Given the way everything is political in India, the ban on loudspeakers too has gone into the realm of politics, with barely relevant politicians such as Raj Thackeray latching on to it in the hope of breathing life into a career that never really took off. On Sunday, Thackeray was strident: if the loudspeakers are not taken off from Maharashtra mosques by 4 May, “we would not keep quiet”, but play the Hanuman Chalisa in front of the mosques at double the volume the azaans are played there. Coming just after the MP-MLA couple, Navneet Rana and Ravi Rana getting arrested for wanting to play the Hanuman Chalisa in front of Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray’s Mumbai residence, it’s political showdown time for the participants stoking the controversy. And then there is Omar Abdullah, a former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, who has come to the conclusion that asking mosques to silence their loudspeakers is proof that Islam is under threat in India. “When we decided to accede to India, we acceded to a country where every religion would be treated equally. We were not told that one religion will get preferential treatment and others will be suppressed… If we knew it, perhaps our decision would have been something else. We had consciously taken the decision after we were told that every religion will get equal rights,” he was quoted as saying in Srinagar a few days ago. He did not clarify which country he would have joined—perhaps Pakistan, where there would have been freedom not only to use loudspeakers in full volume to declare one’s devotion, but also the freedom to make the minorities disappear. But then he must be having first-hand experience of such a situation, considering his brethren too have cleansed his birthplace of the minority Pandit population, and from all accounts, liberally used loudspeakers on mosques to achieve that purpose by striking terror in the hearts of that community.
However, it is only right to point out that followers of the majority religion too excel in the misuse of loudspeakers, and have been doing so for decades. Having grown up in Kolkata, this writer has seen how no Durga Puja is complete without pandals competing with each other to keep the decibel levels of their loudspeakers to cacophonous levels. It is as if any lowering of volume would amount to casting aspersions on the puja organisers’ religiosity. In fact, political parries too are equally guilty of blasting people’s eardrums, with street corner meetings in residential neighbourhoods being the biggest nuisance possible. Over the years, a lot of restrictions have been brought in on the use of loudspeakers, with the Supreme Court banning their use between 10 pm and 6 am. There are rules about decibel levels too. But the implementation on the ground of such rules leaves much to be desired.
As for the current controversy, there can be only one purpose for processions to play loud religious music in front of another religion’s place of worship—to flex muscle. While the violent reaction to such a procession is not justified, the instigation too is best avoided. The Jahangirpuri violence could have been avoided if there was mutual accommodation by both sides, but it was missing.
A ban on the use of loudspeakers at religious places—or lowering their volumes to permissible decibels—applies to all religions and should be implemented accordingly, the way it is being done by Yogi Adityanath’s Uttar Pradesh government. Other BJP ruled states too may follow suit. However, the Opposition-ruled Maharashtra does not seem to be in any mood to take any such action, perhaps for reasons “secular”. If letting places of religious worship use loudspeakers in full volume has come to mean secularism, then it implies that secularism has transmogrified into appeasement. Let the message go out that loudspeakers are not essential to any religion, so either they should be removed or their volumes brought down to permissible limits.