Can a ‘Muslim’ lion, ‘Hindu’ lioness live together? An Indian zoo dilemma

A Hindu nationalist group is upset because a lion named after a Mughal king was in an enclosure with a lioness named after a Hindu deity.

The Calcutta High Court this week told the government of the eastern Indian state of West Bengal to consider renaming two lions in a zoo-cum-animal reserve after a Hindu nationalist organisation called Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) found their names rather catty.

Starting on Tuesday, the court heard the plea requesting a change of name for a lioness called Sita, named after a Hindu deity. Until recently, Sita shared an enclosure at Bengal Safari Park with a lion named Akbar, partly the reason for the outrage. Here’s what it’s all about.

The lion Akbar shares its name with a 16th-century Mughal emperor who is widely seen as having been a beacon of secularism. He had a Hindu wife, and many of his key advisers were Hindu, too. But like all emperors of the Mughal dynasty, which ruled over much of the Indian subcontinent, Akbar, too, is largely a hate figure among Hindu nationalists.

“Sita cannot stay with the Mughal Emperor Akbar,” VHP official Anup Mondal said on Sunday.

Members of the VHP, which is affiliated with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), also said they received complaints about hurt religious sentiments from all over India, deeming the naming of the big cats blasphemous, in the petition written by VHP’s West Bengal secretary Lakshman Bansal.

The lions arrived in West Bengal under an exchange programme involving Sepahijala Zoological Park in the neighbouring state of Tripura, governed by the BJP. The VHP alleged that Akbar was initially named Ram – a Hindu deity and Sita’s husband – and was renamed by the West Bengal authorities, the