On November 29, news portal The Quint quietly deleted a story that they had published on the same day about one Abhishek Shankar, a musician, who had whined on his Instagram profile about a client who had asked him not to play ‘Allah’ song at a Hindu wedding. Abhishek Shankar, had connected his alleged experience with the cancellation of shows of stand-up comedian Munawar Faruqui who mocked the Godhra carnage as well as the victims. It is unclear why The Quint deleted the story. However, a website apdirect.in picked up the story from Quint and published it here.

‘A man with Tika stopped us from playing Allah song’ – alleged Abhishek Shankar

Abhishek has a band that plays at events, including weddings. He shared one incident where he was allegedly stopped from playing a song based on ‘Allah’ at a Hindu wedding. In his now-deleted story, Abhishek said, “Hate isn’t just for comedians. Musicians receive it too. I wasn’t following the news because I was caught up with work and back to back shows until this incident ironically happened to me and the band just 16 hours ago in our last show.”

While emphasising connecting his experience to Faruqui’s shows being cancelled, he added, “My band has a list of songs from different genres in Indian commercial music. Sufi music is one of them. We all love the classic songs of Nusrat (Fateh Ali Khan) saabh as well as Coke Studio India and Pakistan. We have a medley that has songs like Allah-Hoo (Nooran Sisters), Akhiyan Udeek Diyan, Nit Kher Manga (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan) etc., and we were doing our regular set performing all our arrangements.”

He further said everything was going well until their female singer started singing the Sufi song ‘Allah-Hoo’. According to him, the crowd was loving the song, but in the middle of it, “a random uncle with a tika on his forehead called me to edge of the stage. They usually request their favourite songs. His voice tore through the PA system to my ears as he said, ‘What is this Allah ho Allah hoo? Do we look like Muslims to you? This is a Hindu wedding. We won’t tolerate songs about Allah here. I will shut it down. Stop this nonsense now,” he said.

The musician, who was hired to sing at a private event, added that he tried to ‘explain’ it to him, but the man did not listen to him and allegedly threatened him if he did not stop the song, they would be thrown out. He said, “This whole incident started sinking in my brain as each song passed, and I didn’t want to perform anymore. I could have argued with him, but it could have made things worse. For obvious reasons.”

Abhishek claimed he felt disgusted to wear the Hindu sacred thread on his body after the alleged incident. He said, “I felt disgusted wearing a sacred thread on my body after this incident. I just have one request for everyone. Keep your religious hatred to your political and social space. Don’t bring it to the art space and spoil it. Artists do not belong to any religion.”

Towards the end, Shankar claimed that once when he was on a train to Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh, some man asked him about his beard. “You have a beard because you like it or you are a Muslim?” he claimed a stranger had asked him on a train. He then claimed that under the khakhi jacket there was ‘UP Police’ logo.

Except, the thing is that now the entire story has gone missing and Abhishek Shankar, too, has not posted any updates on the wedding he performed at which was hosted by the Hindus who made him feel ashamed of his Janeu. However, it seems very likely that Shankar, after virtue signalling and badmouthing clients (how is it ever a good idea in service industry), felt that it may backfire and his ‘woke’ stand may actually backfire. Because there is no data available on how many people pay money to people only to be badmouthed on social media like this.

In fact, it now seems quite likely either the incident never happened or was exaggerated to a great extent. So when the story was made public by The Quint, and people on social media started questioning the musician and some even questioned his professional integrity for badmouthing clients like this on public platform, the musician decided to run away and perhaps play victim that he was threatened or such. A classic shoot and scoot technique used by the privileged wokes to make sensational claims with very little evidence and then cry foul when someone questions them.

This is quite predictable. Remember the case of Barun Kashyap? In August 2016, one Mumbai based executive had claimed he was ‘beaten up’ by Gaurakshaks (at a time when national media was full of stories of ‘gaurakshaks’ allegedly beating up people over cattle smuggling) because of his ‘leather bag’. Barun had alleged that he was on his way home in Mumbai in an autorickshaw when the driver stopped it mid-way and brought people to thrash him because of his bag that ‘felt was made of cow skin’.

Barun made everyone believe that the autorickshaw could figure out the leather of the bag just by looking at it and take an offence of it being made of cow skin. Barun had then claimed he pleaded to them that the bag was made of camel skin. Except, he later reportedly admitted he had made it all up. Apparently he had even admitted to making it up to spark communal tension and wanted to play victim of ‘gaurakshaks’.

Who is to say Abhishek Shankar did not make it up to play victim because, well, Munawar Faruqui was getting all the attention?