INTRODUCTION
Sonu Nigam is an Indian professional playback singer. His songs had been featured in many languages like Hindi, Kannada, Gujrati, Tamil, Telugu, Tulu, and much more. He is one of the highest paid Indian singers. Adding to this, he is a very warm hearted and amiable person. He generally keeps in touch with his fans and followers through various social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
CONTROVERSIAL TWEETS BY SONU
Recently, he shared some of his personal views and opinions on Twitter which somehow criticized Azaan a lot, which was not intention of the 43 years old singer. Drawing his near immediate outrage, he tweeted, ” I’m not a Muslim but still I have to woken up the Azaan daily in the morning. ” His tweet badly accused his forced religiousness in India. He even supplemented his statement with a puzzling analogy ” Mohammed did not have electricity when he made the Islam. Why do I have to have this cacophony after Edison? ” Soon after all these tweets by him, keeping him safe and in order to clarify that he was not specifically targeting any particular community, he added, ” I only spoke against the use of loudspeakers. Everybody has a right to his opinion. I have the right to have an opinion and it should not be misconstrued. Loudspeakers are not a necessity; they are not a part of any religion.”
INTENTIONS OF SONU BEHIND THESE STATEMENTS
Sonu Nigam just wanted to share his opinion on the loud noise made by loudspeakers at various religious places should be stopped. He acted as a sensible person and took his problems out to the public. He wanted to get an opinion of the public about this issue. He clearly mentioned in all his statements that it’s not at all about Azaan or Aarti. Many of us can also relate to his opinion about the loudspeakers. Sound do impose itself on everyone indiscriminately. He tweeted as of social cause not an religious point.
REACTIONS OF PUBLIC
Unfortunately, after the tweets posted by Sonu, he had been backflushed badly by various Muslim organizations. A FIR has also been filed in his name. A large number of his fans and followers called him with aggressive kind of names for being “insensitive” and “derogatory”. His tweets triggered a fresh row of social media with Twitterati slamming him, whereas many of celebs from the film industry and other fields feel that India is a democratic country and everyone is purely entitled to share their own opinions and thoughts. Thereafter, many were also there which accused the singer boldly.
REACTIONS MADE BY FAMOUS PERSONALITIES
Singers like Shaan, Baba Sehgal, Richa Chadda, Sona Mohapatra, Hard Kaur, Kailash Kher and much more even encouraged and supported his tweets. They all took a strong stand and even appealed to discourage loud sound making devices. Even the young budding actor- comedian Sunil Grover took his side and tweeted, “Don’t give Sonu Nigam’s comments a religious tingle.” Whereas, Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt found this argument as a silly one and called it as ‘ engineered affair’. Actor Anupam Kher was shocked to learn that these tweets were made by Sonu Nigam’s verified Twitter page. Thus, the reactions were mixed and mingled.
