Afew days after Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti cele­ brations and a little before Jummatul Alvida (last Friday of Ramzan), the Yogi Adityanath go­ vernment in Uttar Pradesh swung into action. Quoting a judgment of the Allahabad High Court, in Moti- lal Yadav vs The State of Uttar Pra- desh, 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 (Va­ ranasi), besides Lucknow and Allahabad. The early reports revealed that most places of worship, mosques and temples, were flouting the court order and using loudspeak­ ers either without legal permis­ sion or above the prescribed deci­ bel level. Within a couple of days, the campaign extended to towns in western Uttar Pradesh — Agra, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Muzaffarna­ gar, 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 res­ ponse. There were no threats to hit the roads or approach the Su­ preme Court. There were no calls for rallies or even whispers of dis­ crimination or appeasement. The lack of opposition from religious leaders and clerics surprised ma­ ny. Maybe the images of destruc­ tion in the wake of bulldozer visits in neighbouring Delhi and Madhya Pradesh had had an effect. 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 conces­ sions in a pluralist democracy, pointing to similar prayers and ce­ lebrations of other communities. That section involved in constant one­upmanship with the majority community is, however, fast losing numbers. A significant 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 go­ vernment’s decision to ban or li­ mit the loudspeaker usage in plac­ es of worship of all religions or curtailing public space for prayers. Drawing from the traditions of the Prophet, they reiterate that it is in­ cumbent on the community to fol­ low the law of the land, and one’s action should not discomfit 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 under­ stood or allowed, as back in the 1960s and the 1970s, there were severely limited ways of communi­ cation. 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 in­ stances where a passer­by or neighbour dropped in just to ask the time. In Ramzan, the believers were often woken up by wander­ ing mendicants, singing hymns and knocking at each door to re­ mind them of time for suhoor (pre­ dawn) meal. However, those chal­ lenges 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 five 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 per­ son to climb and give out the prayer call. It may be recalled that back in the seventh century, short­ ly after Muslims had reached Me­ dina from Mecca, the Prophet had to devise a way of inviting people to the mosque five times a day. Some of his companions suggest­ ed a bell could be rung to invite pe­ ople for prayers. Others suggested a horn could be blown. A few oth­ ers wanted a fire to be lit atop a hill as a mark of prayer time. The Prophet turned down the suggestions as they were either be­ ing followed by Christians and Jews or were considered impracti­ cal. 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 to­ gether 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 first ‘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 pe­ ople from a height later led to the construction of tall minarets in mosques over the next many cen­ turies. To this day, most medieval mosques in India, including the Ja­ ma 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 Masjid­Janmabhoomi move­ ment from the late 1980s, many mosques made it a status symbol to employ multiple loudspeakers pointing at different directions for the sound to travel all across. Ma­ ny temples, incidentally, did the same, some even using loudspeak­ ers for Prabhat pheris at dawn. In old cities of Hyderabad, Ahmeda­ bad, Lucknow and Delhi with a sizeable Muslim population, it be­ came almost impossible to res­ pond 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 invit­ ed 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 finds more than one ‘azaan’ call at the same time. In Bangladesh too, prayer calls are made on loud­ speakers. 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 Aus­ tralia cricket captain Pat Cummins tweeting about the experience of listening to ‘azaan’ in the moun­ tains of northern Pakistan. There is change In Saudi Arabia and Malaysia, ho­ wever, the winds of change have started to blow, with the authori­ ties in both countries limiting the use of loudspeakers in masjids. Back in 2010 in Malaysia, Islamic authorities had issued a fatwa ban­ ning 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 tazki- rah or religious narration. In the summer of 2021, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs put out an order for all loudspeak­ ers to be set at only a third of their maximum volume. The Kingdom permitted the use of loudspeakers at this volume for extending invita­ tion to prayer and for Iqamah (se­ cond call at the commencement of prayer) and asked mosques not to use external amplifiers to broad­ cast their prayers in the neigh­ bourhood. Similarly, the Kingdom asked the faithful not to use loud­ speakers when they recite the Ko- ran in the masjid as it was disres­ pectful to the book. The winds of change that start­ ed from Saudi Arabia may just be embracing Indian Islam. [email protected]