Editorial: Catty war on common sense

On the face of it, the absurd case heard by the Kolkata High Court last week about a lion named Akbar and a lioness named Sita is good to chuckle over and then forgotten. But it’s a case that has taken the precious time of a High Court judge and the administrations of two states and led to the suspension of a senior wildlife officer.

Akbar and Sita caught the attention of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) when they were sent to the Silchar zoo from Tripura as part of an animal exchange programme. A local busybody of the VHP took the matter to court, saying it was blasphemous that a male lion having the same name as a Mughal emperor should be caged together with a female having the name of a Hindu goddess. Instead of being spiked as frivolous litigation, the case was heard, and the wildlife officials of West Bengal and Tripura were told to determine who named the animals so. The trail was traced to the chief wildlife warden of Tripura who had signed the documents of exchange. The official has been suspended by his state government without bothering to examine exactly what his offence was and what specific law was violated.

Contrary to the VHP’s wild imagination, zoo authorities follow no particular convention for naming their animals. More often than not, no names are given to most of them. The larger ones, the lions, tigers, giraffes, and chimpanzees, might have pet names given by their keepers, who earn that right by looking after them day in and day out. These names tend to be diminutive endearments, such as might be given to children. So, a chimp might be called Bujji, an elephant Ganesh, and a tiger Sheroo. A zoo animal’s name is a compact between it and its keeper. No one else should have a say in the matter. To suspect that zoo keepers might be motivated by love jihad is ridiculous. Zoo animals are not pets, they are wild animals in captivity. Who’s to know which tigress might reciprocate the advances of which tiger? Who can stop Sheroo if he ignores Mumtaz and makes overtures to Sridevi?

The clever judge who heard the Akbar-Sita case came up with a simple suggestion: Why not just change the name of Sita? This, unwittingly, shows up an absurdity in the love jihad fixation of the Sangh Parivar. In human society, that’s exactly what happens in inter-faith marriages. When a Hindu woman marries a Muslim man and changes her name to an Islamic one, it still would not satisfy the VHP, would it?

The VHP is the Sangh Parivar’s arm for small causes. The silly case of Akbar-Sita is typical of the kind of litigation it specialises in. Cases of inter-faith miscegenation, flags hung wrong side up, and so on are tools of the Hindutva project the redraw the cultural tramlines. As the RSS’s minnow affiliates are well networked in the courts, such petitions often are not dismissed as frivolous at the very outset as they should be. Instead, they are heard and pronounced upon, giving currency to this war on common sense. Since the Akbar-Sita hearing last week, zoo officials in West Bengal and Tripura are busy culling their registers of any animal names with love jihad connotations. It’s inevitable that other states will soon take the cue and ensure that no Sheroo will ever get within whiffing distance of Lakshmi. That explains the Sangh Parivar’s interest in silly litigations.