So imagine this. It is June 2011. We are in Tomsk,
Siberia. Right. A university town known for its
wooden architecture. It's the kind of place that
usually stays out of the international spotlight.
Exactly. But inside a district courtroom, a local
prosecutor, Viktor Fyodorov, is filing a case
that is about to spiral into a geopolitical nightmare.
And he's not going after a terrorist cell or
an arms dealer. No. He is trying to ban a book.
And he wants this book placed on the Russian
federal list of extremist materials. And we have
to be clear about what that list means. It isn't
just a do not read recommendation. No, no. Being
on that list puts a book in the same legal category
as Mein Kampf. It becomes illegal to print, to
distribute. Even to possess. Yeah. It basically
erases the text from society. Right. So you'd
expect this book to be, I don't know, a manual
on how to build dirty bombs or some manifesto
calling for violent revolution. Of course. But
it wasn't. The book in the dock was Bhagavad
Gita as it is. A translation and commentary of
the ancient Hindu scripture, specifically the
one written in the 1960s by A .C. Bhaktivedanta
Swami Prabhupada. Which just sets up this incredibly...
bizarre picture. You have a text that is as sacred
to hundreds of millions, studied by people like
Einstein, Gandhi, Oppenheimer, and it's suddenly
being dissected by a municipal prosecutor in
Siberia who's arguing it ferments social discord.
So that's the mission of this deep dive. We were
looking at the trial of the Gita. It's a story
about what happens when modern sort of bureaucratic
anti -extremism laws collide with ancient spiritual
philosophy. And it involves confused experts,
a box of canned beef, which is a whole other
story. Oh, we have to get to that. And a diplomatic
crisis that nearly derailed the entire relationship
between India and Russia. It really is the ultimate
case study in context. The core question was,
you know, if you take agent metaphors literally
and script them of their history, do they become
crimes? And does a local court in Tomsk even
have the jurisdiction to judge a 5 ,000 -year
-old scripture? So let's dig into the prosecution's
argument. I was reading through the initial filing,
and Prosecutor Fu... Yudatoff wasn't just acting
on a whim. He was using a specific law, federal
law number 114 FC, on countering extremist activities.
And he had backup. He relied on an expert analysis
that was commissioned by the FSB, the Federal
Security Service. Right. And conducted by three
professors from Tomsk State University. And this
is where we need to look at the Russian context,
right? Because Russia has these incredibly strict
laws against extremism. They do. And it's largely
born out of very real fears of terrorism and
separatism. But there's also a cultural dimension.
I mean, since the fall of the Soviet Union, the
Russian Orthodox Church has really reasserted
itself as a kind of moral guardian. So there's
this suspicion of new or foreign religious movements?
A deep suspicion of what they sometimes call
totalitarian sex. So ISKCON, the International...
Society for Krishna Consciousness, was already
viewed with, well, a lot of skepticism by certain
authorities. But here's the thing that confused
me at first. The prosecutors, and later even
the Russian Foreign Ministry, they kept insisting
they weren't banning the Bhagavad Gita itself.
Right. They kept saying, we love the Gita. It's
a world treasure. Exactly. They claimed they
were specifically banning Prabhupada's version.
Bhagavad Gita as it is. They argued the translation
had semantic distortions and that the commentary
was the real problem. And that was their legal
loophole. I mean, they knew they couldn't put
Lord Krishna on trial without looking completely
insane. So they targeted the commentary. They
targeted the commentary. And Prabhupada's commentary
is known for being very direct, very uncompromising.
He writes from a specific theological tradition.
And the experts in Tom's claimed this commentary
contained signs of fomenting religious hatred.
OK, so I want to push on that for a second. Plain
devil's advocate here. I looked at the specific
words they flagged. The commentary does use terms
like fools, rascals, enemies and demons to describe
people who aren't devotees. It does. So if I
stood on a street corner today and called everyone
who didn't agree with me a demon, wouldn't that
be seen as hate speech? Why were the prosecutors
wrong to flag that? It's a valid question. if
you're looking at it through a purely secular
modern lens. But context is everything. In the
context of the scripture, a demon or an asura
isn't a racial slur. It's not a call to violence.
It's a theological category. It refers to a state
of consciousness, someone who is materialistic
or opposed to the divine order. So when Prabhupada
calls someone a fool, he's not trying to start
a fight. No, he's engaging in a philosophical
argument about... the nature of the soul versus
the body. The prosecution was basically doing
a keyword search. They saw enemy, they saw fool,
and they just hit the red button, completely
ignoring that religious texts are full of that
kind of binary language. It's the exclusivity
trap. Exactly. They argued that by claiming the
Krishna religion was the supreme path, the text
was insulting other religions. But if you ban
a religious text for claiming to be the truth,
you have to ban almost every major religious
text in history. Monotheism is, by definition,
exclusive. It reminds me of that saying, to a
hammer, everything looks like a nail. If your
job is to find extremism, well, you're going
to find it in the intense rhetoric of a spiritual
teacher. So the trial kicks off in June 2011,
but the real drama happens in August. And we
need to talk about the judge, Galina Butenko,
because she seems to be the only person in the
room who actually, you know, read the book. Judge
Butenko was fascinating. She presided over the
hearings, and she was clearly skeptical of the
prosecution's whole word search approach from
the start. She famously quoted the Bible, didn't
she? She did. It was a brilliant move. She brought
up the phrase, don't throw pearls before swine.
She was essentially asking, if the Bible calls
people swine to make a point about spiritual
receptivity, are we going to ban the Bible too?
She was forcing them to confront the absurdity
of their own logic. And the prosecution's own
experts completely fell apart. Oh, they crumbled.
When they were questioned in court, they backpedaled
so fast they admitted their opinion. The entire
foundation of the lawsuit should be considered
private rather than official. They realized they
were way out of their depth. But the prosecution
didn't drop it. They doubled down. They asked
for a new assessment from a different university.
Right, from Kemerovo. So the court paused. And
this delay is what turned a local annoyance into
this massive international incident. Because
while the court was waiting, the timeline drags
into December 2011. And that is when India wakes
up. And when India woke up, it was explosive.
You have to remember, the Bhagavad Gita isn't
just a book in India. It's the cultural soul
of the nation. The news broke on December 17th.
And within 48 hours, it was the only thing anyone
was talking about. The outline mentions a golden
day in the Indian parliament. That sounds poetic,
but reading the notes, it just sounds like absolute
chaos. It was chaos. But it was unified chaos.
That's why a member of the upper house called
it a golden day. In Indian politics, the parties
almost never agree on anything. But on December
19th, the Lok Sabha, the lower house, was just
paralyzed. The speaker had to adjourn the session
because MPs from all sides were shouting, we
will not tolerate an insult to Lord Krishna.
And it wasn't just shouting. The political pressure
was intense. Sushma Swaraj, who was the opposition
leader then, she demanded the Gita be declared
a national book. You had MPs asking these grand
rhetorical questions like, can you ban the sun?
Can you ban the Himalayas? It was pure political
theater, but it worked. The Indian government
was feeling the heat. They were getting hammered.
The prime minister's office, the foreign minister,
they were being accused of sleeping at the wheel.
Apparently, ISKCON had warned them back in November,
but the diplomats just thought it would blow
over. And it wasn't just hurt feelings. This
was threatening trade. Russia and India have
massive ties. Huge ties. Nuclear power plans,
defense contracts for fighter jets. All of this
was suddenly in the background of a conversation
about a book ban. You had the VHP, a major Hindu
organization threatening to boycott Russian goods,
protests outside Russian consulates. And this
is where the story gets a little ugly. We saw
reports of Russian flags being burned by some
right -wing groups, but then the counter -protest
in Russia. We have to talk about the canned beef
incident. This is one of those details that's
just so revealing. It exposes the cultural illiteracy
at play. So seeing these protests in India, some
Orthodox activists in Moscow decide to retaliate
against the local ISKCON temple. Now, anyone
who knows anything about Hare Krishnas knows
they are strict vegetarians. It is a core tenet
of their faith that cow is sacred. Right. Of
course. So these activists, along with an Islamic
leader, a mufti, they propose sending humanitarian
aid to the starving Krishna devotees. And that
aid was? canned beef. Wow. And the Mufti specifically
mentioned nutritious halal canned beef. It was
a calculated insult on multiple levels. It was
a way of saying, we don't respect your beliefs,
we don't respect your culture, and we see you
as pitiable. It wasn't a prank. It was a demonstration
of dominance. It just highlights the hostility
they were facing. It wasn't just a legal argument.
No, it was a cultural rejection. And amidst all
this, Flags burning in Mumbai, beef being brandished
in Moscow. The Russian diplomats were absolutely
panicking. They must have been looking at Tomsk
and just thinking, what are you people doing?
Oh, they were furious. Alexander Kadakin, the
Russian ambassador to India. He was a career
diplomat who loved India. He did not mince words.
He publicly called the instigators of the trial
madmen. He actually used the word madmen. He
did. He said their madness should be stopped.
He called the Gita a source of wisdom for the
world. He was desperately trying to signal to
India that this prosecutor in Tomsk did not represent
the Kremlin. And the Russian intellectual community
stepped up, too. Yes, the scholars were horrified.
Yevgenia Vanina from the Institute of Oriental
Studies wrote this scathing critique. She pointed
out that the Gita was first translated into Russian
in 1788. Under Catherine the Great. Yes. It was
fine then. But now, in the 21st century, it's
extremist. She said if you use the prosecutor's
primitive screening method, you'd have to ban
the Koran, the Bible, most of Greek mythology.
Another scholar, Andrei Volodin, said something
that really stuck with me. He said even the CIA
couldn't have planned a more effective sabotage
of Russia -India relations. It's the butterfly
effect of bureaucracy. A small paperwork filing
in Siberia causes a political hurricane in New
Delhi. So let's bring it back to the courtroom.
It's late December 2011. The world is watching.
The second expert panel comes back and they're
split. Judge Butenko has to make a call. And
on December 28, she did. She dismissed the case.
She ruled that the prosecutor had failed to prove
the book was extremist. And her reasoning was
really important, wasn't it? It wasn't just a
technicality. No, it was a crucial distinction.
She ruled that propaganda of exclusiveness, saying,
my God is the best God and criticizing other
beliefs is not the same as extremism. Right.
For something to be extremist under the law,
there must be calls for extremist actions. You
have to be telling people to go out and commit
violence. Merely calling someone a fool is not
criminal speech. A huge victory for common sense.
But Prosecutor Fyodorov didn't give up. He appealed.
He was relentless. He appealed in January 2012.
And this is when the heavy hitters in Russia
finally said. Enough. The open letter. Yes. In
March 2012, 20 leading Russian philosophers and
philologists wrote an open letter directly to
President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin.
It basically said, this trial is discrediting
Russia. We look like barbarians. Please stop
this. And it worked. On March 21st, the appeal
court upheld the original decision. By May, the
prosecutor finally gave up. The book was safe.
The legal battle was over. But the story doesn't
actually end there. If you want to understand
who really won, you have to flash forward. Yes.
The coda to this story is just perfect. We're
talking about December 4, 2025. Right. More than
a decade after the trial, Indian Prime Minister
Narendra Modi is meeting with President Vladimir
Putin. High level summit. And as a diplomatic
gift, Modi hands Putin a book. And it wasn't
just any book. It was a Russian copy. of Bhagavad
Gita as it is, the exact same translation, the
exact same commentary that a Russian prosecutor
tried to ban as extremist material. That is such
a power move. It's the ultimate validation. Here
is the president of Russia accepting the banned
book as a symbol of wisdom from the prime minister
of India. It completely erased the stigma. It
cemented the idea that the trial in Tomsk was
an aberration, a mistake. It brings the whole
story full circle, from the threat of being banned
and burned to being exchanged by heads of state.
So when we step back from this whole deep dive,
what are we really learning here? I mean, on
one hand, it's a story about one specific book,
but on the other, it feels like a warning. I
think the main takeaway is the danger of, I don't
know, what I'd call bureaucratic literalism.
The Russian law was designed to stop terrorists.
It was a blunt instrument. And when you take
a blunt instrument and try to perform surgery
on a complex ancient spiritual tradition, you
just make a mess. It's about cultural literacy.
The prosecutors saw the word enemy and thought
hate crime. They just didn't have the context
to understand spiritual enemy. Precisely. And
it also highlights the resilience of these texts.
The Gita survived thousands of years. It survived
British colonialism, Soviet atheism, and it survived
the district court of... Tomsk. It suggests these
ideas are almost anti -fragile. The more you
attack them, the stronger they seem to get. And
the stronger the community rallies around them.
I doubt the Indian parliament would have been
so united about the Gita if it hadn't been under
attack. Absolutely. The ban attempt actually
popularized the book in Russia. Sales went up.
Curiosity went up. The prosecutor achieved the
exact opposite of what he wanted. The Streisand
effect in full force. 100 percent. So here's
a thought to leave you with. We spent this episode
kind of laughing at the prosecutor in 2011 who
used a keyword search to find extremism. We think
of that as primitive. But here we are in 2026.
How do we moderate content on the Internet today?
We use AI. We use algorithms. And what do those
algorithms do? They strip away context. They
look for bad words. They flag harmful content
based on patterns, often ignoring nuance, satire,
or history. That is a very uncomfortable parallel.
Isn't it? If we fed the Iliad or Shakespeare
or the Bible into a modern content moderation
bot today without any special protection, how
many of them would be flagged for violence or
misogyny or hate speech? In a way, we are all
Viktor Fyodorov now. We've just automated the
process. That is a terrifying thought. Maybe
the trial of the Gita wasn't a relic of the past.
Maybe it was a preview of the future. Something
to mull over. That's it for this deep dive into
the trial of the Gita. Thanks for listening and
stay curious.