A few days after Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti celebrations and a little before Jummatul Alvida (last Friday of Ramzan), the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh swung into action. Quoting a judgment of the Allahabad High Court, in Motilal Yadav vs The State of Uttar Pradesh, the government, in an even-handed manner, removed around 10,900 loudspeakers from various places of worship, with the initial focus being on the Chief Minister’s constituency (Gorakhpur), the Prime Minister’s constituency (Varanasi), besides Lucknow and Allahabad.
The early reports revealed that most places of worship, mosques and temples, were flouting the court order and using loudspeakers either without legal permission or above the prescribed decibel level. Within a couple of days, the campaign extended to towns in western Uttar Pradesh — Agra, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Muzaffarnagar, etc. In Agra, 756 loudspeakers were removed from various places of worship. At one go, around 90% of mosques and 85% of temples were found to be at fault.
A surprising response
The government action was met with a considerably mature response. There were no threats to hit the roads or approach the Supreme Court. There were no calls for rallies or even whispers of discrimination or appeasement. The lack of opposition from religious leaders and clerics surprised many. Maybe the images of destruction in the wake of bulldozer visits in neighbouring Delhi and Madhya Pradesh had had an effect. While the response from some Hindu priests was muted, the Muslim community was divided in its response.
For the past few years there has been a silent churning within the community on certain key issues such as the use of loudspeakers for ‘azaan’ (prayer call), use of public roads for Friday prayers, etc. A section has been volubly in favour of perpetuation of these concessions in a pluralist democracy, pointing to similar prayers and celebrations of other communities. That section involved in constant one-upmanship with the majority community is, however, fast losing numbers. A significant section has been on an introspective mode, preferring to do the right thing by law and religion. It is this section which found fairness with the government’s decision to ban or limit the loudspeaker usage in places of worship of all religions or curtailing public space for prayers. Drawing from the traditions of the Prophet, they reiterate that it is incumbent on the community to follow the law of the land, and one’s action should not discomfit others.
Then and now
The largely educated section, aware of the tenets of faith too, points out that at one time, the use of loudspeakers could be understood or allowed, as back in the 1960s and the 1970s, there were severely limited ways of communication. Mobiles were nowhere on the horizon; landline phones were rare and many houses did not even have a clock. One had to book an HMT wrist watch for weeks in advance. There were instances where a passer-by or neighbour dropped in just to ask the time. In Ramzan, the believers were often woken up by wandering mendicants, singing hymns and knocking at each door to remind them of time for suhoor (pre-dawn) meal. However, those challenges ended many decades ago. In the age of Internet, mobiles and Islamic Apps on phones, it is no longer necessary for a muezzin to blare out the prayer invitation five times a day on a loudspeaker. In fact, many regular worshippers download Apps on their mobile which remind them of prayer time with ‘azaan’.
Interestingly, the ‘azaan’ on loudspeakers has often divided the community. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the supporters of the Tablighi Jamaat, then beginning to have an international following, opposed the use of loudspeakers for the purpose of inviting the faithful to prayers. The largest Muslim organisation pointed out that the Prophet preferred the use of a high mound or hill for a person to climb and give out the prayer call. It may be recalled that back in the seventh century, shortly after Muslims had reached Medina from Mecca, the Prophet had to devise a way of inviting people to the mosque five times a day. Some of his companions suggested a bell could be rung to invite people for prayers. Others suggested a horn could be blown. A few others wanted a fire to be lit atop a hill as a mark of prayer time.
The Prophet turned down the suggestions as they were either being followed by Christians and Jews or were considered impractical. Finally, he asked Bilal, a Black manumitted slave, to learn the words suggested by Abdullah Ibn Zaid, a companion. Beginning with ‘ Allah-u-akbar’, the words together gave the complete text of the prayer call which Bilal was asked to pronounce from the top of the hill. In a strong statement for egalitarianism, the first ‘azaan’ was thus pronounced by a Black man without the sound of a drum or any other instrument or aid. This idea of the Prophet to call people from a height later led to the construction of tall minarets in mosques over the next many centuries. To this day, most medieval mosques in India, including the Jama Masjid in Delhi, have tall and robust minarets which a muezzin is supposed to climb to give the prayer call. It is this tradition which the Tablighi Jamaat wanted to maintain.
Competing calls
Much of it, however, changed from the 1970s, and by 1990s, mosques in Muslim neighbourhoods were seen to be competing in a game of higher volume for their respective ‘azaans’. Spurred on partly by the Babri Masjid-Janmabhoomi movement from the late 1980s, many mosques made it a status symbol to employ multiple loudspeakers pointing at different directions for the sound to travel all across. Many temples, incidentally, did the same, some even using loudspeakers for Prabhat pheris at dawn. In old cities of Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Delhi with a sizeable Muslim population, it became almost impossible to respond to a solitary ‘azaan’ in peace as multiple mosques issued the same invitation at the same time, leading to more cacophony than spiritual rejuvenation. It is this noise, particularly at dawn ( Fajr) and dusk ( Maghrib) time that invited the attention of environment lovers who pointed out the health hazards due to increased noise pollution.
Incidentally, the situation is the same in much of the subcontinent. In Karachi and Lahore in Pakistan mosques use high volume on their loudspeakers; often one finds more than one ‘azaan’ call at the same time. In Bangladesh too, prayer calls are made on loudspeakers. It is not unusual to hear a prayer call from a mosque in either Pakistan or Bangladesh while watching a cricket match from either country. Recently, we had the unique spectacle of Australia cricket captain Pat Cummins tweeting about the experience of listening to ‘azaan’ in the mountains of northern Pakistan.
There is change
In Saudi Arabia and Malaysia, however, the winds of change have started to blow, with the authorities in both countries limiting the use of loudspeakers in masjids. Back in 2010 in Malaysia, Islamic authorities had issued a fatwa banning the use of loudspeakers for reading the Koran before Fajr prayers in the morning. In 2015, an advisory was used to discourage the use of loudspeakers for tazkirah or religious narration.
In the summer of 2021, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs put out an order for all loudspeakers to be set at only a third of their maximum volume. The Kingdom permitted the use of loudspeakers at this volume for extending invitation to prayer and for Iqamah (second call at the commencement of prayer) and asked mosques not to use external amplifiers to broadcast their prayers in the neighbourhood. Similarly, the Kingdom asked the faithful not to use loudspeakers when they recite the Koran in the masjid as it was disrespectful to the book.
The winds of change that started from Saudi Arabia may just be embracing Indian Islam.
ziya.salam@thehindu.co.in
