Is the Transformation of Public Festivals into Public Nuisance Our Destiny?

Two recent news reports capture the contrast at the heart of a significant issue. Solapur is headed into its second year running without DJs at its Ganesh immersions, with the police commissioner crediting the decision to meetings with stakeholders and support from the mandals themselves. Meanwhile, reports on this year's Kanwar Yatra described assaults, vandalism, intimidation and an increasingly aggressive campaign over what people may eat or sell, with Muslims and meat sellers paying much of the price.

One festival is learning restraint; the other is turning coercive.

It has been 130 years since the great freedom fighter Lokmanya Tilak initiated the public celebration of Ganesh festival.

In colonial India, the proclaimed aim of these celebrations might have been to bring people together, but now, as nearly eighty years have passed since the country became independent, its changing form is gradually becoming a matter of unease and concern among socially conscious citizens.

The news reports which appear in the media, normally do not present a complete picture of these changed aspects of these celebrations. The fact is that the tremendous din created through DJs and Dolby sound - without bothering about sound levels, loud music continuing night after night without any consideration of the residents around, illegally erected pandals by blocking roads and processions taken out, all put together collectively create a very dreary situation for people living in adjoining areas.

This license of sorts to blatantly violate people's basic democratic rights, which these celebrations practice is further utilised by sectarian groups, communal formations to vitiate atmosphere and stigmatise social and religious minorities and on occasions foster communal tensions as well. This situation can be observed across the entire country, whether it is occasions such as Ram Navami or Durga Puja or an event such as the Kanwar Yatra.

For more than a decade now, ever since the reins of the country came into the hands of forces advocating preference for a particular religion, the government's benevolent attention too appears to have been showered quite generously on all such festivals.

Are religious festivals becoming a means of violating citizens' rights?

Interestingly, how much anger is actually simmering among the people themselves over this situation, even if it has not yet become nationwide, and how they themselves are also ready to raise their voices, was revealed in recent days almost like a sudden explosion.

The very city of Pune that initiated the public celebration of this Ganesh festival, in 1893, saw thousands of people take to the streets against the transformation of public festivals into public nuisance.

A mere speech by a 37-year-old young man gave voice to the widespread discomfort of the people, whose question was whether the transformation of public festivals into public nuisance should be regarded as our destiny, and how long the systematic violation of the civil rights of the rest of the public, under the guise of religious festivals, would continue. That courageous, principled young man had raised these questions in a packed gathering where all the city's dignitaries, senior municipal corporation officials and ordinary people had gathered.

In view of the Ganesh festival beginning in mid-September, a preparatory meeting was held at the Pune Municipal Corporation on August 24, in which representatives of the mandals organising the public Ganesh festival were present, and ordinary citizens too had been invited to offer suggestions or put forward their views. At the very beginning of the meeting, the person conducting the gathering invited suggestions from citizens and what happened was unprecedented. Pune and indeed the state of Maharashtra will continue to discuss it for a long time.

A young man named Vidyanand Bapat, barely 37 years old, who worked at a BPO and had no previous history of political or social activism, raised his hand and began to speak.

This introverted young man was known to almost no one there, barring perhaps the minister and a handful of senior officials whom he had met a few days earlier, along with some of his colleagues, when he had demanded that the increasing noise pollution during Ganesh festival and all religious festivals be stopped. He also explained how seriously the health of people is affected by deafening sound, how the problems of heart patients keep increasing, and how hearing is negatively affected, and how temporary mandaps are illegally erected on roads in the name of religious festivals, thereby affecting the movement of people and vehicles.

The young man's points were so logical and fact-based that everyone was listening attentively, and even the municipal official conducting the meeting had no answers to those questions. Suddenly, people were seen standing around Vidyanand and trying to silence him, some even raising their hands against him, and to keep the situation under control, the police formed a cordon around him and took him outside. There, the journalists who had gathered, who must have covered countless such meetings before and issued the usual sound bites about the city's festivals, found themselves compelled to think about what the young man had said, and they showered him with questions one after another, to which he gave extremely balanced answers.

What is Secularism?

Vidyanand Bapat’s conversation was centred around the basic principles and values of the Indian Constitution and he was stressing the need to properly understand and implement the principle of secularism enshrined in it.

Bapat made a few things clear about himself. One, he is an atheist, holds left-wing views, and likes the ideas of people such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, senators on the left wing of the Democratic Party in America. The concept of God has no place in his life, and he is by no means against people's right to faith. Not only that, he is not against the celebration of festivals either. He believes they should be celebrated only at a private level, and that they should not result in the violation of anyone's democratic rights. He said that if you want to celebrate a festival, celebrate it in enclosed spaces, go to a ground, put up your own pandal and install an idol there. When you encroach upon roads and put up mandaps, it causes tremendous inconvenience to countless people.

According to him, if you want to play musical instruments, play them, but certainly not in public places, rather in halls that have been made soundproof, your right to religious faith by no means gives you permission to disturb the peace of mind of countless people by forcibly making them listen to music, by playing DJs. He said that the foundations of democracy will crack if every citizen of this multi-religious, multi-racial country does not show complete respect towards every other person, regardless of caste, community, religion, nationality, or colour.

For nearly three weeks now, Vidyanand Bapat, who is originally from Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra, where his parents still live, and who has been living in a rented house in Pune for the past seven or eight years for work, has given dozens of interviews to different channels and newspapers and made his understanding clear. Before long, not only YouTube and social media but also the Marathi mainstream media made Vidyanand Bapat's mission their own. One journalist even made the headline of his report 'Bapatanni Pune Petavle' (Bapat set Pune on fire).

Through the questions he presented at that municipal corporation meeting, Bapat had, as it were, voiced what was in the hearts of thousands of people who were unable to express their pain anywhere. People would privately express anger over the growing din of DJs and their trouble with encroachments on public roads in the name of religious festivals, but with no alternative, on festival days they would leave their homes and go somewhere else to find a quiet place. The terrible din and dazzling lights of such celebrations meant more people suffering from hearing loss or reduced vision were visiting city doctors, while laser shows held in the name of festivals adversely affected the eyes of countless children and young people.

The impact of his words was such that citizens at various levels came forward and launched a signature campaign demanding that the government and district administration ban DJs and loudspeakers. At places such as Pune’s Goodluck Chowk, people formally staged sit-ins and raised this demand.

So unquestionable was the authenticity of his arguments that his opponents, reportedly including people from the Sangh and the BJP, took to quoting Vidyanand Bapat's statements out of context to portray him as being only against Hindus and silent about other religions. Yet in every other interview, Bapat would emphasise his purely secular understanding, speaking of removing loudspeakers from places of worship in the name of religion, including mosques.

On the binary of majority and minority, he also emphasised that if Hindus are the majority in India, then it is their responsibility to set an example, to take the initiative themselves and condemn the interference of religion in social and political life. It cannot work that they violate all the limits laid down by the Constitution and then expect minorities to follow regulations.

Such was the extent of his growing popularity that when his opponents could not stand up to his arguments, they tried to portray him as anti-Hindu by misquoting him. Not only that, on September 3, when he was speaking to a channel, an assailant also attacked him. Ordinary citizens responded with fierce resistance when, just two days later, thousands of them went in a procession to the municipal corporation office and demanded that Ganeshotsav be made free of loudspeakers and DJs.

It is worth underlining that this was the third major protest within a week in which ordinary citizens had taken to the streets. They strongly opposed the Sangh's attempts to distort Vidyanand Bapat's views and portray him as anti-Hindu, and said, do not divert the issue.

How long must we bear the burden of tradition?

In view of the growing demand from the public, the government now has to decide whether it will support the growing din, increasing violations of the law, growing anarchy, and obscenity in the name of festivals, or clearly say that such acts have nothing to do with our culture.

As is also clear from this entire movement, groups such as the RSS - Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which call themselves cultural, also remain silent on this issue, no religious leader appears to oppose it either, obviously, their interests are served by keeping the public entangled in such activities, they know that such activism can push people towards greater fanaticism, towards social polarisation.

Many people argue for continuing the growing use of DJs at religious festivals, or alongside it the use of the Lezim Dance, famous in the state of Maharashtra and also accompanied by the playing of large drums and nagaras, in the name of tradition. Bapat tells all of them that all such traditions are man-made, and that if a tradition causes a large section of the public to face inconvenience and difficulty, the question is whether they will still cling to it. He gives the example of the abolition of the practice of sati. This barbaric practice of burning living women on their husbands' funeral pyres was started by people themselves, who even glorified it, but when the government banned it in modern times, people themselves renounced that tradition. In an interview to a newspaper, he further explained that if we could stop the practice of child marriage in colonial times, which must have continued for hundreds of years, what stops us from banning the use of these traditional instruments that disturb public tranquility?

At present, the ball is in the government's court over the demand for a DJ-free Ganeshotsav in Pune city. A party like the Congress has also supported this demand. Will the Pune administration muster the courage to follow Solapur's example, where a DJ ban has been in force since last year?

Solapur becomes the first DJ-free city

Located about 250 kilometres from Pune, on the southeastern edge of the state, this city entered the era of a DJ-free Ganesh festival only last year. This would obviously not have been possible without organised intervention by citizens.

The question arises as to how it happened that Solapur, which had written a new chapter through the sacrifices of its people in the freedom movement, and which is also called the ‘city of martyrs’ became a pioneer in this intervention.

History bears witness to how Solapur earned that name. The Dandi March was organised under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi in 1930, and in those days, expressing solidarity with that movement, the freedom fighters here hoisted the tricolour on the municipal council of the city and formally made the city free for three days, from May 9-11, 1930. As punishment for this, the British government hanged the freedom fighters of this place, Mallappa Dhanshetti, Abdul Rasool Qurban Hussain, Jagannath Bhagwan Shinde and Shrikrishna Lakshmi Narayan Sarda, in Pune jail on January 12, 1931. The participation of all communities in the struggle, and their readiness to sacrifice everything for the freedom struggle is worth noting.

This novel campaign by the citizens of Solapur to make it DJ free was the result of two tragedies that came to light in the city, such tragedies that could have been avoided and which were directly the result of the sound produced by DJs.

The first incident came to light during a programme organised for the birth anniversary celebrations of Shivaji Maharaj in February 2025. During the procession organised on Shiv Jayanti, a person named Raju Yadgirkar, aged 58, requested the organisers of the programme to reduce the volume, as the loud sound was worsening the suffering of his 80-year-old mother. The organisers, angered by this, instead of considering his request, humiliated him and forced him to sit right in front of the DJ speaker, as a result of which he became permanently deaf.

The second incident, in August, saw a 27-year-old young man named Abhishek Birajdar die of a heart attack while dancing to the beat of a DJ at another religious procession. The doctors clearly stated that the high level of sound, combined with physical exhaustion and stress, triggered the heart attack that killed him, and that such DJ systems, which produce loud sounds, can pose a considerable threat to human health.

The anger resulting from both these incidents led aware citizens to take the initiative and resolve to make not only the Ganesh festival but all religious festivals DJ-free. A widespread signature campaign was conducted, and processions were taken out to build public opinion. Senior citizens gathered in their hundreds and were joined in the processions by other ordinary citizens, students and teachers, on August 20, 2025. A special feature of the Solapur movement was the large-scale participation of doctors in this campaign. They too held a procession in which 550 doctors participated, on August 25, 2025.

Finally, the district administration announced that the Ganesh festival would be DJ-free.

Forgotten struggle for secularism Back at Centre

Nagpur Police has banned the use of DJs, DJ vehicles, and dim lights until November 1. Several festivals sit within this calendar:  Krishna Janmashtami, Ganesh Chaturthi, Navratri and Dussehra.

It is noteworthy that this unique struggle has not only exposed the hypocrisy in how the Sangh and the BJP conceive of building a Hindu Rashtra but has also breathed new life into the fading project of building a secular India.

For the BJP and the Sangh, the rise of this movement, and the growing attraction of that middle-class Hindu public towards it, has certainly become the cause of new concern. It is worth recalling that on August 24, the same evening Vidyanand Bapat gave voice to people's concerns at the municipal corporation meeting, the ABP Majha channel invited Bapat and the BJP's city president for a panel discussion, where the city president tried to silence the seemingly unknown Bapat by saying that even a 'street dog' did not know him. It was meant not only to humiliate Bapat but also to suggest that he was doing it for cheap publicity.

Obviously, the BJP was completely opposed to this demand from day one, but now that this movement from Pune has made headlines not only in the state of Maharashtra but across the rest of the country, and an enlightened section of Hindus themselves is opposing the escalation of disorder in the name of festivals, the BJP's tone is changing.

This can be considered an important achievement of the movement, which has brought even those things that had become the new normal within the scope of questioning. A few days back, Bapat and his comrades issued a legal notice to the District Magistrate of Pune and other concerned officials, as well as concerned ministers in the Fadnavis government, stating that it is their constitutional duty to implement laws and judgements on the control of sound pollution. The detailed memorandum sent by them mentions not only various laws passed by Parliament but also judgements of the Supreme Court, as well as decisions of the National Green Tribunal, to control the sound pollution menace.

As everyone can note, the questions raised by the movement have a wider import. Does constitutional democracy really mean that it gives people the freedom to violate the rights of others with impunity? Does religious freedom mean freedom from all rules and regulations? It is high time that public festivals took place in enclosed spaces, so that the rights of the rest of the population are wholeheartedly respected. The point is not merely that the Ganesh festival is important, but what it means for festivals to become synonymous with this tremendous din.

It should not be forgotten that governments have long been aware of noise levels exceeding permissible limits during festivals but have kept the issue on the back burner. For instance, Pune's leading engineering college has been measuring the increasing noise during the Ganesh festival procession every year for the past twenty-five years. It has found that in recent years the noise level on Pune's busiest Laxmi Road has reached 105 decibels, whereas according to the Ministry of Environment, this level can be at most 55 decibels in residential areas and at most 65 decibels in commercial areas.

Making the increasing noise of DJs a subject of debate is also important because of the rapid proliferation of what the noted journalist Kunal Purohit talks about in his book Hindutva Pop, provocative songs that spew venom against a particular community and that have led to riots after processions during various religious festivals, in which DJs play a major role. Numerous studies have been conducted on the dangerous effects of Hindutva pop, and there is reason to think that, with growing awareness among the masses and conscious citizens, and formations taking the initiative, the menace of the high sound created by DJs can also be reined in.