to have a word with the powers that be, and more diplomatic wrangling was tried there. I understand that the parliament was putting enormous pressure on the ruling UPA coalition in the house, but show some hubris!

As far as I’m concerned, you cannot, cannot, absolutely cannot interfere with due process in another country. End of story. I don’t see anybody telling Indians what to censor and what not to censor. Coming from the country that banned ‘The Satanic Verses’ and ‘Lajja’ and alienated M.F Hussain, that is mighty arrogant, and I feel ashamed.