Temple takes shape amid Gita furore in Russia

Lily

B.R
Staff member
New Delhi: Hindus and Krishna devotees may be fighting a court battle in the Siberian city of Tomsk against a move to ban the Bhagavad Gita, but their 40-year quest to find a foothold in Russia is taking shape in the construction of a massive temple on Moscow's outskirts.

The Moscow Vedic Centre, as the temple devoted to Krishna will be called, is coming up on a five-acre plot of land at Verskino village, close to the Sheremetyevo international airport, Bhakti Vijnana Goswami, a Russian Iskcon monk who is visiting India, told IANS.

The Moscow Vedic Centre is a replacement for the original Krishna temple that acted as the centre of Iskcon (International Society for Krishna Consciousness).

The original temple, Goswami said, was demolished in 2004 by the Moscow city government as it came in the way of a new apartment building. To compensate for the demolished temple, the Moscow administration provided Iskcon an alternative plot of land on Leningradsky Avenue, where the temple functions temporarily till it moves into the Moscow Vedic Centre in late 2012.

Verdict on Wednesday

The Tomsk city court is scheduled to deliver its verdict on December 28 in the case filed by the state prosecutors for banning the Bhagavad Gita and branding it as "extremist" literature, after a deposition from the Russian human rights ombudsman.

"It is ironic that the Russian capital is recognising our humanitarian service, while in another city in the country, state prosecutors have filed a case to get Bhagavad Gita banned in Russia," Sadhu Priya Das, an Iskcon devotee in Moscow, told IANS over phone.

Today, the Iskcon temple in Moscow attracts 1,000 devotees a day on an average and 10,000 devotees, a majority of them Russians, on Janmashtami, deity Krishna's birthday.

Iskcon itself became a recognised official religious organisation in the Soviet Union in 1988 after then President Mikhail Gorbachov introduced Perestroika, a movement within the Communist Party there for political restructuring.

"The days of persecution under the atheist Soviet government was over in 1988," Goswami said.

Soon, in 1990, Moscow authorities provided Iskcon a semi-dilapidated building at Begovaya for a temple, which was later demolished in 2004 leading to the allotment of alternative land for the Moscow Vedic Centre.

Joint declaration

"The alternative land in lieu of the demolished temple came about in 2006, when Moscow's mayor and the Delhi chief minister had signed a joint declaration in this regard," said Goswami. A year later, the Moscow administration issued the necessary orders for the construction of the Moscow Vedic Centre.

In November this year, Indian President Pratibha Patil sent a message to the Iskcon when it observed 40 years of its work in Russia.
 
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