Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray on Monday said that Muslims should have no hindrance in celebrating the festival of Eid on May 3.
In a tweet addressed to his party members, Thackeray asked them to cancel the “maha aartis” – a Hindu ritual – scheduled to be held in various parts of Maharashtra on the same day on the occasion of the Akshay Tritiya festival.
Thackeray’s remarks came two days after he had reiterated his demand that the Maharashtra government should remove loudspeakers from mosques by May 3. He had said that if the loudspeakers were not removed, he would ask his party members to play the Hindu hymn Hanuman Chalisa in front of mosques.
“If you [Muslims] are going to do nuisance by playing azaan on loudspeakers from mosques, we will recite and play Hanuman Chalisa outside that mosque loudly,” Thackeray had said during a rally in Aurangabad on May 1, according to The Indian Express. “I don’t want to cause riots in Maharashtra. Muslims, too, need to understand that very well.”
In Monday’s tweet, Thackeray said that the matter of loudspeakers was not religious in nature, but a “social issue with related inconvenience”.
“Regarding the loudspeaker issue, I will further notify what we intend to do, via my social media,” he told his party workers.
Thackeray had first made the demand to remove the loudspeakers on April 2. Since then, he and members of the Bharatiya Janata Party have repeatedly asked the Maharashtra government to ban loudspeakers at mosques.
The matter escalated after Independent MP Navneet Rana and her husband MLA Ravi Rana, threatened to recite the Hanuman Chalisa outside Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray’s home last month. Both the leaders have been charged with sedition and were sent to judicial custody on April 24.
Meanwhile, on Monday Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar said that no one can give an ultimatum to the state government, PTI reported.
“Dictatorship won’t be allowed in Maharashtra,” Pawar said, without naming Thackeray. “There is rule of law here and law is equal for all.”
Pawar said that every citizen has to abide by the law and the Constitution and decisions taken by the government will be applicable to every resident of the state.
“Only loudspeakers atop mosques [will be removed] and others will not be touched…[such a thing] will not happen,” Pawar said, according to PTI.
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