By Sushil Kutty
Wakf Board. Wakf land, Wakf property. Wakf claim. ‘Once Wakf, always Wakf’. There is enough Wakf to go around for everybody to share. But no, Wakf is limited-ownership. The Muslim can claim ownership of Hindu land, but not vice versa. Just like the PLA salami-slicing India at the LAC, the Wakf Board has been claiming ownership of India’s real-estate, plot by plot, for seven and a half decades. Makes you wonder why Jinnah had to seek a referendum for the creation of Pakistan!
Today, 78 years after the fact, huge portions of India continue to remain Wakf-owned, enough Wakf land to create more than one Pakistan. There was Wakf land in India in 1947 and there’s Wakf land in India in 2024. The Partition of India changed nothing. The Wakf Amendment Bill 2024 comes too little, too late. The raucous and hotly contested Hindu-Muslim skirmishes on TV notwithstanding.
The controversy spilled over when the Delhi Wakf Board laid claim to over six ancient Hindu temples in the national capital. It also claimed ownership of a Delhi bus-stand! One of the “sacred ancient Hindu sites” is in Dwarka and the people of Dwarka had to come out in the streets to thwart the “takeover”, which is what is happening in Himachal Pradesh, where also the Wakf Board announced ownership of a mosque which was at the centre of a politically-charged public outcry.
Muslims claim ownership of the subcontinent on the basis that they’re direct descendants of Adam and Eve and Adam was Prophet No.1. Followers of Islam do not need Romilla Thapar to write their history. Muslim scholars who speak for the Muslim collective call Lord Ram of Ayodhya “Imam-e-Hind”. The Delhi Wakf Board follows the same template: “All of India is Wakf land.” Fugitive Indian Dr. Zakir Naik parrots the same line “Once Wakf, Always Wakf”.
The reality is, the Wakf Board’s role in the “preservation of India’s religious heritage” is at odds with the Wakf Board’s goals, buttressed by an amendment in 2013 which gave the Wakf Board the power to “think” of whichever land it owned and assert its ownership.
How can a government body formed to manage Muslim endowments lay claim to Hindu temples? By whose authority? What about secularism? The Wakf Board Amendment Bill 2024 is being discussed by a Joint Parliamentary Committee set up for the purpose. The Wakf Board has powers to appropriate anybody’s land. It can “randomly assert ownership. Including over Hindu religious sites.”This, in a country where Muslims are often portrayed as “oppressed”. How can a people who “ruled over Hindus for eight centuries” be oppressed?
Wakf and ownership of land came to a head after the Wakf Board Amendment Bill 2024 came up for discussion in the Joint Parliamentary Committee. Muslim religious and political leaders have suddenly become aware of the vulnerabilities of Wakf-owned land. AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi pointed out that over one lakh acres of Wakf-owned land in Uttar Pradesh had no documents to prove ownership. Muslim leaders and religious scholars aren’t waiting for the JPC to clear the air.
Owaisi has warned of difficulties for the Muslim community going forward. The spotlight on the Wakf Board has put the glare on the Wakf Act 1995, warts and all. The size of the land mass the Wakf Board claims ownership of is massive. So much so, “Hindu Rashtra” has become a pipe-dream. The power dynamics have shifted. LoP Rahul Gandhi, perhaps, understands better what Prime Minister Narendra Modi never understood.
To reiterate, the Wakf Board Amendment Bill 2024 has come too little, too late. And Modi’s ‘Viksat Bharat’ is an anomaly to cover-up the gap between promise and reality. In 2047, ‘Viksit Bharat’ will be a country of land owned by the Wakf Board. Modi and Modi’s BJP government have been taxing and taking India’s Hindu majority for a ride.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi stands accused of a decade of political and electoral subterfuge. Nothing changed for Modi’s Hindu votebank with a Hindu nationalist party coming to power. ‘Viksit Bharat’ cannot be a substitute for an India where Hindu temples are heavily taxed and Muslims own the land on which the temples stand.
Questions about religious freedom, fairness, and governance abound. The Wakf Board safeguards Muslim interests, Muslim-owned lands. But what when the Wakf Board can take and fake ownership of any land in the realm? The Waqf Board Amendment Bill 2024 is a decoy. Modi is only being half as clever. The only solution is for the Act to go.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a stubborn 74-year-old who believes that one day, someday, Muslims will vote for Modi, that all he has to do is keep up the refrain “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas.” But the speed at which the Wakf Board is claiming ownership of land, it won’t take for the likes of Modi to go extinct.
The beauty of Wakf is that the Hindu, with no Wakf-like board to fight for him, cannot contest the claims made by the Wakf Board. And secularism doesn’t work for both sides equally. Left spokesperson Vivek Srivastav says the “majority” has to bow before the “minority’s” interests. So, while the Congress and the BJP will continue to name and defame each other, the bloodless Wakf coup will explode in their faces. (IPA
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