An Indian court has ordered authorities to rename two lions, one after a Hindu goddess and the other after a Mughal emperor, after a Hindu organization complained that the big cats shared the same enclosure.
Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a major Hindu nationalist organization that campaigns against interfaith relationships, took the matter to court after calling cat cohabitation a “blasphemy” that hurts Hindu religious sentiments.
Sita the lioness and Akbar the lion arrived at Siliguri Zoo in West Bengal this month as part of an animal exchange program from a neighboring state.
On Thursday, Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya of the Calcutta High Court asked the government's lawyer to rename the couple.
“These names should be avoided and deleted to avoid unnecessary controversy,” he said, according to the Hindustan Times newspaper.
Government lawyer Joyjit Choudhury assured the judge that the state was already “considering renaming” the big cats.
Sita is a goddess from the epic Ramayana, wife of Ram, one of the most revered gods in the Hindu faith.
Akbar was a 16th-century Mughal emperor who extended Islam's rule across much of the Indian subcontinent, a period that Hindu nationalists view as an era of oppression.
According to media reports, the VHP claimed that the lion Akbar, who lived in a zoo in the neighboring state of Tripura – controlled by the BJP, the Hindu nationalist party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi – was named Ram before he was transferred to West Bengal. under the control of the opposition.
Intolerance towards India's 200 million-strong Muslim minority has increased since Mr Modi's government came to power in 2014, human rights activists say.