Prohibiting the use of a loudspeaker at a temple in Moradabad is representative of what it means to be a Hindu in SP-ruled Uttar Pradesh as well as what it means to be a Hindu in the fraudulent ‘secular' Republic of India
Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again — The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht.
Western Uttar Pradesh, the badlands of India’s most populous and largest State, is in ferment again. This time it’s Moradabad which, in the past, has seen vicious riotous mobs lay life and property to waste, from where disturbing news has been emanating over the past week. As is usually the practice, big newspapers and television channels have either ignored the details while indulging in exaggerated and hackneyed hyperbole or simply swamped the news with trivia that titillates the chattering classes.
Since media reports are increasingly unreliable, especially when they deal with issues that are described by the politically correct left-liberal commentariat as ‘communally sensitive’, I asked my friend Vikas Saraswat, who lives in Agra and is possibly the best informed person on western Uttar Pradesh affairs, for what led to Friday’s clashes in Moradabad between enraged BJP activists and ham-handed officials of the district administration. I received this reply from him which I am reproducing without any substantive edits:
“A loudspeaker was installed at a Shiv temple in Ansariyan Mohalla of Akbarpur Chanderi under Kanth police station of Moradabad district. It had been playing prayers regularly in the morning since last Shivratri a few months back. The prayers on loudspeakers were objected to by Muslims in the area who were using loudspeakers for azaan in a mosque nearby. The over enthusiasm of the administration in removing the loudspeaker from the temple was evident in the fact that the police force from several police stations was used for this task. Hindus of the village were lathicharged for protesting the removal. Matters were made worse by the callous handling of the situation by Deputy Inspector General of Police Gulab Singh who is former Samajwadi Party spokesperson Mohan Singh’s brother. The markets have remained closed for the last seven days in protest of the police action. Subsequently, the police disallowed a Mahapanchayat in the area and BJP leaders Nepal Singh (MP), Satyapal Singh (MP), Sarvesh Singh Saini (MP) and Sangeet Som (MlA) were arrested on Friday for violating prohibitory orders.”
In brief, the district administration of Moradabad used brute police force to remove a loudspeaker from a Hindu temple in a predominantly Muslim locality to demonstrate sensitivity towards Muslim sentiments. Those sentiments were clearly inimical to Hindu sentiments, but then the latter seized to matter the day Akhilesh Yadav became Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and Mulayam Singh Yadav resumed his crass pandering of those who are euphemistically described as India’s “minorities”, a label that puts them beyond the pale of the law which, in any event, is more honoured in the breach than in the observance whenever the Samajwadi Party seizes control over this State. It’s a twisted, perverse ‘Socialism’ at play.
The extent of perversion can be gauged from the statements of officials who should have been more circumspect in their utterances but clearly feel sufficiently emboldened to give full flow to them, confident that no explanation shall be sought from them by their political masters of the day. From what has appeared in the media, and has not been contradicted, according to Kanth Circle Officer Rahul Kumar, “Muslims had complained to the police to remove the loudspeaker as it could create disharmony in the area.” Both he and Inspector-General of Police, Bareilly Zone, Zaki Ahmed, have said that the administration removed the loudspeaker from the temple “on finding there was no tradition of using it during this period”. The ‘period’ they refer to is the month of Muslim fasting, Ramzan.
Hindus say that’s not true. And there’s sufficient evidence to suggest that the administration’s version, either concocted or based on what the Muslims have claimed, is severely flawed. But that’s not the real issue. What is of relevance is that there cannot be two different standards for allowing the use of loudspeakers at places of worship — that is, if at all they are to be allowed to do so. If mosques can have loudspeakers, so can temples and vice-versa. If bhajans played over a loudspeaker at a temple could “create communal disharmony”, as the Muslims of Akbarpur Chanderi insist they can, then so can azaan over a loudspeaker upset communal harmony. It would be absurd to argue otherwise.
The Muslims’ complaint to the police over the loudspeaker at the temple in Ansariyan Mohalla is reminiscent of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen complaining, at the behest of the Owaisi clan, that the pealing of bells at Hindu temples in Hyderabad is offensive to Muslim sensitivities and hence must be prohibited. In other parts of the country, most notably in West Bengal, Hindu places of worship have been ransacked or desecrated because they happened to be located in Muslim majority areas. In other places, for instance in Jammu & Kashmir, Muslims have claimed offence to what others wear or do not wear.
There are other manifestations of increasing assertion by Muslims of their right to have their way, even if that clashes with the law or inconveniences others, not to mention offending the sensitivities of non-Muslims. The most glaring of these manifestations is the use of roads, highways, expressways, railway station platforms and other public places for offering namaaz. ‘Prayer Rooms’ at airports and hospitals, meant for people of all faiths, have been usurped and converted into
‘Muslim Only’ facilities. If Hindus were to do anything similar, there would have been outrage and an outpouring of condemnation. We would have heard how ‘communal harmony’ was being disturbed.
last week’s incident at Moradabad is at once representative of what it means to be a Hindu in Samajwadi Party-ruled Uttar Pradesh as well as what it means to be a Hindu in the fraudulent ‘secular’ Republic of India. It means to surrender before bigotry lest ‘communal harmony’ be disturbed. It means giving in to the thuggery of a few and accepting minorityism as a way of life. It also means converting this country into a tinderbox, waiting to explode in the most hideous manner with ghastly consequences.
Is that what we wantIJ
(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist)
