Shri Prakash Ji’s appeal to Vladimir Putin

Shri Prakash Ji’s appeal to Vladimir Putin.

I'am Shri Prakash Ji. I have been living in Russia for the past 27 years. Today I would like to make an appeal to the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Honorable Vladimir Vladimirovich, I love Russia very much, and I have been living in Russia along with my family for the past 27 years. I try to help people around me to the best of my ability. I have a spiritual and cultural organization, and people who are interested in Indian culture, yoga, and leading a good way of life, come to us, and my disciples and I try our best to help them in this direction. Also, we are a part of a religious group. I'am a Hindu by religion, and was born in a Hindu family, so since birth, Hinduism has been my faith.

Hinduism is a very ancient religion; it is one of the major world religions. For 25 years, I lived a very peaceful life in Russia. I gave love and received love and respect back from people. I have a very big spiritual family in Russia, and I have a very good relationship with them. I teach them to have love and kindness in their hearts, show them ways to lead a fulfilling life, bring up their children, so that they would walk on the right path in life, and progress spiritually.

The most important goal that we have as human beings is to not forget about God and spiritual growth while working and living in the world. When talking to people, that is the one message that I try to convey to them. All of my three children were born in Moscow, Russia, and we consider it to be our second homeland. In fact my children consider this country as their first homeland. They love and respect this country, its traditions and culture. We value this country very much and always hope and wish the best for our Russia.

So the last 25 years were peaceful, everything was fine, but in the last two years,...I don't know what is wrong with the person that I'am going to tell you about now, even though I don't really want to do that, but I have to talk about this person, his name is Alexander Dvorkin. He runs his own blog, and for the past two-two and a half years, he has been continuously writing about me, my religion, and has even brought my children into this, writing about them, dishonoring and insulting everything he can. By this time, some 70-75 pages of this filth has been accumulated in his various posts. In the beginning, I was tolerating his behavior thinking that it might just be his distorted views about me, but as time went by I realized that he had some very bad intentions.

All of this is happening on religious grounds, because Hinduism is a minority in this country, and he is very disrespectful towards Hinduism. He has had problems with various branches of Hinduism before this as well, and now I'am the number one topic on his blog. They write all sorts of insults under various names on this blog, which are read by my kids, my disciples, and other people who follow Hinduism, and I feel this to be utterly wrong. The first thing that I did is I wrote a letter to their organization telling them that these activities are bad, and demanded for them to stop these wrongdoings and remove this material. But in their reply, they told us to go and write things on that blog as well, and refused to remove the posts that they have written. Then, I talked to my lawyer, Shota Gorgadze, and he advised me to file a case in court. So I filed a lawsuit against slander and defamation in court.

The court proceedings were lengthy, and the verdict said that their activities were the expression of freedom of speech, that it's just the opinion of different people, and there is nothing insulting about what is being written. But I don't share this view. Presently, Alexander Dvorkin is employing various ways and methods to disturb my family and I, and I would even say that his activities have become a constant threat to us. He has a complex net of connections that he is using to disturb us. He started with using media sources. First he would write an insulting post, then send the link of the blog to certain media sources, and since most of the time they were unaware about me, because I never put myself out there, and was content with what I have, communicating with and helping those who came to me and showed interest, those media sources took Dvorkin's words at face value. Some three TV channels had even aired clips of a slanderous character about me and my work.

I filed a lawsuit against one of these TV channels as well, to which the court gave the same verdict as in the case before about it being an expression of the freedom of speech. They went even as far as to say that the clip that they had aired was about a completely different person. After these cases, I wrote a letter to you and got a reply from your administration saying that my case will be handed over to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, that they will study my situation and reply later on. But, since then, I haven't received any reply, so I turned to the Embassy of India in Moscow, who knew me as a representative of Hinduism living here, and talked to the ambassador and the consul about my situation, who were aware about it as well. 
In India, I met the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs also knows about the situation. I had a conversation with the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Gen. V.K.Singh, who assured me about working to help us in this direction. I think that he might've talked to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia S.V. Lavrov and his office to give him this information.

Even then Dvorkin hasn't stopped carrying out his activities. I have only one question in my mind : who is standing behind this person giving him the power to do things that are bringing disharmony in our society? Who is supporting him? I would like to say to whomsoever behind him, that this is not for the good of Russia as a country. There are enough problems in this world already, and it is completely wrong and pointless to create more of them. We, as adults, should look into taking measures to bring harmony into our society, instead of creating strife, whether on religious or cultural grounds. We all strive to reach the same God, only the path differs. Some take the route of Christianity, others of Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, or Judaism. We are all brothers and sisters going towards the same God. But I have no idea as to why it is so hard for Mr. Dvorkin to come to terms with this fact, and what he is trying to achieve by disturbing me, telling his associates to threaten me, or wanting to drive me out of Russia. Personally, I never troubled Dvorkin in any way, I had never heard about him before discovering his blogs, and he is just a little younger than my father.

I didn't know anything about him, but after all this happened, I started to understand his ideology, but what surprised me even more was that his site had the blessings of the previous Patriarch of Russia. Why is this happening? The embassy had even written a letter to the Patriarch, and they got a reply saying that Mr. Dvorkin is in no way affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church. But I still have a question for the Russian Orthodox Church : why is he using the name of the Patriarch on his site and saying that he has his blessings? A man of such spiritual stature cannot give blessings to somebody who carries out such defamatory works. At the same time, I understand that spiritual people usually give their blessings to anyone who turns to them, but it does not mean that they should stop paying attention his activities.

I did not want to bother you, but this is proving to be a very difficult period for my family and I. Hopefully, if I will have the chance to meet you sometime in the future, we will talk about things that really matter such as love and kindness, but, as of right now, I have to talk about the situation that has been created. What Mr. Dvorkin is doing right now is contacting various governmental structures. For example, yesterday some people with weapons had arrived simultaneously to my flat here in Moscow, and our center situated out of Moscow. But after meeting me, and the people who live in the center, they understood that we were good people, checked what they had the order to verify peacefully and told me that they had come from the District Department of internal affairs. They also said that I had to come to their office to write an explanatory statement. We had a good conversation, I trusted them, and even went there without our lawyer, and just took my son. When in the office, a man entered into the room and started talking in a manner so aggressive that it left me absolutely stunned. He asked us whether we know that Russia is an orthodox country and told us that we don't have any place here. When I asked them his name, they refused to reveal it to me. They just said that he was there manager. But I think that they must've been Alexander Dvorkin's people, I know that not all people in various governmental structures are his people, but nevertheless there are those who support his ideology and help him.

So I request you to pay attention to this, so that there would be no disharmony in our society because of religious beliefs. You are a very busy man, and have many matters and issues to work on, so that our world would be a safe and peaceful place, and I know that you always strive towards this goal. But I still request you to thoroughly look into this problem, so that Dvorkin would remove his blog. Before writing his posts, he must think that the man who he is writing about also has a family, and despite coming from another country he lives and loves the country he resides in presently, and does his best to help the people around him as much as he can. He shouldn't disturb him, because from a spiritual perspective all his activities are utterly wrong. Therefore, I would like you to pay attention to this issue, and help me solve this problem.

I told the ambassador that I would like to talk to Vladimir Vladimirovich, and tell him about the whole situation. He told me that he is a very busy man, but he gave me a word that he would try his best to organize a meeting in the future, or talk to him about our situation himself. But since I don't have the connections that will allow me to speak directly on some national TV channel and voice my opinion, I can only use this medium to address you and turn your attention to this case to help me solve this problem. I will always be grateful to you for that, and I will always wish for the best for you, Russia and its people. My principle is to live peacefully yourself and let everyone around you live a good life as well. Therefore, I'am always ready to talk to you whenever you get the chance, so that we can have a more detailed conversation and discussion about this matter. Good bye! See you soon.