Moscow, Russia - A senior official in the Tomsk Prosecutor General's Office says an effort to ban a Hare Krishna book it considers extremist literature will continue despite being recently thrown out of court.
The local prosecutor general's deputy, Alexander Buksman, said Thursday that his office's case against the book "Bhagavad Gita as It Is" is not an attack on religion, but pertains to certain passages that are "extremist" in tone.
"Society looks at this issue as if prosecutors are opposed to this religion. But this is nothing of the kind," Buksman said, according to RIA-Novosti.
The case to ban the book — a 1968 adaptation of the popular Hindu religious text done by the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness — had been thrown out in January, but prosecutors appealed the ruling.
Prosecutors argued that the book contained extremist statements denouncing Christianity and promoting the superiority of Hinduism.