In Mumbai, BJP unleashes penguin politics to help it fly in civic polls

Earlier this week, a Bharatiya Janata Party official in Mumbai named Nitin Bankar caused a flap when he led a demonstration outside the city zoo in Byculla: he was demanding that recently hatched penguin chicks in the facility be given Marathi names.

It was the latest reminder that the vastly popular icy enclosure at the Veermata Jijabai Bhonsale Udyan does not only afford the opportunity to gape at flightless birds – it also offers a glimpse of some of Mumbai’s most confounding debates and challenges.

Bankar’s protest on Tuesday transported the city’s long-running sons-of-the-soil controversy to the animal kingdom.

Since March, three penguin chicks have been born in Mumbai city zoo. They have been named Noddy, Tom and Pingu.

Those Western-sounding monickers have offended Bankar and his BJP colleagues. “Giving English names to these penguins is injustice to the Marathi language,” he told reporters. “Isn’t this hatred towards Marathi language?”

The first penguins introduced to the city zoo in 2016 were imported from Seoul. They were called Bubble, Mr Molt, Donald, Daisy, Popeye, Dory, Olive and Flipper.

But since then, the Humboldt penguins have reproduced rather prolifically. Eight years later, the enclosure holds 21 birds.

It’s the identities of the new arrivals that have ruffled the BJP’s feathers. “When penguins were brought from abroad to...

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