India Zoo official gave respected names to two lions. He was punished.
The lions look bewildered or even bored in the photos, but they are not unhappy. Sita and Akbar had lived together for years. Now in a captive breeding program in India’s eastern state of West Bengal, they are as married as animals can be.
But many people around them are angry. On Saturday, authorities suspended a senior forestry official who had been overseeing the animals for naming the lioness Sita, after a revered Hindu goddess, and her consort Akbar, after a medieval Muslim emperor.
In an atmosphere of heightened religious and political tensions between Hindus and Muslims in the country, the names of the lions caused a stir. Lakshman Bansal, an official with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a far-right group linked to India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, said that when he read the lions’ names in a Bangladeshi newspaper it “felt provocative.”
“It’s blasphemy,” Mr. Bansal said by phone. “And an attack on the religious beliefs of millions of Hindus.”
The Asiatic lions, along with other animals such as spectacled langurs, two leopards and four Indian antelopes, were brought to the Bengal safari park from the nearby state of Tripura early this month.
Indian zoos have a long tradition of naming animals, especially tigers and other big cats, after warriors, kings and mythological figures. A cheetah in the central state of Madhya Pradesh is called Agni, after an ancient god of fire. At zoos across the country, conservationists said there are many other cats named after Sita and Akbar, who are among the most popular figures in Indian myth and history. Such names help increase the popularity of the animals among both children and adults.
Heightened sensitivities between Hindus and Muslims play a role in the animal naming dispute. Since January 22, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a huge temple to the god Ram in Ayodhya, members of Mr Bansal’s VHP organization have been celebrating it as their own victory. In 1992, they led a mob that destroyed a Mughal-era mosque that had stood on the site where the new temple had been built.
The real Akbar was not only a Muslim, but had Central Asian roots and took wives of different faiths, including a Hindu princess. Contemporary right-wing Hindu activists have campaigned against interfaith marriages, accusing Indian Muslim men of trying to woo, marry and convert Hindu girls.
Mr Bansal said that after reading the news, he immediately wrote a letter to forest officials in West Bengal. When he received no response, he went to court to file a petition to demand that the name of the female lion be changed on behalf of practicing Hindus around the world.
The case was initially presented to a judge, who expressed surprise and asked the petitioners’ lawyer if he was talking about land.
“No, lord of the lion, lion,” the said lawyer emphatically.
“Lion!” said the judge. “So you have challenged the naming of the lion,” the judge continued. At one point he asked, “But who cares?”
Bansal’s lawyers argued that the lions Akbar and Sita could set a dangerous precedent: “Tomorrow a donkey might be named after some deity.”
Whether or not the court was convinced of the risk of a slippery slope, it concluded days later that there was no justification for the big cats’ names and asked West Bengal government officials if they would consider changing them.
And the court went one step further. During a hearing, Justice Saugata Bhattacharya said: “Sita is worshiped by a larger section of this country. I am also against naming the lion after Akbar. He was an efficient, successful and secular Mughal emperor.”
Under pressure, the state government in Tripura, where the animals were named before being brought to Bengal, decided to investigate how the names were arrived at. The officers soon found references to Akbar and Sita in the archives. The official suspended on Saturday, Prabin Lal Agrawal, had denied choosing the names.
Some people took to social media to call the situation absurd. One said it was “a ridiculous precedent” and another said she first thought it was “a joke shared from a parody account.”
Shubhankar Dutta, a lawyer representing Mr Bansal and other petitioners, said the next hearing was scheduled for early March and that he would like judges to issue directives to zoo officials to stop naming cats and tigers after religious figures, at least in West Bengal.