Former BJP MP Kirit Somaiya is fighting a two-and-a-half-front war. He has been relentlessly campaigning against illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya immigrants living in Mumbai. More recently, he has been on a drive to shut down thousands of loudspeakers, unregistered and playing at rule-breaking decibel levels, mostly from mosques.
After his campaign, the Mumbai police removed more than 1,500 illegal loudspeakers overwhelmingly from masjids but also a few mandirs and gurdwaras in just three months.
“We initiated a campaign after the Mumbai High Court issued directives about the use of such speakers. Almost 99 per cent masjids had never obtained or applied for loudspeaker permission till the High Court order,” Somaiya said. But after the police action, more than 600 masjids and their trustees have applied for permission.
Somaiya’s half-front war is against his party’s own allies in the NDA, like Ajit Pawar, who has assured Muslim groups that their loudspeakers would not fall silent and Somaiya would be reined in.
But Kirit Somaiya is not playing. Never before have Mumbai’s Islamists faced such a daunting resistance to their single-minded focus on capturing more and more physical space and marking territory by decibels.
Observing that the use of loudspeakers is not an essential part of any religion, the Bombay High Court on January 25 directed the Maharashtra government to prepare in-built mechanisms to control decibel levels in loudspeakers, public address systems, and other sound-emitting gadgets used at places of worship and religious institutions. The court asked the Mumbai police to crack down hard on violators. It told the state to seriously consider issuing directives to the police for calibration and auto-fixation of decibel limits of loudspeakers or public address systems used at such places.
The Noise Pollution (Regulation and Control) Rules, 2000, allow noise levels up to 55 decibels during the day and 45 dB at night in residential areas. Noise from loudspeakers can vary between 75 and 200 dB.
Celebrities like Sonu Nigam and Suchitra Krishnamoorthi have complained about azaan being beamed over ear-splitting loudspeakers five times a day.
Uttar Pradesh has successfully taken down or muted more than a lakh loudspeakers.
After the Bombay HC order, the Mumbai police issued a notice on May 11 directing all religious sites to give up loudspeakers.
“Any stakeholders interested in installing loudspeakers would then have to acquire a license, granted after providing documents such as property cards, legal construction proofs, and waqf registration papers,” the order read.
But Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar met a cross-party coalition of Muslim leaders on June 25, warned the police to follow due process, and urged Somaiya to stop what he says is a “smear campaign” against noisy mosques. The Muslim coalition has NCP state president Nawab Malik, party leaders Zeeshan Siddique, Sana Malik, and Syed Jalaluddin, Samajwadi Party state president Abu Asim Azmi, and AIMIM national spokesperson Waris Pathan.
But Mumbaikars, even many Muslims, seem happy.
“I stay hardly 200 metres away from a couple of mosques at Kurla Pipe Road. I don’t see any decrease in the number of devotees in mosques after azaan stopped being amplified through loudspeakers. This is a relief and should be welcomed,” a local practising Muslim, Mohammed Tarique, is quoted as telling The Times of India.
Many mosques took down the loudspeakers on their own. Khursheed Siddiqui, general secretary, Masjid and Madrassa Mohammadiya in Vikhroli, reportedly called a meeting of elders to explain to them that loudspeakers were not required to amplify Allah’s message. They agreed.
But Islam’s self-appointed political guardians are religiously rooting for the noise nuisance to return, never mind that seventh-century Arabia did not even know the ear trumpet, let alone the loudspeaker.
Abhijit Majumder is a senior journalist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.