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)
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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.
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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
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