Stressing that Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) had no intention of causing riots in Maharashtra or any other part of the country, MNS chief Raj Thackeray on Sunday said that the issue of playing azaan on loudspeakers was not a religious one, but a social problem.
Speaking to reporters in Pune, Mr. Thackeray nonetheless warned the minority community – and the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition government of the Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress – that if loudspeakers were not removed from mosques by May 3, then the MNS would reply in kind.
“The MNS does not want riots or any kind of violence in Maharashtra or elsewhere in the country. We have no wish to disrupt the peace in Maharashtra or anywhere else. But the Muslim community need to think of playing the azaan over loudspeakers keeping humanitarian considerations in mind. Nobody has opposed their prayers. But if they insist on playing the azaan over loudspeakers five times a day, then they will have to listen to the Hanuman Chalisa and aaratis being similarly played over loudspeakers,” said the MNS chief.
Mr. Thackeray further said that he had refrained from doing anything till now as the Islamic holy month of Ramzan was currently on, but that if the Muslim community regarded themselves above the Supreme Court, the Constitution or the law and order machinery, then it was “essential to give them a fitting reply” and that the MNS was “gearing up to give such an answer.”
He said that a Muslim journalist had reportedly told MNS leader Bala Nandgaonkar that even he had once told the mosque authorities over the disturbance from loudspeakers as his child was getting affected.
“The matter of the azaan being played over loudspeakers is troubling not just to Hindus, but also to Muslims and other people…the Supreme Court, too, has clearly has said not to give permits to such loudspeakers which disturb the peace. But that apart, the Muslim community leaders need to understand that people are getting disturbed by the use of loudspeakers… Their religion cannot be bigger than this country,” Mr. Thackeray said.
In line with the MNS’ advocacy of Hindutva politics, Mr. Thackeray announced that he would be visiting Ayodhya on June 5 with his associates.
The announcement comes after Shiv Sena leader and minister Aaditya Thackeray said he would be visiting Ayodhya soon.
More tellingly for Maharashtra’s politics, Mr. Thackeray also said that he would be holding a public address at Aurangabad’s Sanskrutik Mandal ground.
The venue is noteworthy as it is the same place where the late Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray addressed a massive rally and gave the call for ‘Aurangabad’ (named after the 17 th century Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb) to be renamed as ‘Sambhajinagar’ (after Chhatrapati Sambhaji, the Maratha king who was brutally tortured and murdered by Aurangzeb).
Given the MNS’ tilt towards the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Mr. Thackeray’s rally on May 1 in Aurangabad is seen as an attempt to break the dominance of the Shiv Sena led by his estranged cousin and Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray. Besides Mumbai city and Thane, the Sena has been dominating the Aurangabad civic body for over 25 years now.
Since his party’s rout in the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly election, Raj Thackeray has inched ever closer to the BJP in a bid to seize the Hindutva space from the Shiv Sena after the latter fell out with the BJP to subsequently ally with the ideologically opposed NCP and the Congress in the State.
In his April 2 speech on the occasion of the Marathi New Year (Gudi Padwa), Mr. Raj Thackeray, continuing with his hard Hindutva line, had caused a furore by demanding the MVA loudspeakers before mosques else his MNS party workers would do so by force and play the Hanuman Chalisa in their stead.
He has given an ultimatum to the MVA government to take down the loudspeakers before mosques by May 3 to which MVA leaders including the Sena’s Sanjay Raut and Home Minister Dilip Walse-Patil have said that Maharashtra’s political climate was being deliberately heated-up by the MNS chief.
