Mumbai: Woken up by the morning Azaan call from a nearby mosque on Monday morning, singer Sonu Nigam raised eyebrows with a series of tweets terming the Muslim call to prayer a kind of Forced Religiousness and gundagardi.
Sonu Nigam's main concern was this: "I'm not a Muslim and I have to be woken up by the Azaan in the morning."
"When will this forced religiousness end in India," he tweeted.
"God bless everyone. I'm not a Muslim and I have to be woken up by the Azaan in the morning. When will this forced religiousness end in India... " he wrote in another tweet.
Nigam went on to justify his tweets by another message.
"And by the way Mohammed did not have electricity when he made Islam.. Why do I have to have this cacophony after Edison?...", he tweeted.
Nigam then said that he didn't 'believe' that temples and gurudwaras should wake up people with loud noises either.
"I don't believe in any temple or gurudwara using electricity To wake up people who don't follow the religion . Why then..? Honest? True?..."
"Gundagardi hai bus...", Nigam's last tweet of the series said.
Nigam's tweets soon attracted messages criticising his rants against the Muslim call to prayers.
"Azaan should be stopped in India, where millions of Muslims live, because desh ka laadla Sonu Nigam can't sleep. Where is the tolerance? FO.", Sheru wrote using Twitter handler @iamzaalima
G.Mishra using Twitter handler @Satyameva_J wrote: "Dear Sonu Nigam u forget u started ur career doing jagrata all night. Where was gundagardi thn. If azaan shd stop thn jagrata shd also stop.
Sonu Nigam is an Indian playback singer whose songs have been featured mainly in Hindi and Kannada. He has also sung in Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Tulu, Assamese, Odia, Nepali, Maithili and various Indian languages.
He has also released Indian pop albums and acted in a number of films.He has come into limelight through the Kannada film Mungaru Male (2006), which set several records in Indian cinema.
Sonu Nigam is not the first to protest against Azan calls in loudspeakers. In fact, a petition calling the mosque authorities to reduce volume level is pending in the Bombay High Court, and the move has also got support of the Muslims.
"Azaan is mandatory to namaz, not the use of loudspeakers. Azaan should be sonorous and easy on the ears. If loudspeakers are inconveniencing fellow citizens, I would say the mosques should remove them before the police take action," says senior community leader Dr Mohammad Ali Patankar has recently said in response to the petition.
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