Ride in peace: A crowded local train in Mumbai

Mumbai, Aug. 28: Daily travel by local trains has just got a little better.

Bhajan singers on the trains — whose powerful vocal chords would shatter the silence of the Arabian Sea and the eardrums of fellow travellers — are being asked to keep mum by railway police.

Railway police have recently issued instructions to the 500-odd bhajan groups to stop singing, for the benefit of the other travellers.

Any group caught singing will be booked for “creating nuisance in a public place” and slapped with a fine. If someone is caught five times, they can be put behind bars.

“This is not the first time that there is a move to stem the nuisance,” said the Central Railway spokesperson. “But we have intensified the drive more than before.”

He said the Railway Police Force and the Government Railway Police have both been instructed to stop the singers. Railway police said 500 notices have already been issued in one month.

Bhajan groups are a menace on local trains, especially long-distance ones. In a city where a major part of the day is spent in travelling by train to the workplace and back, groups of passengers who take the same train every day have come together and formed bhajan groups for “time pass”, if not to please God. But since they have never cared about other passengers’ ear for music, many have protested about the noise they make.

Railway police have always tried to clamp down on the bhajan singers, but the recent drive came after a request from a qawali group to sing their songs on a train.

“We decided to step up the action after a qawali group asked us for permission to sing in the trains. We took two-fold action. We said a definite ‘no’ to the qawali group and mounted a strict vigil to restrict singing of bhajans,” the spokesperson said.

He said the action was taken keeping in mind the public. “Everything has a place. A bhajan is beautiful if sung in a mandir or at home. But it is a public nuisance in a train,” he added.

The spokesperson said stopping bhajans was not a matter of caste or creed, but railway police wanted to nip the issue in the bud before it led to any controversy. Bhajan-singing, innocuous as it may be at other times, can take on dangerous communal implications at particular times.

Exactly one year ago, after the twin blasts on August 25, bhajan groups, most rampant on the Virar- or Borivali-bound local trains — there are concentrations of Hindu Gujaratis in these areas — would often try to provoke supposed Muslim passengers with their singing.

“We don’t want to take any chance for anything ugly happening,” said the spokesperson.

The move has not come as music to the Shiv Sena’s ears though. Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Narayan Rane has accused the Maharashtra government of adopting “double standards” for different communities. Dubbing the ban “unfortunate”, Rane said his party would lodge protest in an appropriate manner.