Singer Sona Mohapatra complained to the Mumbai Police in a series of tweets on Monday that the Madariya Sufi Foundation has threatened her to remove her song Tori Surat from all online channels. She told the police that the organisation has claimed the video is vulgar and can incite communal tension.
On Tuesday, Mohapatra posted a link to the music video with the message: “If this offends you, then please go live in your pre-historic cave.” She had first posted the video of Tori Surat, based on lyrics written by 13th-century Sufi musician Amir Khusrau, on April 13. The video has over 58,000 views on YouTube.
Lyricist Javed Akhtar condemned the alleged threats by “regressive and reactionary organisations”. “These mullas should know that Amir Khusrau belongs to every Indian,” he wrote on Twitter. “He is not your property.”
The video’s description on YouTube says that Mohapatra is seen “in unique earthy incarnations of the feminine divine from different cultures”. It says Facebook followers picked the looks featured in the video as a “collaborative audience interactive project”.
In a series of tweets, Mohapatra said on Monday that the Madariya Sufi Foundation, “along with the agreement of the Nizamuddin Dargah”, had a problem with the description and the “sleeveless dress and body-exposing dancers” in the video.
“Basically [a problem] with everything woman [and] free,” she wrote. “Why is it that in this day [and] age the women [are] expected to cover up, not sing or dance in public?”
Mohapatra tweeted later that the Mumbai Police were in touch with her and had handled the matter in a “very mature and considered manner”.
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