Think back to the last Bollywood number that drove you up the wall. Is it raising your blood pressure just to think about it? Congratulations, you now have something in common with the Islamic state.
Bollywood music is the latest weapon that the British special forces are deploying against the Islamic State, according to the Daily Mirror. Since the IS considers music apostasy, the British special forces hope that blasting Bollywood will work as psychological warfare. It’s the brainchild of a Pakistani-born British intelligence officer who is reportedly of the belief that making IS hear Bollywood may just persuade them to leave the Libyan town of Sirte, which has been under IS control since September last year.
In IS territories, sharia law has banned anything that is seen as “frivolous” and Bollywood music is seen as an insult. “In one incident, the team — helped by Libyan troops — left two cars near checkpoints on the edge of Sirte and at dawn, blasted Bollywood music by remote control through two huge speakers in the vehicles,” reported the Mirror. A senior “source” told the Mirror, “We need to unnerve militants… it went well.”
And you thought nothing good would ever going to come of Honey Singh, Himesh and Co.
This is not the first instance of cacophony, sorry, music being used to bring people to their knees. In 2005, The New Yorker reported that one of the most stressful sections of a Pentagon-funded program titled “Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape” (SERE), designed to toughen up trainees in case they’re captured, used “noise stress”. Yoko Ono’s albums was one of the soundtracks that trainees were made to hear. Loud music (genre and artist unspecified) has also been used in Guantanamo Bay.
As tempting as it is to imagine the likes of Himesh Reshammiya and Honey Singh winning the war against IS for the rest of the world, we’ve got to admit that we find it a lot more likely that in a couple of days, IS fighters will be bopping to the likes of “Hookah Bar“, “Caller Tune” and “Manali Trance“. Plus, if there’s someone in IS who can translate the lyrics, the group might find itself approving of the lyrics of “Chittiyan Kalaiyan“.