LifestyleStrange things, odd times, what has happened in India? Lions had 'blasphemous' names

Strange things, odd times, what has happened in India? Lions had 'blasphemous' names

KOLKATA, WEST BENGAL, INDIA - 2023/10/27: A Chhau dancer (semi classical Indian dance with martial and folk traditions) passes through a road while wearing a mask of lion as he takes part during the Durga Puja carnival. Durga Puja is a Hindu festival and one of the biggest Bengali festivals, included in UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Durga Puja represents the collective worship of the Hindu Goddess Durga. The West Bengal Government organized a carnival with various puja pandals in Kolkata, India. Clubs participate in this carnival by arranging tableaus, dancing, and singing. (Photo by Jit Chattopadhyay/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Images source: © GETTY | SOPA Images

7:18 AM EST, February 23, 2024

An Indian court issued a ruling ordering the Indian zoo in West Bengal region to change the names of the lions habitating one of the parts of their zoo. It turns out the reson for the change of the names was the fact that they are considered to be... "blasphemous'.

The court in India in West Bengal ruled that the lions' names hurt the religious sentiments of some groups. The group is a radical Hindu group whose religion allegedly was being hurt by the names of the lions.

What were the names than that they had to be changed?

The names of the lions were 'Sita' and 'Akbar'. The lioness had a former name and the lion had the latter. What do those names really mean?

Sita is a Hindu female goddess. She is considered to be a Great Mother, and she is a goddess of beauty and Devotion. Similar to the Grecian Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, love, lust, pleasure, passion, and procreation. The Hindu deity is one of the most important characters in Hindu mythology and was the protagonist of the Hindu epic Ramayana. The most important temples of the goddess can be found in Nepal in Janakpur and in Eliya on Sri Lanka.

SRINAGAR, JAMMU AND KASHMIR, INDIA - 2024/02/22: Kashmiri people sit on benches inside a garden with a backdrop of snow-covered mountains on a sunny day in Srinagar. The weather improved across Jammu and Kashmir after three days of incessant rain and snowfall. Meanwhile, the daytime temperatures improved with bright sunshine witnessed in many parts of the valley, including the summer capital Srinagar. The Dal Lake, apart from being the prime tourist attraction, is also home to over sixty thousand people, whose primary source of income comes from tourism and agriculture. (Photo by Faisal Bashir/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)© GETTY | SOPA Images

Akbar is a different story, though. It is a historical figure, not a god or goddess. He is popularly known as Akbar the Great (very similar to the Macedonian Alexander the Great) and we know the exact dates of his birth and death. He was born in 1542 and passed away in 1605. Most importantly, he was a great ruler of the Moghal Empire which in the times of its biggest greatness was incorporating most parts of the Indian Peninsula spanning from the Himalayas to the nowadays place of Mumbai.

During the rule of Akbar, the wealth of this part of India almost tripled. He won many territories by conquest, politics, and economic prowess. Most importantly, during his rule, Perso-Islamic culture started to merge with the Indian culture, and it was the start of a very important chapter of Asia and the Middle East. It was also during his rule that the Muslim religion started to merge with Hinduism and the religious diversity is seen in India to this day.

Sources: BBC News; Wikipedia