The naming of two lions in India – one after a Hindu goddess – and the other after a 16-century Muslim emperor, is causing an uproar and sparking concerns about the rising trend of religious intolerance by hard-line Hindu groups there.

Hindu right-wing group Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or VHP, recently filed a bizarre petition in court to stop the lions from sharing a zoo enclosure because of the names. The subsequent actions by the court in the group's favor have added to the tensions.

VHP said that keeping the lioness with the name of the Hindu goddess, Sita, in the same enclosure as Akbar the lion was an act of ‘blasphemy’ and amounted to a “direct assault on the religious belief of all Hindus.”

Analysts and social activists have criticized the group, calling its protest "outrageous" and “absurd.”

Social activists say the controversy stems from a deeper issue.

They say the VHP and other Hindu right-wing groups, which are affiliated with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, pursue an agenda to keep Muslims and Hindus apart in as many ways as possible.

For example, the right-wing groups oppose marriages between Muslim men and Hindu women.

The charge that the BJP seeks to keep Hindus and Muslims apart is “totally baseless,” said New Delhi-based senior BJP leader Alok Vats.

“The BJP does not have any policy to keep Hindus away from Muslims. The party also does not differentiate between Hindus and Muslims,” Vats told VOA.

“In increased numbers Muslims, especially women, across the country are joining the BJP,” Vats added.

Many believe the issue over the lions flared because Akbar the lion bears a Muslim name and is perceived to be a Muslim, while Sita, the lioness, is perceived as Hindu because of her name.

“This absurdity in the form of a protest against the cohabitation of the two animals is yet another example of the dangerous level to which the BJP and its affiliates can go to create and widen divides in the society,” Delhi University professor Apoorvanand, who uses only a first name, told VOA.

As part of an animal exchange program — the big cats were relocated from a zoo in the northeastern state of Tripura to an animal park in the eastern state of West Bengal on February 12. While transporting them, the wildlife authorities of Tripura recorded the name of the lioness as Sita and the lion as Akbar.

About a week after the animals reached West Bengal, the VHP filed a petition to the High Court in Kolkata, the capital of the state.

The VHP’s West Bengal secretary, Lakshman Bansal, who filed the petition, said that naming the lioness Sita caused “deep anguish” to Hindus. He said Sita was the consort of Lord Ram, one of the most widely worshipped Hindu deities, and was a sacred deity herself.

“We cannot allow Sita to stay with Akbar in the same enclosure,” Bansal said.

Dulal Roy, another VHP leader said, “Naming of an animal after the name of a religious deity is certainly sacrilegious and tantamount to blasphemy.”

Responding to the VHP petition, on February 22, the court asked the wildlife authorities of West Bengal to change the lions’ names.

“These names should not be used to avoid unnecessary controversy,” a High Court judge told officials.

On February 26, the government of Tripura suspended the chief wildlife warden, Pravin Lal Agrawal, following the VHP petition over the lions’ names.

Akbar is one of the 99 names for the god of Islam, or Allah. In India, Akbar is mostly known as the name of a Muslim emperor who expanded the Mughal empire over much of the Indian subcontinent through military, diplomatic and economic dominance.

Critics say that since Modi and his BJP came to power in 2014, religious intolerance targeting the 200 million Muslim minority has increased in India, a charge the Hindu nationalist party denies.

The right-wing groups have campaigned against marriage between Muslim males and Hindu females, calling such a union a “Love Jihad” — perpetuating a conspiracy theory that alleges Muslim men are luring Hindu women into marriage under false pretenses — to convert them to Islam and ensure the dominance of Muslims over the Hindus.

Zafarul-Islam Khan, former chairman of the Delhi Minorities Commission, said that naming an animal after a Hindu deity is an “age-old” practice among the followers of Hinduism in India.

“In the Delhi Zoo, there has been, for decades, an African elephant named Shankar (the other name of the Hindu god Shiva). In the same zoo, there lives a white tigress who is called Sita. No group protested against these names or called them ‘sacrilegious,’” Khan said.

“They certainly would have not made the case of Sita, the lioness in West Bengal, an issue if she did not share an enclosure with the male lion bearing a Muslim name,” Khan added.

Several analysts say that by picking up the lion-lioness issue, Hindu right-wing groups are seeking to widen the communal divide in Indian society.

Human rights activist Angana Chatterji, an anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley, told VOA that "Hindu nationalists invent and weaponize Hindu and Muslim differences.”

“These ugly dictates of the Hindu right underscore the xenophobia, absurdity and impiety of their zeal. They want no Hindu and Muslim union, friendships... or alliances,” Chatterji said.

“By lying about the shared histories of Hindus and Muslims, they are driving the breakage of India as a nation, country and culture.”

Delhi University’s Apoorvanand noted that the court agreed with the VHP’s claim that the religious sentiments of Hindus were hurt by keeping the lioness Sita and lion Akbar in the same enclosure.

“The court asked how Sita could be alongside the lion bearing a Muslim name. This indulgence by the court sends across a strong message, the cohabitation of Hindus and Muslims in society cannot be allowed,” Apoorvanand told VOA. (VOA)

•PHOTO: FILE - A lioness yawns as she stands beside a lion at Delhi Zoo, in New Delhi, India, June 28, 2002. A zoo in India has sparked a religious controversy by keeping lioness Sita, named after a Hindu goddess, and lion Akbar, a 16-century Muslim emperor, in the same enclosure.

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