A Russian court yesterday rejected an attempt to ban a translation of a sacred Hindu text in a ruling greeted with relief by New Delhi after protests over the sensitive issue in India.

The attempted ban was the work of ignorant and misdirected or motivated individuals

The ruling represented a rare victory for religious freedoms in Russia after years of expanding influence by the country’s dominant Orthodox Church.

Prosecutors in the Siberian city of Tomsk had asked a court to classify a Russian translation of the Hare Krishna edition of the Bhagavad Gita as “extremist literature” alongside books such as Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

They cited conclusions from two Russian state universities claiming the foreword to the Russian edition contained signs of “incitement to religious hatred” and “extremism”.

The prologue was written by Swami Prabhupada – founder of the international Hare Krishna movement that has had repeated run-ins with local authorities since its first appearance in post-Soviet Russia.

Prosecutors had asked for the ban in June after running a check on Hare Krishna’s activities in the Siberian region. The Russian general prosecutor’s office had also conducted national checks on the movement in 2004 and 2005.

The Izvestia daily said the eight-hour hearing ended yesterday “with the judge’s verdict being drowned out by the sound of applause” from Hare Krishna’s supporters in the court room.

The case threatened to create an unexpected roadblock in relations between Russia and India, strategic allies that have had exclusive military and other trade relations since Soviet times.

Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna had described the prosecutors’ attempted ban as the work of “ignorant and misdirected or motivated individuals” that attacked a text defining the “very soul of our great civilisation”.