A Fractured Timeline: How The Waqf Amendment Targets Muslims While Ignoring Deeper Failures

In a menacingly bipolar polity and society, and in an era of easy-labelling and stereotyping, telling truth and holding a mirror before the two poles is a much more difficult task. Accusations and counter-accusations of opportunism against independent-minded interventions on a contentious issue come rather hastily. Thus, commenting upon a deeply flawed, ill-intended and partisan law on Waqf (Muslim charitable endowments) becomes as much difficult as it is to point out the flaws within certain aspects of the institutional creation and bad management of the Waqf.

As of now, pertaining to the Waqf, a lot of communication gap exist even among the non-partisan. That needs to be steered clear. Every society and religion has provisions and practices of charity and public welfare. In India, in an era of majoritarian ascendancy and minority-bashing, weaponising such a noble, welfarist institutional practice seems to have become an easy populist politics of minority persecution. On the other hand, huge Waqf assets and its proceeds controlled and siphoned off by the self-serving religious and secular elites of Muslims in connivance with the state and state regulated Waqf Boards, since ages, is a double whammy for the common Muslim citizens of the country. This is regardless of whether the dispensation is overtly anti-Muslim or ostensibly pluralist.

The Story of my Ancestral Village

In my own native village, there are at least three to four graveyards. The largest one is, as per documentation, owned by some of the families, but used for burial by all Muslim castes (biradris) and classes of the village. Another one is owned by three specific families. In the three contiguous graveyards, each family buries its dead people in their respective spots. Yet another one, adjacent to it, belongs to the Muslim communities of Mir-Shikars, Rayeens, Mansuris (Pasmanda Muslim communities). The land is said to have been donated by a Bhumihar-Brahman Hindu upper caste landlord of the village, economic status of whose descendants are reported to have dwindled very significantly. Thus, as per the notion of “Waqf by user”, these graveyards of my native village are Waqf, without any such documentation. As per the just legislated law (The Waqf (Amendment) Bill 2025), the Hindu inheritors of these lands may claim their ownership and one can imagine its socio-political fallout, particularly in an era of “everyday communalism”.

The older mosque in my ancestral village stands on a piece of land which belonged to an issueless widow. The rest of the plot of the land has got a house of the legal inheritors of the donor, who possess the document of proprietorship. Off and on, certain villagers, hostile to, or jealous of the house-owning descendent (legal inheritor), keep claiming that the rest of the plot of the land too belongs to the Waqf (mosque). Thus, a dispute is kept alive, howsoever, intra-Muslim. The very same widow-donor is said to have donated another plot of her land, produce of which is meant for upkeep of the mosque. This is all oral. Otherwise, the legal inheritor of the widow-donor can always reclaim the land. Recently, certain “pious” people of the village expressed their intent to sell away the land so that a tall, 80-feet-long-spire (minar) could be built. Without a tall minar, the identity of the newly arrived, affluent Muslims couldn’t be displayed to create awe among the Muslims and Hindus of the locality. These “pious”, religiously educated and Shariah-minded people were choosing to forget the fact that a Waqf land cannot be put to use for any purpose other than what has been specified by the donor (Waqif). They also chose to forget a fact that in the face of non-existence of a written documentation and lack of registration of such details with the Waqf Board or non-registration in a court of law to that effect, their step would encounter a big obstacle. Who would be the seller in the land-registration office? The seller in such a scenario has necessarily to be a legal inheritor of the land. That the newly-constructed tall minar on the northern wall of the mosque (the metallic road touches the northern wall of the mosque, hence, it involves another question of legality) would attract the attention of the Hindu religious processions and therefore it is potentially explosive, is another important issue.

Religiosity of the Waqf

In 1879, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan—when he was in the Viceroy라이브 바카라 legislative council—published an article in his Urdu journal, Tazhib- al-Akhlaq, titled “A Plan for Saving Muslim Families from Destruction and Extinction”. He noted that if a Waqf was “allowed”, or “permitted” (mujaz), means that he didn’t call it disapprovable, but he also didn’t approve of the institution as strongly.

Sir Syed라이브 바카라 four important concerns were: (a) that the property placed in a Waqf be accurately and fully described; (b) his proposal insisted that once drawn up, a waqfnamah (deed of Waqf) be registered with the district officer or the district collector or magistrate; (c) the shares of the Waqf라이브 바카라 income had to be precisely laid out in the Waqfnamah; (d) also, the succession to the office of mutawalli had to be clearly established. Ameer Ali (1849-1928), however, disagreed with Sir Syed. Eventually, bending under the pressure of the Muslim orthodoxy, Sir Syed couldn’t propose the draft bill in the imperial legislative council.

Contentious Legislative Histories of the Waqf in India

After the failed attempt of Sir Syed, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the cunning politician, jumped into it, ostensibly to protect the interests of the Muslim landed elites who needed the Waqf Validation Act of 1913. This Act, supported by the colonial state, aimed to safeguard the landed assets of these elites, who were seen as potential allies against the growing anti-colonial movement. The Swadeshi Movement, which opposed the religious-communal partition of Bengal, had forced the colonial state to annul the (Bengal) partition in 1911, necessitating a political arrangement to secure Muslim support. So much so that unlike the Sir Syed라이브 바카라 draft, Jinnah, in 1913, also succeeded in getting a clause added that registration of a Waqfnamah was not mandatory.

Subsequently, Jinnah enlisted more consolidated support of Muslims through the Shariat Act of 1937, which was based on the Aurangzeb era codification of Shariat, Fatawa-e-Alamgiri of the late 17th century. Through the Shariat Act 1937-1939, he secured hugely consolidated political support of the separatist Muslim elites and soon after, he succeeded in winning Pakistan for them. Pakistan reformed Muslim Personal Laws in March 1961. Many other Muslim countries have introduced reforms, but India라이브 바카라 Muslims continue to resist state interference not only on the issue of un-Quranic Instant Triple Talaq (ITT), but also in the Aligarh Muslim University라이브 바카라 malignant governance and gross abuse of autonomy.

Moral Weakness of Building Resistance and Solidarity

While the “liberal” era of the Indian republic has often been obliging the Muslim regressives, the current majoritarian era pursues its own divisive political agenda. For instance, it criminalised the ITT in 2019, but didn’t strengthen the provisions of maintenance to the divorced women. Whereas, the Supreme Court라이브 바카라 verdict (in the Danial Latifi case of 2001) has already clarified that the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, (MWPRD), does provide for maintenance. This should have been strengthened in the Act of 2019. It must be noted that maintenance to the divorced women is the most crucial aspect in this specific issue of taking care of the women victims.

Such a political history of India라이브 바카라 Muslims in the 20th century (colonial and republican eras) and their stubbornness against state intervention into the reforms has been weakening the moral strength needed to resist the Waqf Act of 2025. Moreover, such a character of Muslim politics, particularly of the 1980s, has been identified by many as a contributing factor to the rise of majoritarianism in India today. Hiding the sad fact of perpetual mismanagement of Waqf assets since ages will further deplete the moral strength required to build up solidarity to resist an unwanted law.

Moreover, a political arrangement to safeguard the monopoly on landed assets is equally true for the Hindu Mahanths and their Mutths. The current dispensation hasn’t bothered about these Hindu institutions suffering from similar ailments. Unfortunately, this institution of Mahanths and Maths remains under-explored by the historians of peasant and agrarian relations. Prakash Jha라이브 바카라 film Mrityudand (1997) attempts to depict some of the degenerative aspects of the institution of Mahanth, but it eventually turned more into a melodramatic movie.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has got no intent of introducing a similar bill to reform this Hindu institution of Mahanths’ Muths? This is, therefore, an additional reason why Muslim communities and justice-loving people look upon the Waqf Act 2025 with alarming concern, as it creates an impression of targeting only Muslims with discriminatory treatment. One more apprehension is that the Act could be turned into a tool to harass Muslims by local majoritarian forces and outfits in those smaller villages and mohallas where written deeds of Waqf and mosques aren’t available, as is the case with the abovementioned instance from my own ancestral village. Another alarming aspect of the Act is the religious places of worship falling under the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act, 1904. According to lawyer Kapil Sibal, this specific aspect was kept unknown to Parliamentarians of the Opposition, till the day it was debated in the two houses.

In short, India라이브 바카라 Waqf urgently need reforms in terms of actualising maximum potential of revenue, proceeds, usufruct for charitable purposes towards capacity-building of the weaker sections of citizenry. Khalid Rashid (1978) estimated that Waqf assets actualise only a mere 3.5 per cent of its actual promise in terms of usufruct. It needs protection from the encroachers. Waqf-loot happens with the connivance of the state and the Muslim elites controlling the Waqf Boards. The Act legislated in 2025 doesn’t promise any such intent and sincerity towards breaking this nexus (between the state and the Waqf-looting elites). Protecting the Waqf and realising its basic objective of charity and welfare remains as elusive as ever. More sincere implementation of the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2013, could have been much helpful than legislating a new law on this. The BJP should have considered emulating Turkey whose laws of 1868 and 1924 make the Waqf institutions most robust in terms of education, healthcare, municipal and civic amenities and even in disaster relief. Politically, such emulation may have helped the BJP outsmarting the Opposition, without creating social friction.

(Views expressed are personal)

Mohammad Sajjad is a professor, Modern And Contemporary Indian History, Aligarh Muslim University, and author of Muslim Politics In Bihar: Changing Contours

This article is part of 바카라라이브 바카라 May 01, 2025 issue 'Username Waqf' which looks at the Waqf Amendment Act of 2025, its implications, and how it is perceived by the Muslim community. It appeared in print as 'A Fractured Timeline'