By M D Nalapat
Sound of the decibel level found in a discotheque is not requisite for practice of faith.
Among
the medley of stories on national television was an item about a
graveyard for the Muslim community in Panjim, where loudspeakers have
now been banned with the consent even of those using them. The argument
in favour of the ban got clinched when it was pointed out that
“loudspeakers are used not in graveyards, but in houses of worship”.
Such a view assumes that sound of the decibel level found in a
discotheque is a requisite for the practice of faith, when in fact the
reverse is true. The magnification of sound as a consequence of being
expressed through a loudspeaker makes it more, rather than less
difficult to achieve the contemplative state that is most conducive to
calm devotion. The reason why discos are loud is because they encourage a
mood of anticipated pleasure. Excitement gets generated through the
high decibel music played within the room where dancing takes place.
Surely it is not such a mood that is sought to get replicated in
religious places, but the opposite. Of course, it is true that often
religious issues generate heat and passion that sometimes lead to
arguments and even fights. However, such emotions are not natural to the
spirit of genuine religious experiences, which are deepest in an
ambience conducive to contemplation. Which is an ambience from where
loudspeaker noise has been excluded. All loudspeaker noise. Some time
ago, the Samajwadi Party government in Uttar Pradesh silenced
loudspeakers in a temple compound, while permitting the same in a nearby
mosque. In like manner, the Trinamool Congress regime in Kolkata had
sought to downscale Puja celebrations in some locations, “so as not to
offend minority sentiments”. Aside from the Wahhabi fringe, it is
ridiculous to assume that Muslims would object to the celebration of a
festival as joyous as Durga Puja, and by making such an assumption, the
Trinamool Congress is continuing the policy pursued by the Congress
Party since Mahatma Gandhi gave support to the 1919 Khilafat agitation
of the Ali brothers. This is to ignore the moderate majority of Muslims
and treat only the extreme fringe as representative of the world’s
second largest religious denomination. The empowerment that successive
national governments in India gave this fringe has resulted in the
skewing of policy to favour the fringe at the cost of the overwhelming
majority within the Muslim community. Such empowerment of a few has, for
generations, created an impasse in matters such as a resolution of the
Ayodhya, Mathura and Varanasi legacies. So long as these three leftover
problems from history do not get remedied, the danger exists of a
poisoning of inter-communal relations in a way that goes against the
interests of both Muslims and Hindus.
Mahatma Gandhi entered on a programme of
consistent accommodation of fringe elements in the Muslim community with
the noblest of intentions. He wanted a united country and was opposed
to Partition, seeing in such an outcome, a moral and political defeat.
After the shock to Britain of the 1914-19 war and afterwards that caused
by the 1939-45 war, there was zero doubt that the British would soon
hand over their subcontinental empire to its legitimate inhabitants.
Freedom became an outcome close at hand once the loyalty of Indian
members of the armed forces to the British Empire began to disintegrate
from 1945 onwards in a series of mutinies and desertions. The real task
before the Congress leadership was not the (by now inevitable) securing
of freedom, but the preservation of unity within the subcontinent of
India. Who would prevail, Mahatma Gandhi and his efforts at unity, or
M.A. Jinnah and his bid to divide the country?
Jinnah won and Mahatma Gandhi lost,
although in our history books this is not seen as a defeat, but as a
natural consequence of the perfidy of the British. In reality, partition
was not inevitable, except that Jinnah serially outsmarted the Congress
leadership, transforming an initially weak Muslim League hand into a
winning one on the back of the numerous mistakes made by the Congress
Party. These include the resignation of its provincial ministries in
1939, the futile effort to “non-cooperate” with the war effort and the
assumption of moral equivalence between the Axis and the Allied powers.
By backing the latter during the war, Jinnah accumulated goodwill among
British policymakers sufficient to ensure the final success of the
“Divide & Quit” lobby. After the war, the Congress Party conceded
equal representation to the much smaller Muslim League in the
pre-Independence government, an advantage that was used by Jinnah to
sabotage the functioning of the Congress-led government, including by
ensuring immunity for individuals such as Shaheed Suhrawardy, who let
loose gangs in Bengal that rampaged through a terrified Hindu community.
In tune with his nature, Mahatma Gandhi forgave Suhrawardy and even
took part in several joint activities with the then Chief Minister of
Bengal. The post-1919 deference of the Congress leadership to the
escalating demands of the Muslim League succeeded not in keeping India
united, but in dividing the country, just as a similar deference to
fringe elements since 1947 has resulted in a less than satisfactory
situation concerning communal relations in India.
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Dipak
Misra is the author of the SC edict that the national anthem should get
played before any film gets screened in a theatre. Presumably, such an
order increases the Patriotism Quotient within the filmgoer population.
Hopefully, the CJI will now consider passing another order, which is
that loudspeakers get banned in all religious places of worship in the
country. That would be a significant step towards ensuring the
contemplative atmosphere needed for the tranquillity that is the core of
faith.
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