WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.099 So imagine this. It is June 2011. We are in Tomsk, 00:00:04.099 --> 00:00:07.620 Siberia. Right. A university town known for its 00:00:07.620 --> 00:00:10.300 wooden architecture. It's the kind of place that 00:00:10.300 --> 00:00:12.019 usually stays out of the international spotlight. 00:00:12.279 --> 00:00:15.619 Exactly. But inside a district courtroom, a local 00:00:15.619 --> 00:00:18.640 prosecutor, Viktor Fyodorov, is filing a case 00:00:18.640 --> 00:00:21.399 that is about to spiral into a geopolitical nightmare. 00:00:21.660 --> 00:00:23.440 And he's not going after a terrorist cell or 00:00:23.440 --> 00:00:26.199 an arms dealer. No. He is trying to ban a book. 00:00:26.699 --> 00:00:28.879 And he wants this book placed on the Russian 00:00:28.879 --> 00:00:31.480 federal list of extremist materials. And we have 00:00:31.480 --> 00:00:33.359 to be clear about what that list means. It isn't 00:00:33.359 --> 00:00:36.119 just a do not read recommendation. No, no. Being 00:00:36.119 --> 00:00:38.899 on that list puts a book in the same legal category 00:00:38.899 --> 00:00:42.020 as Mein Kampf. It becomes illegal to print, to 00:00:42.020 --> 00:00:44.719 distribute. Even to possess. Yeah. It basically 00:00:44.719 --> 00:00:47.200 erases the text from society. Right. So you'd 00:00:47.200 --> 00:00:49.399 expect this book to be, I don't know, a manual 00:00:49.399 --> 00:00:52.799 on how to build dirty bombs or some manifesto 00:00:52.799 --> 00:00:55.100 calling for violent revolution. Of course. But 00:00:55.100 --> 00:00:57.679 it wasn't. The book in the dock was Bhagavad 00:00:57.679 --> 00:01:00.840 Gita as it is. A translation and commentary of 00:01:00.840 --> 00:01:03.560 the ancient Hindu scripture, specifically the 00:01:03.560 --> 00:01:06.700 one written in the 1960s by A .C. Bhaktivedanta 00:01:06.700 --> 00:01:10.060 Swami Prabhupada. Which just sets up this incredibly... 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:14.519 bizarre picture. You have a text that is as sacred 00:01:14.519 --> 00:01:17.219 to hundreds of millions, studied by people like 00:01:17.219 --> 00:01:20.939 Einstein, Gandhi, Oppenheimer, and it's suddenly 00:01:20.939 --> 00:01:23.680 being dissected by a municipal prosecutor in 00:01:23.680 --> 00:01:26.879 Siberia who's arguing it ferments social discord. 00:01:27.200 --> 00:01:29.900 So that's the mission of this deep dive. We were 00:01:29.900 --> 00:01:32.579 looking at the trial of the Gita. It's a story 00:01:32.579 --> 00:01:36.280 about what happens when modern sort of bureaucratic 00:01:36.280 --> 00:01:40.120 anti -extremism laws collide with ancient spiritual 00:01:40.120 --> 00:01:42.430 philosophy. And it involves confused experts, 00:01:42.670 --> 00:01:45.010 a box of canned beef, which is a whole other 00:01:45.010 --> 00:01:47.010 story. Oh, we have to get to that. And a diplomatic 00:01:47.010 --> 00:01:49.510 crisis that nearly derailed the entire relationship 00:01:49.510 --> 00:01:52.109 between India and Russia. It really is the ultimate 00:01:52.109 --> 00:01:54.750 case study in context. The core question was, 00:01:54.909 --> 00:01:56.969 you know, if you take agent metaphors literally 00:01:56.969 --> 00:01:59.469 and script them of their history, do they become 00:01:59.469 --> 00:02:02.069 crimes? And does a local court in Tomsk even 00:02:02.069 --> 00:02:04.349 have the jurisdiction to judge a 5 ,000 -year 00:02:04.349 --> 00:02:07.030 -old scripture? So let's dig into the prosecution's 00:02:07.030 --> 00:02:09.110 argument. I was reading through the initial filing, 00:02:09.229 --> 00:02:11.550 and Prosecutor Fu... Yudatoff wasn't just acting 00:02:11.550 --> 00:02:15.229 on a whim. He was using a specific law, federal 00:02:15.229 --> 00:02:18.669 law number 114 FC, on countering extremist activities. 00:02:18.930 --> 00:02:22.030 And he had backup. He relied on an expert analysis 00:02:22.030 --> 00:02:24.590 that was commissioned by the FSB, the Federal 00:02:24.590 --> 00:02:27.250 Security Service. Right. And conducted by three 00:02:27.250 --> 00:02:29.840 professors from Tomsk State University. And this 00:02:29.840 --> 00:02:31.740 is where we need to look at the Russian context, 00:02:32.020 --> 00:02:34.520 right? Because Russia has these incredibly strict 00:02:34.520 --> 00:02:37.439 laws against extremism. They do. And it's largely 00:02:37.439 --> 00:02:40.000 born out of very real fears of terrorism and 00:02:40.000 --> 00:02:42.500 separatism. But there's also a cultural dimension. 00:02:42.879 --> 00:02:45.120 I mean, since the fall of the Soviet Union, the 00:02:45.120 --> 00:02:47.120 Russian Orthodox Church has really reasserted 00:02:47.120 --> 00:02:49.180 itself as a kind of moral guardian. So there's 00:02:49.180 --> 00:02:52.180 this suspicion of new or foreign religious movements? 00:02:52.439 --> 00:02:54.639 A deep suspicion of what they sometimes call 00:02:54.639 --> 00:02:58.780 totalitarian sex. So ISKCON, the International... 00:02:58.860 --> 00:03:01.159 Society for Krishna Consciousness, was already 00:03:01.159 --> 00:03:03.719 viewed with, well, a lot of skepticism by certain 00:03:03.719 --> 00:03:05.580 authorities. But here's the thing that confused 00:03:05.580 --> 00:03:08.500 me at first. The prosecutors, and later even 00:03:08.500 --> 00:03:11.120 the Russian Foreign Ministry, they kept insisting 00:03:11.120 --> 00:03:13.139 they weren't banning the Bhagavad Gita itself. 00:03:13.539 --> 00:03:15.719 Right. They kept saying, we love the Gita. It's 00:03:15.719 --> 00:03:18.960 a world treasure. Exactly. They claimed they 00:03:18.960 --> 00:03:21.780 were specifically banning Prabhupada's version. 00:03:22.280 --> 00:03:25.300 Bhagavad Gita as it is. They argued the translation 00:03:25.300 --> 00:03:28.400 had semantic distortions and that the commentary 00:03:28.400 --> 00:03:30.699 was the real problem. And that was their legal 00:03:30.699 --> 00:03:32.639 loophole. I mean, they knew they couldn't put 00:03:32.639 --> 00:03:35.639 Lord Krishna on trial without looking completely 00:03:35.639 --> 00:03:37.719 insane. So they targeted the commentary. They 00:03:37.719 --> 00:03:40.039 targeted the commentary. And Prabhupada's commentary 00:03:40.039 --> 00:03:43.939 is known for being very direct, very uncompromising. 00:03:44.080 --> 00:03:46.599 He writes from a specific theological tradition. 00:03:47.120 --> 00:03:50.159 And the experts in Tom's claimed this commentary 00:03:50.159 --> 00:03:52.919 contained signs of fomenting religious hatred. 00:03:53.139 --> 00:03:55.340 OK, so I want to push on that for a second. Plain 00:03:55.340 --> 00:03:56.840 devil's advocate here. I looked at the specific 00:03:56.840 --> 00:03:59.180 words they flagged. The commentary does use terms 00:03:59.180 --> 00:04:02.659 like fools, rascals, enemies and demons to describe 00:04:02.659 --> 00:04:05.800 people who aren't devotees. It does. So if I 00:04:05.800 --> 00:04:07.699 stood on a street corner today and called everyone 00:04:07.699 --> 00:04:10.439 who didn't agree with me a demon, wouldn't that 00:04:10.439 --> 00:04:13.479 be seen as hate speech? Why were the prosecutors 00:04:13.479 --> 00:04:16.910 wrong to flag that? It's a valid question. if 00:04:16.910 --> 00:04:18.569 you're looking at it through a purely secular 00:04:18.569 --> 00:04:23.110 modern lens. But context is everything. In the 00:04:23.110 --> 00:04:25.930 context of the scripture, a demon or an asura 00:04:25.930 --> 00:04:29.370 isn't a racial slur. It's not a call to violence. 00:04:29.430 --> 00:04:32.550 It's a theological category. It refers to a state 00:04:32.550 --> 00:04:35.230 of consciousness, someone who is materialistic 00:04:35.230 --> 00:04:38.610 or opposed to the divine order. So when Prabhupada 00:04:38.610 --> 00:04:40.629 calls someone a fool, he's not trying to start 00:04:40.629 --> 00:04:42.769 a fight. No, he's engaging in a philosophical 00:04:42.769 --> 00:04:45.339 argument about... the nature of the soul versus 00:04:45.339 --> 00:04:47.639 the body. The prosecution was basically doing 00:04:47.639 --> 00:04:50.199 a keyword search. They saw enemy, they saw fool, 00:04:50.379 --> 00:04:52.100 and they just hit the red button, completely 00:04:52.100 --> 00:04:54.740 ignoring that religious texts are full of that 00:04:54.740 --> 00:04:56.879 kind of binary language. It's the exclusivity 00:04:56.879 --> 00:04:59.860 trap. Exactly. They argued that by claiming the 00:04:59.860 --> 00:05:03.139 Krishna religion was the supreme path, the text 00:05:03.139 --> 00:05:06.040 was insulting other religions. But if you ban 00:05:06.040 --> 00:05:08.040 a religious text for claiming to be the truth, 00:05:08.300 --> 00:05:10.439 you have to ban almost every major religious 00:05:10.439 --> 00:05:14.009 text in history. Monotheism is, by definition, 00:05:14.189 --> 00:05:16.709 exclusive. It reminds me of that saying, to a 00:05:16.709 --> 00:05:19.209 hammer, everything looks like a nail. If your 00:05:19.209 --> 00:05:20.970 job is to find extremism, well, you're going 00:05:20.970 --> 00:05:23.110 to find it in the intense rhetoric of a spiritual 00:05:23.110 --> 00:05:26.230 teacher. So the trial kicks off in June 2011, 00:05:26.589 --> 00:05:31.389 but the real drama happens in August. And we 00:05:31.389 --> 00:05:33.610 need to talk about the judge, Galina Butenko, 00:05:33.810 --> 00:05:35.829 because she seems to be the only person in the 00:05:35.829 --> 00:05:38.250 room who actually, you know, read the book. Judge 00:05:38.250 --> 00:05:41.319 Butenko was fascinating. She presided over the 00:05:41.319 --> 00:05:43.759 hearings, and she was clearly skeptical of the 00:05:43.759 --> 00:05:46.259 prosecution's whole word search approach from 00:05:46.259 --> 00:05:48.519 the start. She famously quoted the Bible, didn't 00:05:48.519 --> 00:05:50.519 she? She did. It was a brilliant move. She brought 00:05:50.519 --> 00:05:52.879 up the phrase, don't throw pearls before swine. 00:05:52.959 --> 00:05:55.699 She was essentially asking, if the Bible calls 00:05:55.699 --> 00:05:58.740 people swine to make a point about spiritual 00:05:58.740 --> 00:06:01.079 receptivity, are we going to ban the Bible too? 00:06:01.660 --> 00:06:04.319 She was forcing them to confront the absurdity 00:06:04.319 --> 00:06:06.540 of their own logic. And the prosecution's own 00:06:06.540 --> 00:06:09.459 experts completely fell apart. Oh, they crumbled. 00:06:09.899 --> 00:06:12.319 When they were questioned in court, they backpedaled 00:06:12.319 --> 00:06:15.220 so fast they admitted their opinion. The entire 00:06:15.220 --> 00:06:17.379 foundation of the lawsuit should be considered 00:06:17.379 --> 00:06:20.040 private rather than official. They realized they 00:06:20.040 --> 00:06:22.360 were way out of their depth. But the prosecution 00:06:22.360 --> 00:06:24.959 didn't drop it. They doubled down. They asked 00:06:24.959 --> 00:06:26.899 for a new assessment from a different university. 00:06:27.199 --> 00:06:30.660 Right, from Kemerovo. So the court paused. And 00:06:30.660 --> 00:06:33.439 this delay is what turned a local annoyance into 00:06:33.439 --> 00:06:36.160 this massive international incident. Because 00:06:36.160 --> 00:06:38.639 while the court was waiting, the timeline drags 00:06:38.639 --> 00:06:41.660 into December 2011. And that is when India wakes 00:06:41.660 --> 00:06:44.220 up. And when India woke up, it was explosive. 00:06:44.639 --> 00:06:46.459 You have to remember, the Bhagavad Gita isn't 00:06:46.459 --> 00:06:48.939 just a book in India. It's the cultural soul 00:06:48.939 --> 00:06:52.240 of the nation. The news broke on December 17th. 00:06:52.259 --> 00:06:55.259 And within 48 hours, it was the only thing anyone 00:06:55.259 --> 00:06:57.740 was talking about. The outline mentions a golden 00:06:57.740 --> 00:07:00.339 day in the Indian parliament. That sounds poetic, 00:07:00.439 --> 00:07:02.759 but reading the notes, it just sounds like absolute 00:07:02.759 --> 00:07:06.240 chaos. It was chaos. But it was unified chaos. 00:07:06.540 --> 00:07:08.600 That's why a member of the upper house called 00:07:08.600 --> 00:07:12.480 it a golden day. In Indian politics, the parties 00:07:12.480 --> 00:07:15.300 almost never agree on anything. But on December 00:07:15.300 --> 00:07:19.259 19th, the Lok Sabha, the lower house, was just 00:07:19.259 --> 00:07:22.610 paralyzed. The speaker had to adjourn the session 00:07:22.610 --> 00:07:25.230 because MPs from all sides were shouting, we 00:07:25.230 --> 00:07:27.310 will not tolerate an insult to Lord Krishna. 00:07:27.490 --> 00:07:29.649 And it wasn't just shouting. The political pressure 00:07:29.649 --> 00:07:32.569 was intense. Sushma Swaraj, who was the opposition 00:07:32.569 --> 00:07:35.670 leader then, she demanded the Gita be declared 00:07:35.670 --> 00:07:38.949 a national book. You had MPs asking these grand 00:07:38.949 --> 00:07:41.389 rhetorical questions like, can you ban the sun? 00:07:41.490 --> 00:07:43.810 Can you ban the Himalayas? It was pure political 00:07:43.810 --> 00:07:46.089 theater, but it worked. The Indian government 00:07:46.089 --> 00:07:48.370 was feeling the heat. They were getting hammered. 00:07:48.540 --> 00:07:50.899 The prime minister's office, the foreign minister, 00:07:51.040 --> 00:07:53.240 they were being accused of sleeping at the wheel. 00:07:53.379 --> 00:07:55.980 Apparently, ISKCON had warned them back in November, 00:07:56.139 --> 00:07:57.839 but the diplomats just thought it would blow 00:07:57.839 --> 00:07:59.980 over. And it wasn't just hurt feelings. This 00:07:59.980 --> 00:08:03.600 was threatening trade. Russia and India have 00:08:03.600 --> 00:08:07.160 massive ties. Huge ties. Nuclear power plans, 00:08:07.379 --> 00:08:10.319 defense contracts for fighter jets. All of this 00:08:10.319 --> 00:08:12.040 was suddenly in the background of a conversation 00:08:12.040 --> 00:08:15.529 about a book ban. You had the VHP, a major Hindu 00:08:15.529 --> 00:08:18.290 organization threatening to boycott Russian goods, 00:08:18.509 --> 00:08:21.910 protests outside Russian consulates. And this 00:08:21.910 --> 00:08:23.790 is where the story gets a little ugly. We saw 00:08:23.790 --> 00:08:25.990 reports of Russian flags being burned by some 00:08:25.990 --> 00:08:29.230 right -wing groups, but then the counter -protest 00:08:29.230 --> 00:08:31.889 in Russia. We have to talk about the canned beef 00:08:31.889 --> 00:08:34.250 incident. This is one of those details that's 00:08:34.250 --> 00:08:37.110 just so revealing. It exposes the cultural illiteracy 00:08:37.110 --> 00:08:40.029 at play. So seeing these protests in India, some 00:08:40.029 --> 00:08:42.809 Orthodox activists in Moscow decide to retaliate 00:08:42.809 --> 00:08:45.730 against the local ISKCON temple. Now, anyone 00:08:45.730 --> 00:08:47.590 who knows anything about Hare Krishnas knows 00:08:47.590 --> 00:08:49.990 they are strict vegetarians. It is a core tenet 00:08:49.990 --> 00:08:52.330 of their faith that cow is sacred. Right. Of 00:08:52.330 --> 00:08:54.429 course. So these activists, along with an Islamic 00:08:54.429 --> 00:08:56.870 leader, a mufti, they propose sending humanitarian 00:08:56.870 --> 00:08:59.330 aid to the starving Krishna devotees. And that 00:08:59.330 --> 00:09:02.750 aid was? canned beef. Wow. And the Mufti specifically 00:09:02.750 --> 00:09:05.889 mentioned nutritious halal canned beef. It was 00:09:05.889 --> 00:09:08.470 a calculated insult on multiple levels. It was 00:09:08.470 --> 00:09:10.509 a way of saying, we don't respect your beliefs, 00:09:10.649 --> 00:09:13.289 we don't respect your culture, and we see you 00:09:13.289 --> 00:09:17.450 as pitiable. It wasn't a prank. It was a demonstration 00:09:17.450 --> 00:09:20.090 of dominance. It just highlights the hostility 00:09:20.090 --> 00:09:21.990 they were facing. It wasn't just a legal argument. 00:09:22.269 --> 00:09:25.509 No, it was a cultural rejection. And amidst all 00:09:25.509 --> 00:09:29.399 this, Flags burning in Mumbai, beef being brandished 00:09:29.399 --> 00:09:31.799 in Moscow. The Russian diplomats were absolutely 00:09:31.799 --> 00:09:33.940 panicking. They must have been looking at Tomsk 00:09:33.940 --> 00:09:35.600 and just thinking, what are you people doing? 00:09:35.840 --> 00:09:38.419 Oh, they were furious. Alexander Kadakin, the 00:09:38.419 --> 00:09:40.720 Russian ambassador to India. He was a career 00:09:40.720 --> 00:09:43.600 diplomat who loved India. He did not mince words. 00:09:44.120 --> 00:09:46.600 He publicly called the instigators of the trial 00:09:46.600 --> 00:09:49.860 madmen. He actually used the word madmen. He 00:09:49.860 --> 00:09:51.960 did. He said their madness should be stopped. 00:09:52.440 --> 00:09:54.620 He called the Gita a source of wisdom for the 00:09:54.620 --> 00:09:57.179 world. He was desperately trying to signal to 00:09:57.179 --> 00:10:00.840 India that this prosecutor in Tomsk did not represent 00:10:00.840 --> 00:10:02.840 the Kremlin. And the Russian intellectual community 00:10:02.840 --> 00:10:06.100 stepped up, too. Yes, the scholars were horrified. 00:10:07.059 --> 00:10:09.419 Yevgenia Vanina from the Institute of Oriental 00:10:09.419 --> 00:10:12.799 Studies wrote this scathing critique. She pointed 00:10:12.799 --> 00:10:15.200 out that the Gita was first translated into Russian 00:10:15.200 --> 00:10:19.389 in 1788. Under Catherine the Great. Yes. It was 00:10:19.389 --> 00:10:22.070 fine then. But now, in the 21st century, it's 00:10:22.070 --> 00:10:24.610 extremist. She said if you use the prosecutor's 00:10:24.610 --> 00:10:26.889 primitive screening method, you'd have to ban 00:10:26.889 --> 00:10:30.009 the Koran, the Bible, most of Greek mythology. 00:10:30.330 --> 00:10:33.049 Another scholar, Andrei Volodin, said something 00:10:33.049 --> 00:10:35.409 that really stuck with me. He said even the CIA 00:10:35.409 --> 00:10:37.929 couldn't have planned a more effective sabotage 00:10:37.929 --> 00:10:40.110 of Russia -India relations. It's the butterfly 00:10:40.110 --> 00:10:42.990 effect of bureaucracy. A small paperwork filing 00:10:42.990 --> 00:10:45.710 in Siberia causes a political hurricane in New 00:10:45.710 --> 00:10:47.679 Delhi. So let's bring it back to the courtroom. 00:10:47.899 --> 00:10:50.679 It's late December 2011. The world is watching. 00:10:50.799 --> 00:10:52.860 The second expert panel comes back and they're 00:10:52.860 --> 00:10:55.419 split. Judge Butenko has to make a call. And 00:10:55.419 --> 00:10:58.259 on December 28, she did. She dismissed the case. 00:10:58.419 --> 00:11:00.720 She ruled that the prosecutor had failed to prove 00:11:00.720 --> 00:11:02.960 the book was extremist. And her reasoning was 00:11:02.960 --> 00:11:04.460 really important, wasn't it? It wasn't just a 00:11:04.460 --> 00:11:06.720 technicality. No, it was a crucial distinction. 00:11:06.980 --> 00:11:10.480 She ruled that propaganda of exclusiveness, saying, 00:11:10.559 --> 00:11:13.460 my God is the best God and criticizing other 00:11:13.460 --> 00:11:16.139 beliefs is not the same as extremism. Right. 00:11:16.279 --> 00:11:18.019 For something to be extremist under the law, 00:11:18.139 --> 00:11:20.860 there must be calls for extremist actions. You 00:11:20.860 --> 00:11:22.279 have to be telling people to go out and commit 00:11:22.279 --> 00:11:24.720 violence. Merely calling someone a fool is not 00:11:24.720 --> 00:11:27.139 criminal speech. A huge victory for common sense. 00:11:27.480 --> 00:11:30.980 But Prosecutor Fyodorov didn't give up. He appealed. 00:11:31.039 --> 00:11:33.799 He was relentless. He appealed in January 2012. 00:11:34.559 --> 00:11:36.519 And this is when the heavy hitters in Russia 00:11:36.519 --> 00:11:39.750 finally said. Enough. The open letter. Yes. In 00:11:39.750 --> 00:11:42.389 March 2012, 20 leading Russian philosophers and 00:11:42.389 --> 00:11:45.110 philologists wrote an open letter directly to 00:11:45.110 --> 00:11:47.289 President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin. 00:11:47.450 --> 00:11:49.889 It basically said, this trial is discrediting 00:11:49.889 --> 00:11:52.009 Russia. We look like barbarians. Please stop 00:11:52.009 --> 00:11:54.990 this. And it worked. On March 21st, the appeal 00:11:54.990 --> 00:11:58.029 court upheld the original decision. By May, the 00:11:58.029 --> 00:12:00.350 prosecutor finally gave up. The book was safe. 00:12:00.549 --> 00:12:03.659 The legal battle was over. But the story doesn't 00:12:03.659 --> 00:12:05.500 actually end there. If you want to understand 00:12:05.500 --> 00:12:08.480 who really won, you have to flash forward. Yes. 00:12:08.539 --> 00:12:11.100 The coda to this story is just perfect. We're 00:12:11.100 --> 00:12:14.039 talking about December 4, 2025. Right. More than 00:12:14.039 --> 00:12:16.860 a decade after the trial, Indian Prime Minister 00:12:16.860 --> 00:12:19.500 Narendra Modi is meeting with President Vladimir 00:12:19.500 --> 00:12:22.879 Putin. High level summit. And as a diplomatic 00:12:22.879 --> 00:12:26.100 gift, Modi hands Putin a book. And it wasn't 00:12:26.100 --> 00:12:29.629 just any book. It was a Russian copy. of Bhagavad 00:12:29.629 --> 00:12:32.529 Gita as it is, the exact same translation, the 00:12:32.529 --> 00:12:35.210 exact same commentary that a Russian prosecutor 00:12:35.210 --> 00:12:38.110 tried to ban as extremist material. That is such 00:12:38.110 --> 00:12:40.750 a power move. It's the ultimate validation. Here 00:12:40.750 --> 00:12:42.950 is the president of Russia accepting the banned 00:12:42.950 --> 00:12:45.429 book as a symbol of wisdom from the prime minister 00:12:45.429 --> 00:12:48.389 of India. It completely erased the stigma. It 00:12:48.389 --> 00:12:50.649 cemented the idea that the trial in Tomsk was 00:12:50.649 --> 00:12:52.929 an aberration, a mistake. It brings the whole 00:12:52.929 --> 00:12:55.129 story full circle, from the threat of being banned 00:12:55.129 --> 00:12:57.309 and burned to being exchanged by heads of state. 00:12:57.750 --> 00:12:59.970 So when we step back from this whole deep dive, 00:13:00.169 --> 00:13:02.090 what are we really learning here? I mean, on 00:13:02.090 --> 00:13:04.350 one hand, it's a story about one specific book, 00:13:04.470 --> 00:13:06.870 but on the other, it feels like a warning. I 00:13:06.870 --> 00:13:09.970 think the main takeaway is the danger of, I don't 00:13:09.970 --> 00:13:11.789 know, what I'd call bureaucratic literalism. 00:13:12.460 --> 00:13:14.679 The Russian law was designed to stop terrorists. 00:13:14.940 --> 00:13:17.240 It was a blunt instrument. And when you take 00:13:17.240 --> 00:13:18.980 a blunt instrument and try to perform surgery 00:13:18.980 --> 00:13:22.080 on a complex ancient spiritual tradition, you 00:13:22.080 --> 00:13:24.000 just make a mess. It's about cultural literacy. 00:13:24.019 --> 00:13:26.340 The prosecutors saw the word enemy and thought 00:13:26.340 --> 00:13:28.820 hate crime. They just didn't have the context 00:13:28.820 --> 00:13:31.940 to understand spiritual enemy. Precisely. And 00:13:31.940 --> 00:13:33.940 it also highlights the resilience of these texts. 00:13:34.220 --> 00:13:37.259 The Gita survived thousands of years. It survived 00:13:37.259 --> 00:13:40.820 British colonialism, Soviet atheism, and it survived 00:13:40.820 --> 00:13:43.879 the district court of... Tomsk. It suggests these 00:13:43.879 --> 00:13:46.419 ideas are almost anti -fragile. The more you 00:13:46.419 --> 00:13:48.220 attack them, the stronger they seem to get. And 00:13:48.220 --> 00:13:50.480 the stronger the community rallies around them. 00:13:50.559 --> 00:13:51.980 I doubt the Indian parliament would have been 00:13:51.980 --> 00:13:54.139 so united about the Gita if it hadn't been under 00:13:54.139 --> 00:13:56.500 attack. Absolutely. The ban attempt actually 00:13:56.500 --> 00:13:59.500 popularized the book in Russia. Sales went up. 00:13:59.720 --> 00:14:02.240 Curiosity went up. The prosecutor achieved the 00:14:02.240 --> 00:14:04.620 exact opposite of what he wanted. The Streisand 00:14:04.620 --> 00:14:07.279 effect in full force. 100 percent. So here's 00:14:07.279 --> 00:14:09.919 a thought to leave you with. We spent this episode 00:14:09.919 --> 00:14:12.580 kind of laughing at the prosecutor in 2011 who 00:14:12.580 --> 00:14:15.480 used a keyword search to find extremism. We think 00:14:15.480 --> 00:14:19.039 of that as primitive. But here we are in 2026. 00:14:19.559 --> 00:14:22.259 How do we moderate content on the Internet today? 00:14:22.440 --> 00:14:25.610 We use AI. We use algorithms. And what do those 00:14:25.610 --> 00:14:28.230 algorithms do? They strip away context. They 00:14:28.230 --> 00:14:30.990 look for bad words. They flag harmful content 00:14:30.990 --> 00:14:34.529 based on patterns, often ignoring nuance, satire, 00:14:34.529 --> 00:14:37.110 or history. That is a very uncomfortable parallel. 00:14:37.330 --> 00:14:39.840 Isn't it? If we fed the Iliad or Shakespeare 00:14:39.840 --> 00:14:42.500 or the Bible into a modern content moderation 00:14:42.500 --> 00:14:45.879 bot today without any special protection, how 00:14:45.879 --> 00:14:47.940 many of them would be flagged for violence or 00:14:47.940 --> 00:14:50.679 misogyny or hate speech? In a way, we are all 00:14:50.679 --> 00:14:52.860 Viktor Fyodorov now. We've just automated the 00:14:52.860 --> 00:14:55.179 process. That is a terrifying thought. Maybe 00:14:55.179 --> 00:14:57.379 the trial of the Gita wasn't a relic of the past. 00:14:57.539 --> 00:14:59.700 Maybe it was a preview of the future. Something 00:14:59.700 --> 00:15:02.600 to mull over. That's it for this deep dive into 00:15:02.600 --> 00:15:04.620 the trial of the Gita. Thanks for listening and 00:15:04.620 --> 00:15:05.139 stay curious.