Gita, canon & confusion

There was a hue and cry in the whole country, and rightly so, when state prosecutors in Siberia’s Tomsk city asked the courts to ban one particular translation of the Bhagvad Gita in Russia. Fortunately the plea was rejected by the Russian court. Surprisingly, however, there was no reaction from anyone when the Bhopal high court recently ruled that the Gita “is essentially a book on Indian philosophy and not a book on Indian religion”.

The bench of justices, Ajit Singh and Sanjay Yadav, held this view while dismissing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by the spokesperson of the Catholic Church, Father Anand Muttungal, seeking to include summaries of sacred books of all other religions in the academic curriculum following the BJP state government’s announcement to include a summary of Bhagvad Gita in school curriculum.
The government’s action, the PIL pointed out, was in violation of Article 28 (1&2): “No religious instruction shall be provided in any educational institutions wholly maintained out of state funds.” The judges added, “On reading Clause 1 of Article 28 we find that it does not ban moral instruction.”
The honourable justices had earlier given the petitioner’s counsel, Rajesh Chand, two months to read the Gita before coming back to the court. My own research, however, suggests that the honourable justices themselves need a thorough re-reading on the origin of the Holy Book and its contents through the many commentaries on it, including that of Adi Shankaracharya.
Hindu scriptures in India come under two categories: the Sruti and the Smriti. It is true that the Gita technically does not belong to Sruti, acknowledged by the Hindu tradition as eternal (the sacred texts comprising the central canon of Hinduism, the Vedas and the Upanishads), but to Smriti (literally, that which is remembered), as it is a section of the Mahabharata.
Gispert-Sauch, an emeritus professor of Indology and a well- known scholar of Indian religions in Delhi, holds, “Adi Shankaracharya himself and the Indian tradition in general include the Gita among the prasthana-traya of the Vedanta tradition (i.e., the Upanishads [Veda], the Gita [smrti] and Badarayana’s Brahma Sutras, which may be considered ‘philosophy’, although they summarise the teachings of the Upanishads). These three ‘foundational’ texts are often appealed to as authoritative in religious, legal, ritual and philosophical texts.”
In the introduction to his commentary of the Bhagvad Gita, Shankaracharya tells us that it was declared in the Kurukshetra by the Supreme Lord and Creator (Bhagvan and Iswara) to ensure the sustenance and well-being of the “brahma” world and all its people. Mahatma Gandhi considered the Gita as the summary of the whole Vedic revelation.
Gispert further avers, “In my opinion, the ‘Song of the Lord’ or, more accurately according to the traditional colophons at the end of each of the 18 chapters, the Gita Upanishad sung by the Lord is primarily a religious text, but it is also simultaneously a great philosophical text, even if it is not sruti but smriti. After all, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, no less than the six darsanas, are all smritis, and they are the foundation of most religious life, both in South and North India. The Gita is not a mere philosophical text as, for example, the bhashyas of Shankara or Ramanuja are. It is much higher, authentically religious and I would add, mystical.”
Would the honourable justices consider Lord Krishna a mere philosopher and the festival of Janmashtami (the birth of Lord Krishna) to be celebrated in universities? Would the justices then please explain why the temple worshippers at Vrindavan deify Lord Krishna? And why on earth do our courts ask witnesses to place their hand on the Gita to swear, if it is not a religious book? Would they also hold that Meera Bai’s experience of total mystical union with Lord Krishna was just a moment of philosophical delusion?
It is a little more than surprising and indeed intriguing that neither the religious leaders nor the philosophers or indeed the secularists of our country expressed their views on this ruling of the Madhya Pradesh high court.

Father Dominic Emmanuel is the director of communication of the Delhi Catholic Church. He can be contacted
at frdominic@gmail.com