Police prevent a bid to burn Gita and Ramayana

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Lucknow The Uttar Pradesh police have arrested four miscreants allegedly

belonging to the 'Shudra', a lower caste, who were trying to make an offering

of shoes to the idol of Lord Rama to express their anguish. They were

complaining that the holy books show the 'Shudras' in poor light. The police

arrested the members. The documents recovered from the place of incident are

now with the police. "The low caste people organised a meeting in a common

hall without permission where they made an offering of shoes to the idol of

Lord Rama. They also tried to burn the holy books like the Ramayana and the

Gita. People informed us and we arrested them. The things that have been

recovered are kept in police custody," said K N Singh, Inspector, Darul Safa.

Meanwhile, members of the "Shudra" community say it is up to the Court, to

decide on the importance of the holy books. "The police said that we have

offered

shoes to the idol of Rama. The court should decide whether Ramayana or Gita are

important or not. The police cannot decide this," said Chaudhary Charan Patel,

General Secretary, of the Shudra community group in the area. Bhagavad Gita is

a core sacred text of Hinduism and its philosophy. Often referred to as the

Gita, it is a summation of the Vedic, Yogic, Vedantic and Tantric philosophies.

The Bhagavad Gita literally means the "Song of the Lord", and contains the

essence of Hinduism. It is not clear when the Bhagavad Gita was written.

Astronomical evidence cited(Two Eclipses in Thirteen Days) in the Mahabharata

itself put the date at 3137 BCE, the Puranas suggest a date of about 1924 BCE.

Scholarly estimates place it in the latter half of the 1st millennium BC

(roughly 4th century BC), together with the older Upanishads. The Ramayana is

part of the Hindu smriti, written by Valmiki. This epic of 24,000 verses in

seven kands (or, chapters or

books) tells of Lord Rama, a Raghuvansi prince of Ayodhya whose wife Sita is

abducted by the demon King, Ravana. It contains the teachings of the ancient

Hindu sages and presents them through allegory. The characters of Rama, Sita,

Lakshmana, Bharat, Hanumana and Ravana (the arch villain of the story) are all

fundamental to the grander cultural consciousness of India. The Ramayana is

set in the Treta Yuga. Many interpret this as 3000 BCE (based on astronomical

data in the Ramayana). (ANI)

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