BY JOHN DAYAL
Not many remember this story. In January 1998 a 13-year-old girl
was raped but her cries for help were drowned by blaring neighbourhood
loudspeakers. The raped girl later committed suicide by setting herself on fire.
The story did move Mumbai engineer Anil Mittal who moved the Supreme Court of
India to see if Indian law had anything in it to prevent the girl’s tragedy
being repeated.
Many others had long wished they could do something about
fortnight-long festivals that lasted deep into the night, often into the early
hours of the morning, even as children struggled to mug up answers to questions
they were expecting in the examinations the next day, or perhaps even worse,
patients for whom a break in sleep because of the cacophony could spell the
difference between life and death.
The apex court was indeed moved by Mittal’s arguments. "No one
shall beat a drum or tom-tom, or blow a trumpet or beat or sound any instrument,
or use any sound amplifier at night (between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.) except in
public emergencies," Chief Justice RC Lahoti ruled. The Chief Justice said the
case raised "certain issues of far-reaching implications in day-to-day life of
the people in India." That was then.
Earlier this month, the court seemed to have struck at its own
decision, for the moment at least, allowing Gujarat’s now world famous Navratri
garba extravaganzas to go on till midnight, and in their wake, also
allowing the Ram Lilas, which in urban India used to last till almost midnight.
If any one else has any other religious festival over the next
few months, they can blare their music systems and light their crackers to their
hearts’ content or till their eardrums burst or until the Supreme Court finally
decides on the issue once and for all. Once the government provides it with the
latest medico-legal information on the harm that noise pollution does to the
human brain and to the environment in general.
As a civil society and freedom of faith activist interested in
several cases currently before the Supreme Court, I would be the last person to
try and antagonise the highest court in the land with a sarcastic commentary on
its latest pronouncement. Christians in general, and the church establishment in
particular, are particularly wary of the judicial processes in this country,
partly because for want of legal education we do not fully understand the
intricacies of the system of judicial equity in a democracy, as also the fact
that so few of us are in the practice of law. Afraid that courts may
collectively take umbrage and rule against us in a myriad cases, we have always
been the first to profess our absolute trust in the judicial system of India.
But despite this, I must dare explore the contours of this
decibel democracy as established by law. The impact of the first ruling – the
ban on late nights after 10 p.m. – was not just about deflating the gusto with
which Durga Puja is celebrated in all Bengali enclaves from Tripura to Jammu and
Jaisalmer, or toning down the Ganesh Puja in which Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad
vie with one another for the title of Tallest Idol Immersion in the Smallest
Water Body Capital of the World. It had an impact on practitioners of all
faiths.
The Muslims, already under pressure for the five-times-a-day
loudspeaker azan, muffled Ramzan festivities before sehri, the
pre-dawn breakfast. The Sikhs were not really affected. All their festivities
are held in broad daylight, as are Sikh weddings.
The Christians faced a peculiar problem. They are a community
with the least number of holidays recognised by government. Easter is always on
a Sunday, a holiday, but for the traditionalists, Easter dawns at midnight
intervening between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. But even if Easter is
always a Sunday holiday, there is no way you can usher in Jesus’s birthday in
the afternoon of December 25. Christmas for us begins at midnight – when the
babe was born in the manger to the lowing of cows and the braying asses, the
choir of angels singing in bright starlight out in the fields – a cacophony if
ever there was one!
Archbishops in several metros did hastily postpone Christmas
Masses to the morning of December 25 and ordered their priests to follow suit,
but many a brave mother superior and parish priest defied archbishop and
superintendent of police alike to hold the Midnight Mass in a tent outside the
small church.
Perhaps this year Masses will indeed be held at midnight, even
in Mumbai. But I digress.
The arguments were not located in the manger, but in the
marketplace. When the first ban came, Sivakasi, the firecracker capital of the
world, and otherwise a small town in Tamil Nadu, cried tears of blood,
estimating losses running into billions of rupees. But they, poor home-grown
sods, lacked the advocacy strength of their non-resident Indian and expat-driven
garba industrialists of Gujarat.
NRIs, expats and homebodies, million-rupee-a-night vocalists and
billion- dollar-a-season manufacturers of colourful cholis and rustling
ghagras moved into action, commanded brilliantly by Narendra Modi, chief
minister of Gujarat and currently its chief ambassador in the West where he
otherwise may not visit because they refuse him visas till he serves a jail term
for supervising the massacre of Muslims in 2002.
Taking India, the UK and the US into account, as well as the
still existing enclaves in Africa and the Caribs, the Navratri garba is
indeed a billion-dollar industry.
The prayers, if not the advocacy skills, of the Navratri
garba industry have carried the day, the apex court has granted them an
exemption till it comes up with a judgement without the mistakes it admits it
may have made in the last one.
Until such time, Modi exults. And democracy may be gauged in
decibels.