S SHIVA
Padma Shri awardee and one of the most versatile singers of Bollywood, Sonu Nigam, performed at the NDTV Good Times Concert, held at the Sher-i-Kashmir International Conference Centre (SKICC), Dal Lake, on 26 October 2025. However, the concert didn’t attract much audience. The reason lies in a boycott campaign started by a Kashmiri Muslim and supported by many others from the community.
On 19 October 2025, a tweet on X showed up. It was by an account named Nafees, who describes his location as Kashmir, India, in his bio. The tweet featured an image of Nigam, with a black cross drawn over his face and a red stamp on the bottom-left, which had “boycott” written within it. In the tweet, Nafees requested people “to boycott this show for the sake of Allah SWT.” Nafees said, “Sonu Nigam had problems with Adhaan & loudspeakers, guess what he’s also using loudspeakers in his concert & now we have problems.”
The #BoycottSonuNigam campaign started by Nafees to boycott Nigam received more than 50,000 views on both X and Instagram. Over 30,000 people on Instagram shared the template, created by Nafees, calling for Nigam’s boycott on their stories, which had “Kashmir Rejects Bollywood” mentioned on it.
A Salafi Muslim, with over 2,50,000 followers on Instagram and over 12,000 members on his Instagram channel, in a video, said, “I have been receiving a lot of DMs related to a Bollywood singer, Sonu Nigam, whatever his name is, that his show is about to happen in Kashmir’s Srinagar.” He added, “Nigam once said that Azaan should be banned on the loudspeaker. Anyone who goes to his show will be those who call themselves Muslims, however, don’t have iman (faith) in their hearts. I would request my Kashmiri brothers, my Muslim brothers, to boycott this fitnah (test).”
Nafees’s campaign found support. Wajahat Nabi, 25, who hails from Anantnag, Jammu & Kashmir, as per his X bio, quoting Nafees’s tweet, wrote, “Even if he doesn’t have any problem with Azaan, being a muslim state it’s our moral responsibility to boycott the concert.” Syed, another Kashmiri Muslim who describes his location as the “Land of Martyrs,” in his X bio, wrote, “A person who disrespects Azaan … cannot be accepted in our land. This is not chaos. This is a peaceful resistance. A call for respect. The concert must be boycotted… peacefully, firmly, and with awareness.”
In April 2017, Nigam wrote a series of tweets expressing how Azaan from a mosque near his home disturbed his sleep. In one of the tweets from the series, Nigam wrote, “God bless everyone. I’m not a Muslim and I have to be woken up by the Azaan in the morning. When will this forced religiousness end in India.”
The boycott is their right; Article 19 protects it as surely as it protected Nigam’s tweets. What’s revealing is the test it applies: a singer is unwelcome for an opinion on loudspeakers, in what its supporters call ‘a Muslim state’ and ‘our land.’ Those phrases recall Kashmir’s Hindu history and raise a question: what if Hindus said the same to Kashmiri Muslims?
This is not the first instance where some Kashmiri Muslims have expressed discomfort with the Indian state and its Hindu majority. Over the past several years, their tendency toward exclusionary attitudes rather than a unified perspective has become evident.
In the first week of September 2025, the Waqf board inaugurated the renovated Hazratbal Shrine in Srinagar. Within days, a mob vandalised the national emblem on its plaque. Kashmiri politicians defended the act on the usual grounds: hurt religious sentiments and Islam’s prohibition on idol worship.
Those phrases recall Kashmir’s Hindu history and raise a question: what if Hindus said the same to Kashmiri Muslims?
Nigam has faced this before. It was Syed Sha Atef Ali Al Quaderi of the West Bengal Minority Council who issued a fatwa against Nigam and said that he would give Rs 10 lakh to anyone who shaves Nigam’s head and makes him travel across the country with a garland of old shoes. Nigam shaved his own head in response and said, “… Keep your 10 lakh ready, maulavi.”
