When Akbar And Sita Meet In The Zoo!

By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam 20 February 2024 Yesterday's (February 19) TOI carried a funny but worrisome snippet on its edit page (Leonine we ain't): Silliguri bench of Calcutta high court will hear Bengal VHP’s plea that religious sentiments are “hurt” because a lioness is named Sita, who has a companion named Akbar. Both were brought from Tripura’s zoo. Their names wouldn’t have hurt anyone’s sentiment, and their arrival in Silliguri would have generated only excitement, as always happens when big cats come to town. But clearly VHP spotted an opportunity for needless controversy. According to reports, the two big cats were brought to the Siliguri zoo from Tripura's Sepahijala Zoo along with eight other animals, as part of an animal exchange programme on February 12. (Representational Photo) ------- Even animals aren't being spared by these Hindu fanatics. Religion has completely hijacked our thinking. It has usurped our brains (but did we have brains in the first place?). This is not medievalism. This is primitivism. One wonders whether to laugh or cry. Now animals are being pigeonholed into different faiths and they'll soon have sects and castes as the devolved humans have ! Mark Twain aptly said, "The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog." Let these poor animals meet and mate. Why should their names be impediments and suggestive of religion/s? We're going backwards at a breakneck speed. More than two decades ago, there was a popular milk brand in western Maharashtra. It was Sita Doodh. Yes, you read it right. No one ever tried to read between the lines and thought what you may be thinking at the moment, thanks to the sickening religiosity of our times. Until twenty years ago, Ram and Sita were mere names. There was no extra and unnecessary divinity attached to their names. No one made a hue and cry that their names were being desecrated. Sigmund Freud wrote that a fanatic society is not just over-sensitive about its gods and books. It stretches this religious sensitivity further to include everything that it considers as sacrosanct. Just like the Victorian morality that saw eroticism in all things and covered even the legs of a dining table, these people are concerned that a lion, named Akbar, mustn't defile and 'deflower' the lioness, whose name happens to be Sita. This stupid Hindu-Muslim angle is everywhere in India. Of late, this has assumed ridiculous proportions. I wonder, what would have happened, had the name of the lion been Ram/Shyam or based on some 'Hindu character' and lioness would have been named as Noorjahan or Jahanara? Would these oafs still have protested? Muslims are condemned for their Fatwa Sanskriti (culture of issuing decrees at the drop of a hat). Aren't today's Hindus equally asinine and mutton-headed? Agreed, such fanaticism cannot go on forever and this too will pass but by the time this idiocy ends, it'll have done much damage to our social fabric and collective sanity. Correct me if I'm wrong. ------ A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several languages including Persian. URL: https://newageislam.com/interfaith-dialogue/akbar-sita-zoo/d/131756 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism