It is no secret that loudspeakers have become a major source of noise pollution in today’s time and noise pollution affects the well-being and behavior of an average human being. Unwanted noise is responsible for the deleterious effects on the health of a person. Several serious health problems such as hypertension, tinnitus, sleep disturbances, high stress levels etc are caused due to noise pollution. In India the issue of noise pollution is a serious and unfortunately a contentious one. Over the past few decades, loudspeakers have somehow come to be associated with or identified with the religious practices of different religions in India when should certainly not be the case.
On April 17th, 2017, well-known Bollywood singer Sonu Nigam in a series of tweets, commented against the use of loudspeakers and questioned when the “forced religiousness” in India will end. Sonu Nigam said that he had been woken up early morning suddenly by the sound of ‘azaan’. He made a valid point through his tweets. Sonu said that such use of loudspeakers needs to be stopped no matter which religion is practicing the use of loudspeakers.
Shortly after his tweets, there was a major controversy and Sonu Nigam faced a barrage of abuses by the religious fanatics. There were extensive debates over this issue on the electronic media. Actress Suchitra Krishnamoorthy and others too backed the views expressed by singer Sonu Nigam about the use of loud speakers for religious purposes, especially during night.
The Allahabad High Court’s Lucknow bench has ordered the government of the state of Uttar Pradesh and the State Pollution Control Board to remove all loudspeakers that were installed without permission at religious places. Any loudspeaker in the state that was being used without the permission of the concerned authority will be taken down today itself. The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court issued the order on the matter citing the provisions of the Noise Pollution Rules, 2000. According to the order that was issued, the authority and the District Magistrates of the UP state have been guided to classify various areas into industrial, residential, commercial and silence zones. Each area will be having a separate maximum limit of permitted sound level. If these norms are not followed then one could land up in the jail for about five years and may even have to pay the penalty of Rs 1 Lakh.
It must also be remembered that the Yogi Adityanath Government had issued guidelines in September last year around the time of Durga Puja and Muharram. These guidelines had included restriction on the use of loudspeakers in the state.
Loudspeakers were invented in the 19th century. Now, they are being used widely for religious and even entertainment purposes. Most of the major religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Christianity etc. have existed since much before the invention of loudspeakers. It is not an essential practice of any religion to use loudspeakers for praying. Interestingly, in Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the World, over the past few years, there has been increased emphasis on creating more awareness about the ill-effects of loudspeakers for the people. Many mosques have decided to do away with the use of amplifier as well as restricting the usage of loudspeakers in mosque. In recent times, Egypt that has the largest populated country in the Arab world has also taken steps such as enforcing bans to control the indiscriminate use of loudspeakers by mosques, especially for Tarawih prayers at night in the holy month of Ramzan.
The use of loudspeakers for religious practices needs to be controlled as inadvertently forcing anyone who does not wish to listen to any religious sermons or playing of music by using loudspeakers at high decibel levels is not really the most appropriate or tolerant thing to do. Religion should be a private matter. Azaan, derived from the Arabic word ‘adhan’, literally means to listen. In the past, the muezzin called out from the top of the minaret of the mosque to inform the people about the prayers. In today’s age of modern technology, there are many ingenious ways such as smartphones apps, podcasts, FM to achieve this noble object while reaching out to many more people than can be reached by loudspeakers.
But one must congratulate Sonu Nigam for talking about an issue very few celebrities will dare to talk about. It took him ten months, but it appears Sonu Nigam has emerged victorious in the war he started.