Igor Kotin
1 Introduction
Archaeological findings of a Hindu mūrti (image) in the Staraya Maina in the Volga region of Russia prove the early, occasional presence of Indians there. Hinduism has been present in Astrakhan since the sixteenth century. With the Russian conquest of Astrakhan in 1556, members of a small, local Indian trading community became residents of the Moscow state. Yet many of them were merely considered foreign traders, and primarily subjects of the Persian (Iranian) shah. For most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Indians sold Russian goods to Persia and took Persian goods to southern Russia. Until the nineteenth century, this community was an important part of the trading world in southern Russia, although in time they turned from direct trade to banking. They enjoyed tax and legal immunity and received protection from Astrakhan voevodas’ (military and administrative heads of the city) as well as from the central power. In the early eighteenth century, the first Russian emperor, Peter the Great, met the head of the Astrakhan Hindus and, at their request, asked the Russian Senate to issue a law protecting Hindu beliefs. This was the first law in Russia that protected a foreign creed. From the nineteenth to the late twentieth century, occasional Indian adventurers, politicians, and students visited Russia, but few of them decided to stay there for a long time. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the introduction of a market econ- omy in Russia, many Indian students became businessmen and were joined by fellow businessmen coming from India. By 2001, the Indian Parliamentary Committee on the Indian Diaspora counted 16,000 Indians in Russia—mostly Hindus and mainly in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Between the years 2003 and 2006, Hindus became the object of Russian media interest in connection with plans to construct a large Vedic centre on the Leningradsky prospect in cen- tral Moscow in cooperation with the Hare Krishnas (i.e., members of ISKCON; International Society for Krishna Consciousness). The plans failed, but they managed instead to establish a smaller centre in the Molzhaninovsky district of Moscow, which is outside the city centre, a decade later. This issue received much media attention. Other Hindu-related issues covered by Russian and international media are the “Bhagavadgītā case” (2011–12) and yoga teacher
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004432284_057 Hinduism in Russia 1393
Dmitry Ugay’s “unlawful missionary activity case” (2016). Both trials failed. Reactions to both cases show the growing cooperation between Indian Hindus and Russian members of Hindu traditions such as the Hare Krishnas. At the same time, Russia’s evolution into an ultra-conservative country that protects “traditional religions” and prosecutes “sects” makes local followers of Hinduism and Hindu-related new religious movements vulnerable to government con- trol or even punishment.
2 Early Period of Hindu Presence in Russia: the Astrakhan Community
Indian merchants supposedly found trade ways to Rus in the twelfth century. Evidence of a Hindu mūrti (image) in the Staraya Maina and Indian coins in the Volga region prove their early presence there. With the Mongol invasion of the Volga region and Rus, Indians went to Sarai, the Mongol-Tatar capital city on the Volga River. Russian merchants also frequently visited the capital of the Golden Horde of the Mongols. Thereby the Volga region became a meeting place for Russians and Indians, at least from the twelfth century onwards. The collapse of the Golden Horde resulted in the emergence of the Tatar Khanate in Haji Tarkhan (Astrakhan), which is not far from the ruins of Sarai, where both Indians and Russians had their trading sites. The invasion of the Astrakhan Khanate by Moscow’s Tsar Ivan Grozny (the Terrible) in the sixteenth century resulted in the inclusion of the existing trading colony of Indians in Astrakhan, and Terki (Kizlyar) in the North Caucasus, into the Russian state. There is sig- nificant information on the Hindu presence in Astrakhan in the archives in Astrakhan, Moscow, and St. Petersburg (see Palmov 1934: 161–82; Goldberg 1949: 127–48; 1958; Gopal 1989). From these archives we know about the special trading place (“The Indian Court”) for Indian merchants that had been con- structed in 1624 in Astrakhan, and it was close to trading centres for Armenian and Persian merchants. It had space for trading rows and housing for about one hundred Indian merchants who lived there with their servants. In the eigh- teenth century “the Indian Court” fell into poor condition and was demolished. A new building for Indians was constructed in the early nineteenth century. This building, on the present-day Komsomolskaya and near the Volodarskogo Street (former Indian) line, still exists and is marked by a commemoration sign as a historical monument. The Indians who lived there and were involved in trade and banking in Astrakhan originally came from Multan in Punjab and were mostly Hindu Banyas or traders by caste. In Astrakhan they mostly sold Iranian goods, like