- Sunday, April 28, 2024
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad alleged that the lion named ‘Akbar’ was previously named ‘Rama’ but was given a different name after it was shifted to Bengal which is ruled by a party opposed to PM Modi.
By: Shubham Ghosh
IN an unusual event, a Hindu nationalist organisation in India has filed a court petition seeking to prevent two lions, named after a Hindu deity and a 16th-century Muslim emperor, from sharing an enclosure at a zoo.
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a prominent right-wing Hindu group, initiated legal action in the eastern state of West Bengal amid concerns that a lioness named Sita had been housed with a lion named Akbar.
Akbar, an emperor from the Mughal dynasty, had set up a massive empire over the Indian subcontinent and according to Hindu nationalist groups, it was a period of slavery.
“Sita cannot stay with the Mughal emperor Akbar,” Anup Mondal, a member of the VHP, said on Sunday (18), complaining it would hurt religious sentiments in Hindu-majority India, according to AFP.
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“Such an act amounts to blasphemy and is a direct assault on the religious belief of all Hindus,” the VHP said, the report added. The outfit said it after having lodged a plea last week asking for a name change.
Critics have often alleged that religious intolerance has been on the rise in the world’s most populist nation since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of prime minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014.
The prime minister continues to be popular even after a decade of being in the office and is likely to return to power for the third straight term in this year’s general elections.
According to Mondal, the lion named ‘Akbar’ was previously named after the Hindu god Rama when he was in the state of Tripura in north-eastern India, which is ruled by the BJP.
The animal’s name was changed when he was brought to Bengal, it was alleged. Bengal is ruled by the Trinamool Congress, a party opposed to Modi’s BJP which often accuses its supremo and the chief minister of the state, Mamata Banerjee, of appeasing the minority Muslims at the expense of the Hindu majority.
Bengal has the longest border among all Indian states with Bangladesh, a Muslim nation.
The VHP petition also sought for a ban on giving animals in zoos religious names.
A forest department official in Bengal said the lion and lioness were kept separately, the AFP report added.
