Making A Mark Online

Kashmiris are going online to express and establish themselves. Syed Asma surveys some Kashmiri websites that emerged in 2011.

Amidst the bans and restrictions on mainstream media in Kashmir, youth in the valley are finding alternative spaces to share stories—by starting their own websites.

“We have a passion for writing and it would do no good if it’s not used to tell the stories of Kashmir, for Kashmir holds a galaxy of untold stories,” says Samreen Mushtaq, a part of the three-month-old website Kashmir Currents. It was Samreen’s idea to start a website but she credits her team for making it a reality. Samreen is a presently pursuing her Masters’ in political science from Jamia Millia Islamia.

One day Samreen and her friends visited a woman in Kupwara who had

lost her four sons to the conflict, but had received no media coverage. It was then that Samreen and her friends decided to provide a platform for such unreported stories. “We wanted these untold, unheard stories to be told and re-told. Media [mainstream] often fails to follow up few stories,” says Samreen.

Fahad Shah seconds her view. He has turned his blog into a full-fledged website called The Kashmir Walla. He says organisations have their own pressures to handle but alternate media is the medium for the people and of people. “It reports what mainstream media cann

ot report because of its limitation.”

Fahad’s blog, set up in 2009, came from a need to write about Kashmir for his non Kashmiri friends who did not know much about Kashmir and the conflict.

Online enthusiasts in Kashmir say it is the global reach of the internet that plays a part in them turning to the web for highlighting conflict stories.

Sheikh Saaliq says online media is the main media source in today’s world. He believes repeatedly reporting on Kashmiri suffering to Kashmiris does not make much sense now, and that it is time to highlight these issues on a wider platform so it reaches the larger global community. He considers Internet to be the best medium for this.

Saaliq runs a website called The Vox Kashmir, meaning ‘voice of Kashmir.’ It started as a blog in early 2009.

“My website’s second issue had 15,000 hits in the first three hours of being uploaded, of which only 4,000 where from Kashmir, which suggested people outside are reading Kashmir,” says Saaliq.

The Kashmir Walla’s mention in Sunday Guardian, Indian Express, Mint Lounge, NDTV and Al Jazeera speak volumes about its readership in just the second year of its existence.

Kashmir Currents, The Vox Kashmir, The Kashmir Walla, The Parallel Post and other websites owned by Kashmiri youth came into existence after the recent unrest from 2008-2010. Limits on media during this time compelled them to create their own spaces for expression, they say.

At first, they turned to social networking sites such as Orkut, where they discussed issues with friends and refined their ways of expression. Then they started blogging and eventually turning to sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Each online outlet helped the young generation of Kashmir move one step closer to discovering and developing themselves in the virtual world—and gradually led to independent websites—designed and operated by Kashmir youth.

“We are all Orkut immigrants,” says Saaliq. “These social networking sites encourage us to use them to tell our stories. We have now moved on to more formal and authentic media, e-magazines and websites,” he says.

In addition to giving a voice to unheard stories of Kashmir, these websites have provided an opportunity to many individuals, and given them the chance to show their skills. Each website’s team includes trained journalists, passionate writers, graphic designers, and IT enthusiasts.

“The idea is to encourage new writers who are not established or who are amateur writers. We aim to encourage people beyond their social, intellectual, cultural and political existence,” says Anees Zargar.

Anees is a part of Kashmir’s online magazine, The Parallel Post.

“The Parallel Post also aims to help youth develop skills in various fields like filmmaking, writing and photography,” he adds.

Most of the youth running these websites are passionate to the extent that they sustain the websites with their own pocket money.

Saaliq says, “Tying up with other organisations means that they too will have a say in the content. It increases the tendency of outsider’s interference and may lead to some compromises as well. So, this makes us hesitant of trusting anyone.”

The enthusiastic young website owners say they may suffering on the financial grounds but are not ready to compromise in their content.

PUBLISHED ON KASHMIR LIFE

Forgotten Prisoners

GUEST POST BY FRONTLINE KASHMIR FAN

In the dark cells do we hang around and wait,
To hear the news about the world we hate.
What’s the current situation of the Muslim nation?
Are they soldiers of Allah, or guards at the police station?

Restlessly walking around the tiny mole holes.
Asking Allah to forgive us and protect our souls,
Quiet it is every day and every night
Where are your letters that you used to write?

Life in the cells is indeed cold and grim
Our hearts cry out loud, deep down from within
Why are my brothers and sisters so quiet all the time?

Do you not see these chains around his legs and mine?
Yes we are the forgotten prisoners of today.
All day do we wait to read what you have to say,
The kaafir next door has no trouble at all
His nation never forget him, sending him many letters for sure.
We do not ask for the world, sun or moon,
Only duaas written on paper, that we are released soon.

Paper and pen is all it takes my dear brothers
Do you have no time for those who left their mothers?
Plain are our walls, with only a written Du’aa or two
From our mothers, wives, children, nieces and nephews.
If only the walls were covered with the words which are great.

Indeed when I see the walls, do I shudder in disgrace
What a time I am in, where I must beg for support
It hardly comes willingly – though I wish it would
I cry and I weep, every night and everyday.
Remember me in your du’aas, write to me today.

An ummah of 1.5 billion is just a figure of no use
You enjoy your life as you watch us tortured and abused.
Our situation is no movie, why do you not understand?
Please, write to us – Let us see the words of your hand.
Lonely we are in the cold cells deep
Days and nights are horrid, we can hardly sleep.
Forgotten prisoners we are, our loved ones have all gone.

Though our Lord is always besides us, He is the only One!!

Living in despair, Kashmir half widows hopes still alive

Guest Post By: Yasir Ashraf

Today Javaid would have been celebrating his 37th birthday, if ‘security’ forces had not picked up him 21 years ago. On August 18, 1990 Javaid was taken away for never to return.

During the first years of militancy in Kashmir sixteen year old Javaid Ahmad Ahangar, class 11thcommerce student, was staying at his uncle’s house for the night when he was picked up by the ‘security’ forces and bundled into a vehicle. Till now his whereabouts are unknown.

Parveena Ahangar along with prominent human rights activists founded an organization in 1994(split into two organizations in 2006) Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons to know the whereabouts of their dear ones. Parveena told Agence India Press that, her son was taken mistakenly. “The security forces had come to arrest Javaid Ahmad Bhat, a JKLF militant in neighborhood, but instead picked up my son Javaid Ahmad Ahangar,” remembers Ahangar.

Every month she organizes a sit in protest with others like her whose dear ones are missing. Ahangar says that we are one family: “They are my family, their sufferings are mine, and we fight for same cause. The search of our dear ones,” says Ahangar.

Mothers, sisters, and wives of the disappeared have organized under the association of parents of disappeared persons (APDP) towards bringing justice.

Today they are protesting against the enforced disappearances of their relatives, and one among them is Naseema Bano. Naseema is sitting silently on a road here with a candle in her right hand and wearing black pheran (a long cloak to cover body) to mark the International human rights (December 10) day as black day. She is a ‘half widow’.

Women whose husbands have been subjected to enforced ‘disappearances’ but not yet been declared deceased are often called ‘half widows’.

By conservative estimates there are 1,500 widows in Kashmir.

Indian forces have been accused of human rights abuses against civilians since 1989. By conservative estimates, 22 years of strife have left more than 70,000 dead and more than 8,000 disappeared.

Such disappearances have been carried out by government forces—police, paramilitary, or military—or by militants. However, the number of the disappeared carried out by militants is significantly lower than government forces.

The British Raj, which once controlled Kashmir, a Muslim majority princely Kingdom ruled by a Hindu monarch Maharaja Hari Singh. End of British rule in sub-continent or independence in 1947 split this sub-continent into two sovereign states of India and Pakistan. The two nations have paid with strife and bloodshed to establish their conflicting claims over the disputed region.

Kashmir has signified a major source of tension between India and Pakistan since their birth, 1947, and has seen armed conflict since 1989.

Currently, 4000,000 to 750,000 (the exact number remains unknown and disputed) Indian military and paramilitary remain in Kashmir, making this one of the world’s most militarized regions. The Indian government has passed security legislation—such as the Disturbed Areas Act, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, and the Public Safety Act—giving military and police forces special powers to suppress insurgency and maintain a fortified presence in the region.

Naseema’s husband, a painter, left for work on 21 July, 2000, never to return. She lives in a rented one-room apartment with no curtains and scraps of calendar and news papers over the walls and the ceiling, as if hiding their poverty. She lives with her brother-in-law, her mother-in-law, and her 11- year-old daughter Shazia. Naseema, herself about 27-years-old, is effectively the breadwinner of the family.

She was married to Anwar Shah in 1998; she belongs to south Kashmir’s Islamabad district. They were living happily after their marriage, but their happy life lasted only for two years. Anwar went missing as if he never existed. He vanished as thousands of others like him vanished in Kashmir and get the term ‘disappeared’. She has no clue about what happened to her husband.

Anwar’s disappearance was the beginning of the family’s sufferings. Mushtaq and his Mother, Haseena Bano, who went looking for their loved one, are sent from one military base to another, one jail to another, each suggesting some clue at the next.

They went from pillar to post in order to register a missing report, but the police officials refused to file any report.

Mushtaq along with his mother appeared in the year 2006 to the district magistrate Srinagar with an application for filing a missing report. Again the applicant has filed an application to the District magistrate 16-06-2007. Finally, it was 11 February, 2008 an FIR was lodged in the police post Bona Mohallah, Fateh Kadal on the directions of Chief Judicial Magistrate Srinagar. The irony of the officials and the judiciary did not stop here, the orders were wrong instead the officials filed a wrong date of the missing, as the orders were given by the CJM himself to lodge a missing report in 2002. But Anwar went missing in 2000.A question mark on the judiciary and casts a shadow over its verdicts so far.

The family felt relieved to get a copy of FIR but the irony of the justice is that they ordered a wrong date of the missing report. “We get copy of an FIR, so we thought it will be alright. As an uneducated how could we see such details? And our lawyer also did not speak about it,” laments Mushtaq.

The family has received no compensation for the disappearance. Naseema’s brother-in-law and mother-in-law made several trips to the District Commissioner’s office, all unsuccessful bear no fruits.

The family has a copy of a confidential report by the Special Branch of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) report from October 2009 that states:

"...as per reports the subject has not come to averse notice prior to his missing."

That is, the CID affirmed that Naseema’s husband was not part of the militancy and is thus not believed, even by the CID, to have potentially left with a militant group or gone to Pakistan.

Naseema no longer hears from her natal family. While her parents are long deceased, her siblings refuse to help her unless she re-marries.

Only a small fraction of half widows choose to remarry. Many half widows do not contemplate re-marriage, believing they will eventually receive some information about their husbands. Even more give up the option of remarriage on account of their children; there is a deeply held fear that a stepfather will never accept his wife’s children or give them his best. And for those who want to remarry, social stigmas around remarriage remain strong, while religious interpretations of the rules around remarriage remain contested, says a report titled Half widow, Half wife? Compiled by Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS).

A well known Kashmiri Sociologist, Prof Bashir Ahmad Dabla, carried out a survey in which he says that one of the tragic consequences armed conflict has been experienced in terms of emergence of huge widows and orphans, 16,000 widows in 2000, their estimated number has increased to 32,400 with 97,000 orphans in 2008.

The research says, having the provision for re-marriage in Islam, only 8.66 percent had remarried. "Rest doesn’t want remarry because they wanted to devote themselves for the development of children of the dead husband."

"89 percent had not married till date and had no intention to marry again because children emerged as the crucial problem,” adds study.

The social taboos around remarriage are cultural rather than religious. Islam encourages widow remarriage.

In Islamic law, Shariah, there is no consensus around the marriage of women who are half widows, because there is no special provision for the phenomenon of enforced disappearances. All major schools of Islamic thought provide different guidance about re-marriage.

However, the concept of ‘Ijtehad’ provides for scholars to extrapolate an opinion regarding any topical issue that has no instance in Islamic jurisprudence, if done in accordance with the context and urgency of the issue and without violating basic Shariah. Thus, though the Hanafi School has declared that a woman has to wait 90 years after her husband’s disappearance but, Maliki School says that a woman either wait four or seven years, and if husband remains missing, without information about his whereabouts even after proper investigation the marriage is deemed to have been dissolved.

“If I get married, my daughter’s life will be ruined. If it was a son, it would still be fine, but she is a girl, what will she do without me?”asks Naseema.

The absence of husbands renders women economically vulnerable. In already socioeconomically weak families, this is the status of most families that have suffered disappearances, such vulnerability leads to destitution.

Generally, the husband is the sole breadwinner in the family and his disappearance results in an abrupt paucity of income.

Naseema works in neighborhood homes, cooking and cleaning and doing domestic chores as required. The money fluctuates and everything she makes is spent on food for the four family members, her daughter’s school supplies, and medicines for her mother-in-law. Her brother-in-law, Mushtaq Ahmed, has a disability since birth and walks with difficulty. He cannot earn for the family.

They believe she is squandering her energy taking care of an ailing old mother-in-law, a brother-in-law with debilitating disability, and a young girl. Mushtaq says that if this family have nothing to eat in the house, but they will never beg.

The half widow is mostly not equipped, educationally or socially, to begin earning for her family. As a result she, as well as any children she has, become dependent on others, most often the husband’s family (given the cultural context where parents live in a joint family with their sons and daughters-in-law, not with their married daughters). In the in-laws’ family, relationships often sour after the disappearance.

“I have no mother, no father, and my husband is lost. Where shall I go leaving all of them?”Says Naseema.

In their desperation, many half widows visit pirs, fakirs, darweshs (‘holy men’), make offerings at Sufi shrines, and some even patronize fortune tellers.

“I have also visited Shrines and pirs to get a clue about him, maybe someday he will be back to his home,” says Naseema.

Amidst this socioeconomic insecurity, women battle their emotional traumas while struggling as single mothers, many of whose children also often show manifestations of trauma.

The various socio-economic pressures together have psychological effects on half widows that largely go unaddressed.

Most half widows report anxiety (often described in terms of “speeding up” or palpitations), sleep disorders, and lack of interest in everyday activities. Many half widows exhibit Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); anxiety attacks may be triggered by memories of the disappearance or the disappeared.

The Government Psychiatric Diseases Hospital in Srinagar continues to receive 200 patients a day in its Out Patients’ Department. However, doctors there report not seeing half widows or other family members of the disappeared come in for treatment very often; the families continue to harbor hope without recognizing that retaining such hope has taken its toll on their own mental well-being. Half widows are known to self-medicate, consuming easily available antidepressants, resulting in further health issues. In a vicious cycle, the worsening mental and physical health has adverse effects on their economic situation, which further worsens their social standing and vulnerability, entrenches their isolation and suffering, further compromising.

Valley’s well known psychiatrist Mushtaq Margoob told Agence India Press that most of the half widows have insecurity and uncertainty. “They are always in a state of turbulence, because they are over burned with responsibilities of their children,” says Margoob.“Their whole world changes, their entire life, suffering a perpetual trauma and having extreme psychological agony. Which many times magnified, after months or years, because of their loneliness. They have also hope at the same time. They think Creator’s powers are not limited, it would create a miracle and finally their husband will come back,” elaborates Margoob.

“He always come in my dreams and says he will be back soon,” says Naseema with a hope in her words.

“Agar hai su aeshaa yem maslie ma gasheen” (if he, Anwar, would have been here, there would have been no problems), says Mushtaq in a broken voice.

“I am living on a hope that he will knock at the door and declare I am back,” says Naseema finally.

Z for Zalim: Semiotics and the Occupation of Kashmir

By: Shivam Vij

A for Apple and Z for Zebra. Children are taught the alphabet with the help of images. And the association of images with sound. It helps them associate the sound of A with the sound of Apple, and associate that in turn with the image of an apple. The alphabet book depend

s on images that may be familiar to children. The word Apple is a signifier, and the apple itself is the signified. This is, most simply, what semiotics or the study of signs and sign processes.

In a future world, if there are no zebras, alphabet books may have to replace the last entry with something else. What could it be? Zebra crossing? Zimbabwe?

Last week, the Jammu and Kashmir Police registered a case of sedition, defamation and criminal conspiracy against six officials of BoSE, the government’s very own Board of School Education, for this:

This is a page from a book called Baharistaan-e-Urdu. This attempt to teach Kashmiri children the Urdu alphabet (note to self: this is what I need to learn Nastaliq!) makes them say, “Zoi se Zalim,” Z for Zalim, meaning cruel. That is only one of four examples. The other two are: zaroof (utensils), zahir (visible) and zareef (humorist).

The maker of the textbook no doubt wanted to used such signifiers and signified images that Kashmiri children can relate to. So just as you could say P for Pheran and a child would know what that is, you could say Z for Zalim and refer to the security forces, because a child in Kashmir hears them be called that all the time. It is time for scholars of semiotics to study the Kashmir conflict, but it needs no scholar to tell you how this incident is illustrative of what the people of Kashmir, whom Indians say are fellow Indians, fell about the security forces Indians say provide security to the people of Kashmir.

It would be ridiculous to suggest that the maker of this textbook was not being political, or that the political import of this act is unintentional. Such is the repression in Kashmir that everyone is deeply aware, and in fact over-cautious about acts of speech. Who should this be said to, how should I frame it, should I keep my counsel? No, no, I don’t want azadi. Come tomorrow and I’ll want it.

The textbook image resembles a private security guard and not a policeman, but it is obvious that a “security” person is being used to stand-in for much more than, say, an ATM security guard. It is certainly not the image of a “hooligan” as the BoSE chairman would have us believe. That the textbook writer did not place a police, paramilitary or army person there is practical: the book wouldn’t have escaped attention on its way to the printing press. The clever toning down again suggests s/he was aware of how political his/her small act was. S/he knew it would go much farther in fostering dissent against the state than a post in a blog an op-ed in a newspaper.

The incident shows how easily, in the smallest of ways, the Indian state’s claims of Peace and Normalcy in Kashmir crumble! India and its Kashmir spokespersons and experts and defenders on Kashmir have been telling the whole world about how this was a Peaceful Year in Kashmir, because, well, the security forces were not asked to kill any stone-pelters by shooting into their skulls!

What a peaceful year it has been in the beautiful valley of Kashmir, indeed, a year so peaceful when a textbook published by the state was teaching Z for Zalim about people who provided this peace and security! What an ungrateful people indeed!

Writing in the Economic Times, Najeeb Mubarki is confused. He writes, “It is a truth often verified that school textbooks across south Asia are filled with hilarities and downright stupid mistakes. An exercise in seeking something to be offended by would probably throw up umpteen examples. That, in general, is a sad commentary on the primary school systems in the region.” And then he further writes: “…in its harsh suppression of dissent and opposition within Kashmir, in its seeking to blatantly —and, one might add, arguably illegally too — criminalise extant political realities in Kashmir, the administration often works and functions like a police state.” The state can’t possibly be crushing dissent and opposition here because according to Mubarki, there was no dissent in the textbook writer’s act, it was only a “downright stupid mistake,” a “hilarity” like the rest of her/his South Asian counterparts!

Mubarki wonders why the state police wastes time trawling through textbooks – but in fact, the book had been in circulation for a year. It could just have been that a police officer sat down to teach his child and was embarrassed to see this. (I wonder why Kashmiris sometimes try to suggest that state repression in Kashmir is mindless. See for instance this article by Burhan Qureshi that recollects memories of repression but not the revolt that the repression was responding to.)

Mubarki’s piece has an excellent title though: Where the state charges itself with sedition. It must be sad for the BoSE chief, Sheikh Bashir, to be accused of sedition. For those who don’t know, Bashir is one of the most patriotic Indians in Kashmir. Bashir is such an Indian nationalist that he even paid from his own pocket to be honoured with the Bharat Gaurav Award The award was ‘given’ by a certain NRI organisation called the India International Friendship Society. So happy was the BoSE Chairman about being called the Pride of India that he decided to use tax-payers’ money to issue advertisements in newspapers congratulating himself on being ‘awarded’ the Bharat Gaurav Award. Bashir is the sort of ‘Indian’ who is singled out in Kashmir for outsiders to be shown – look, he’s Kashmiri and a patriotic Indian! For all such patriots the Indian government should institute a special award so they don’t have to buy it any more.

News of this funny incident has been reported all over the world, thus once again giving away the bad planning of the Indian version of How to Have an Occupation and Pretend it Ain’t One. Perhaps the Home Ministry’s Kashmir Division should learn from the Kashmiris themselves; for instance, from this comment by a Kashmiri on Facebook:

"The emperor hereby orders deletion of the letter zoi alphabet from Urdu, Kashmiri, Gojri, Pahari, Sheena and Balti languages of his colony. Thus words like zaalim and zulm naturally stand obliterated from the lexicon.

The subjects are hereby directed to unlearn zoi and any word beginning with zoi. In addition, by the same decree, mazloom is also designated as a forbidden word from these languages unless used by the authorities in their official pursuits. Anybody found using zoi or its derivatives will be punishable with minimum 14 years of imprisonment by the newly promulgated Indic Alphabetica Act.

The order is implemented with immediate effect."

Appeared Earlier On: kafila

Nuptial Knot Of Sisters Awaits Brother’s Release

Combining the strength to collectively hold the position of their brother in the family, the sisters of a Kashmiri youth still wait for their brother to return and get them married. The dreams seem to be shattered due to their brother’s detention.

Last year on December 31, Mehraj-ud-din Shergujree of Hajin Bandipora was arrested in Bhopal. “He was falsely implicated there. He had gone to Bhopal for an orientation as he had a lot of interest in learning religion. Unfortunately he became the victim of cruelty there and was made a prisoner”, says his sister, Shaista Qadir.

Mehraj has nine sisters and seven of them are unmarried. The sisters say they are waiting for their Zuu to come. “We have never thought of happiness without Baijan. In fact, happiness went away the day he was taken away from our eyes”, says Shaista.

Writing his final year examinations, Mehraj is presently detained at Srinagar’s Central Jail. Away from home, his sister says, Mehraj is living life of a caged bird. “He would walk freely in his home; would go to college and handle our father’s shop very well”, says Shaista.

The family says Mehraj was once brought to local police station Hajin but detained again, later. “They once brought him here and told us he will soon be released. We were anticipating his homecoming but our dreams shattered when they detained him again,” says his father, Ghulam Qadir.

Even a local court, according to Ghulam Qadir, had granted bail to Mehraj but never to be released. “They played with our sentiments. At the time when I need my son very much, he is languishing in jail”, he says.

Mehraj-ud-din is the only son of Ghulam Qadir Sheergujree. He used to run the shop besides going to college. “He worked very hard. On one hand he was studying and on the other hand, like an awlaad-e-saleha (faithful son) helped our father in maintaining the shop”, says Shaista.

After passing 2nd year exams Mehraj had started his own shop selling Kiryana items. “He worked hard in his shop after he would come from college. Besides he helped me in early hours of morning in collecting milk”, his father says.

The family is waiting for their son to come home and bring them happiness. His shop is running in loss. They wait for him to come, shoulder the burden of the family, and get his sisters married. Two of his engaged sisters will not marry until he comes.

Mehraj’s 10-year-old niece says her Mamu will bring her lots of toys. “Mamu gaya hai hajas, woh bohat saare khiloonay layenge wahan se (Mamu has gone to Hajj, he will bring me lots of toys),” she says.

Bhagavad Gita Faces Legal Ban In Russia

Bhagavad Gita, one of the holiest Hindu scriptures, is facing a legal ban and the prospect of being branded as "an extremist" literature across Russia. A court in Siberia's Tomsk city is set to deliver its final verdict Monday in a case filed by state prosecutors.

The final pronouncement in the case will come two days after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his Dec 15-17 official visit for a bilateral summit with Russian President Dmitry Medvdev consolidated bilateral trade and strategic ties and personal friendship.

The case, which has been going on in Tomsk court since June, seeks ban on a Russian translation of "Bhagavad Gita As It Is" written by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON).

It also wants the Hindu religious text banned in Russia and declared as a literature spreading "social discord", its distribution on Russian soil rendered illegal.

In view of the case, Indians settled in Moscow, numbering about 15,000, and followers of the ISKCON religious movement here have appealed to Manmohan Singh and his government to intervene diplomatically to resolve the issue in favour of the scripture, an important part of Indian epic Mahabharata written by sage Ved Vyas.

The ISKCON followers in Russia have also written a letter to the Prime Minister's Office in New Delhi, calling for immediate intervention, lest the religious freedom of Hindus living here be compromised.

"The case is coming up for a final verdict on Monday in Tomsk court. We want all efforts from the Indian government to protect the religious rights of Hindus in Russia," Sadhu Priya Das of ISKCON and a devotee of a 40-year-old Krishna temple in central Moscow, told IANS.

The court, which took up the case filed by the state prosecutors, had referred the book to the Tomsk State University for "an expert" examination Oct 25.

But Hindu groups in Russia, particularly followers of ISKCON, say the university was not qualified as it lacked Indologists who study the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent.

The Hindus pleaded with the court that the case was inspired by religious bias and intolerance from a "majority religious group in Russia", and have sought that their rights to practice their religious beliefs be upheld.

The prosecutor's case also seeks to ban the preachings of Prabhupada and ISKCON's religious beliefs, claiming these were "extremist" in nature and preached "hatred" of other religious beliefs.

"They have not just tried to get the Bhagavad Gita banned, but also brand our religious beliefs and preachings as extremist," Das said.

The ISKCON devotees have taken up the matter with the Indian embassy in Moscow too for an early diplomatic intervention before things get worse and the court passes an adverse verdict banning the Bhagavad Gita and Krishna consciousness teachings.

In the Nov 1 letter addressed to Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Pulok Chatterji, ISKCON's New Delhi branch Governing Body Commissioner Gopal Krishna Goswami, said the prosecutor's affidavit claims Lord Krishna "is evil and not conforming to Christian religious view".

Goswami also urged Manmohan Singh to accord priority to the matter during his Moscow stay and take it up with the Russian authorities.

Indian diplomatic corps officials at the embassy here, who were unwilling to be named, told IANS that they have been following up the case since the time it was brought to their notice earlier this year.

They had also taken up the matter at the appropriate levels in the Russian government to get the case either withdrawn or get the defence to fight the case to obtain a favourable verdict.

Officials at the Indian Prime Minister's Office, who were part of the Indian delegation accompanying Manmohan Singh, confirmed to IANS the case and the letter they received from ISKCON in this regard.

"This matter is receiving the highest attention and the Indian embassy officials in Moscow have been instructed to follow up the case with the Russian authorities," they said