Uproar in India as Hindu group files court case over lion named after Muslim emperor

To supporters of these Hindu groups, however, the court petition filed by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) is justified – as Indian authorities have for years placated the country’s Muslim community over incidents of alleged blasphemy.

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The Calcutta High Court will hear the petition on Tuesday.

VHP is one of several Hindu nationalist groups who detest anything to do with the Mughals, who ruled over a huge swathe of the Indian subcontinent for several centuries before the arrival of the British and are regarded by hardliners as having enslaved the Hindu majority.

In its petition, VHP, which has ties with Modi’s ruling BJP, is demanding action against the North Bengal Wild Animals Park in Siliguru, West Bengal.

“Sita cannot stay with the Mughal emperor Akbar,” VHP leader Anup Mondal told reporters in Kolkata on Sunday.

The VHP also objects to the lioness being named after a Hindu goddess. “Such naming of animals after the name of religious deities is very much sacrilegious and tantamount to blasphemy,” said Dulal Chandra Roy, another VHP official.

Alarmed at the protest, zoo officials have separated the two lions and transferred them to a park in Tripura Zoo in the country’s northeast.

Critics say the case is yet another example of how the Modi government has presided over rising religious intolerance and provocative demands for censorship in India, a Hindu-majority country with the world’s largest Muslim minority population at some 200 million.

“Members of the ruling party often talk about Hindu slavery under the Mughals and express disgust for anything to do with Muslim culture. This encourages Hindu extremists to keep the pot boiling with