Sonu Nigam's Azaan Tweet Controversy: Why Are We Getting Dumb And Dumber?

This controversy refuses to end. Sonu Nigam has again tweeted a video of azaan and the furore only reflects that our faculty to think has taken a beating. May God bless us!

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Sonu Nigam's Azaan Tweet Controversy: Why Are We Getting Dumb And Dumber?
The latest from Sonu Nigam is a video of azaan recorded from the terrace of his house captioned ‘Good morning India’. It surely is a cryptic message, which forces us to think. Has Sonu accepted defeat in his tirade against the noise coming from religious places?

Karl Marx has been proven right once again. It was opium that was waiting to be consumed. The after-effects, which have no rationale or logic, are for all to see.

The reflections of the Sonu Nigam controversy could be seen in the Snapchat controversy that took place a few days before. It was a comment by Snapchat CEO on Indian users that infuriated the entire country. And in haste to show anger, without reasoning and logic, people started uninstalling the Snapdeal app from their smartphones.


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In Sonu Nigam’s case, it was actor Sonu Sood who had to face the brunt of disgruntled Indians. The operative word here is haste – haste in jumping to conclusions, haste in making decisions and haste in pronouncing judgment and the race to be number one (that only applies to media organisations).

Sonu Nigam was judged in haste, made guilty in haste and guillotined in haste. If only people had bothered to take a few minutes to read his tweets and another few minutes to comprehend his tweets, this entire controversy would have remained stillborn.

It was a harmless tweet of Sonu Nigam in which he had expressed the trauma of his nights getting disturbed by the sound of azaan.

The only mistake that Sonu made the day he tweeted his ire was the fact that in a series of five tweets, he had saved the meat for his last tweet, the one conveyed the essence and his thoughts. By the time people bothered to read from tweet one to tweet five, their minds were made up, the polarization was complete and it was too late. It was the fifth and the last tweet of Sonu that was conveniently ignored.

The reference of azaan in his first tweet made all the difference. Sonu was pumelled, fatwa was issued from a corner of India as far as Bengal, he had to encounter the ire of trolls and last but not the least, he had to forgo his lock of raven hair just to prove a point.

Sonu in his last tweet had categorically mentioned that loudspeakers should not be allowed in both temples and mosques. Now the pertinent question here is was Sonu Nigam wrong in making that statement? Any person prone towards rationalism and logic will say that Sonu has every right to express his opinion and whatever he had mentioned in his tweets absolutely makes sense.

Sonu Nigam in his press conference that followed a few days later also mentioned and elaborated that to sum up thoughts in 140 characters on Twitter is slightly challenging and therefore they had to be broken down and thus the series of tweets. And this is precisely what Sonu had to pay for eventually - in a haste to judge Sonu, no one bothered to read his entire viewpoint.  Both in the real and virtual world, Sonu was made to stand in the witness box and people took turn to pronounce their verdict. In the cacophony that followed everything was lost in translation.


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Even his fellow fraternity did not spare him. Wajid (from the Sajid-Wajid duo), rapper Raftaar and controversy queen Kangana took no time in saying that what Sonu wrote amounted to blasphemy.  It’s a pity that all three of them mentioned only azaan in their reference and none of them bothered to mention the sound from temples or gurudwaras in their statements.


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Kangana might have felt the sound of azaan beautiful during her stay in Lucknow while shooting for Tanu Weds Manu but had she endured the sound from temples, mosques or gurudwaras, close to her Khar residence on a routine basis, I am sure she would have sung a different tune.

Coming back the moot question, it only seems fair to ask that why are loudspeakers used by mosques and temples? What purpose do they serve? And does it really benefit people?

I even heard few of my fellow fraternity members ranting against Sonu’s rant. They were of the opinion that singer Abhijeet through his constant nationalist stance has carved out a political career and now its Sonu’s turn and his tweets mark a step in that direction. ‘How ridiculous and how archaic’, were my thoughts.

These days we are so busy getting offended that our faculty to think has taken a beating. It’s time we stop being judgmental and for once start using our rationale.


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