Gita: No Info On Authentic Gita Text, Culture Min Says In Rti Reply

Gita: No Info On Authentic Gita Text, Culture Min Says In Rti Reply

The Union ministry of culture in an RTI query seeking access to an authentic text of the Bhagavad Gita has said that “no such information is available” with it.

The reply has come at a time when the Gujarat government has decided to teach the Gita in schools and the Karnataka government is following a similar path.

The RTI query was filed by Belagavi advocate Surendra Ugare in December 2021. Ugare had asked: “Kindly provide information regarding the holy book BHAGAVADGITA and kindly provide its address to see the original pages and give us details as to where it has been preserved.” He had also requested information on the “recognized books and authentic books along with its publication list”.

The ministry replied in February saying, “No such information is available.”

Ugare said he filed the query because he thought the Gita would be the next subject that the BJP would push in line with its Hindutva agenda.

“Interestingly, the culture department has zero knowledge of the Gita and they don’t seem to know that the Gita is part of Mahabharata,” Ugare said. “If they had known, they would have responded with details of the Mahabharata, Vyasa Maharishi , Ganesha and Krishna ,” he said.

The question about the Bhagavad Gita text was put to Ramabhadra Priya Das, a devotee of Lord Krishna who is associated with the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON).

Das said the original manuscript is not available as it is written 5,000 years ago. “The script is lost but the parampara has passed down generations,” he said.

Das, based in Vrindavan in UP, said there are authentic commentaries on the Gita. “The Bhagavad Gita should be understood in a bonafide parampara coming directly from Lord Krishna,” he said. There are four such bonafide paramparas — the Sri Sampradaya, Brahma-Madhwa-Goudiya Sampradaya, Kumara Sampradaya and the Rudra Sampradaya, Das said.

“The commentaries of spiritual acharyas or gurus in these paramparas are the authentic commentaries on the Gita. The rest that are available in the market are of no spiritual value,” he said.

The Krishna devotee also made a distinction between the paramparas and interpretations of the Gita available in other texts. “In almost all of them (the texts), the commentator expresses his opinion without touching the spirit of the Gita as it is. But the people coming from the paramparas do not interpret or express their opinion. They simply unfold what Krishna said,” Das said.