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Russia: First the Gita, now the Temple

'No grountls'for Hindu community in Russian capital: Moscow govt

In a recent move that effectively ousts the Hindu community from the capital of Russia, Moscow government orders the eviction and demolition of the only Hindu shrine in the city - thc Krishna temple run by ISKCON - due by January 15,2013.

Issued on the eve of Russian President Vladimir Putin 's official visit to Delhi, the decree continues the trend set by the last year's Bhagavad Gita ban attemped by prosecutors in Siberia during PM Manmohan Singh 's visit to Moscow. In December 2011, the Bhagavad Gita trial in the Russian city ofTomsk stalled the Lok Sabha and threatened Indo-Russian ties as it sent Russian flags burning across India.

Other religious minorities in Moscow face similar hurdles. In 2012. Muslims and Buddhists were denied permission to build their shrines in the Russian capital , and a Protestant church was razed to the ground by Moscow authorities with no prior notice.

In 2004, the Hindu community in Moscow survived the demolition of their previous temple that fell victim to city reconstruction. As compensation, the Moscow government allowed them to have a makeshift shrine in a corrugated iron shack at another location, with no sewers or heating, assuring of a permit to replace it with a permanent temple. Now, citing improprieties in their own land allotment order, the authorities are scrapping the promise and expelling some 15,000 Indian and Russian devotees from their only shelter, saying it " violates the urban planning code" and has "no legal grounds" for existence. while ignoring repeated appeals by the Indian embassy and community in Russia.

A source in the Moscow Mayor's office said on conditions of anonymity that Mayor Sergey Sobyanin also ordered to axe the permanent temple project, which Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit and the previous Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov had included in a Joint Declaration in 2006 as a symbol of cultural cooperation between the cities. Following the Declaration. Indian Ambassador Ajay Malhotra laid the corner stone for the new project earlier this year.

On December 20 at a press-conference Russian envoy to India Alexander Kadakin denied plans for demolition and danger for the new temple project. But Indians in Russia do not share this optimism. 'The eviction notice .we have on hands for our current temple and the halting of the new project are a crushing blow to the Indian community in Moscow, says Sadhu Priya Das, chairman of both the Association of Indians in Russia and the Hindu Council of Russia. "In one word, we are desperate. We are lett with nothing."

Ironically, while the Hindu community in Moscow is facing the wintry streets at minus twenty, the agenda of President Putin's upcoming talks with PM Manmohan Singh is said to include, besides the Sistema telecom disputes and the Kudankulam nuclear plant tussle, a request for land in Delhi for the construction of the first Russian Orthodox Church in India.