Just one question came to my mind while scrolling down social media posts on the violence in Haryana’s Nuh district triggered by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad-Bajrang Dal procession on Monday: For how many more decades will these people use the same tactics ad nauseam – playing music before mosques and in predominantly Muslim localities?
The question cropped up because of the long history of the issue. It is close to 150 years since music in front of mosques became a source of conflict between Hindus and Muslims.
Researchers have established that music emerged as a recurring source of communal violence during the colonial period, especially in the 1860s. Although their numbers were minuscule when compared to today’s figures, newspaper readers from the last decades of the 19h century were conversant about the phenomenon of ‘music-before-mosque riots’.
07/08/2023