Time and again, the BJP government derives titillating pleasure in regulating the religious affairs of Muslims. The power exercised hence serves as a reminder to Muslims that their religious practice is not only under watch but need to be mediated by governance authorities like school principals, deputy commissioner and collectors (in the cases of anti-hijab law, child marriage crackdown and the 2024 Wafq Amendment respectively). Governance of Islam in India today has been spread open to judgments of non-Muslims who partake in an increasingly Islamophobic society. Such a society shapes them, their thoughts and perspectives. Governance strategies of BJP is increasingly infused with assumptions about Muslim—the Muslim is corrupt; Muslim women are oppressed by patriarchy of the men forced into hijab, child marriage and triple talaq. The act and amendments hence passed reify majoritarian assumptions and stereotypes rather than address the issues genuinely.
Amendments and acts have become tools of oppression and are cloaked by the saviorism of a Hindutva state. This Hindutva state marshals through New India with its self-assumed role as protector of Muslim property, women and children. The protection offered by these laws is illusionary and instrumental, for it has not activated Muslims agency—Muslim are not moving or voicing freely in the laws’ embrace. Instead, in its protectionist shadow, Muslims’ economic, social and cultural lives are being strangled. For instance, Muslim women whose husbands were arrested in Assam child marriage crackdown, have died by suicide. If it was Muslim women who were protected, why the crackdown manifested as suicide? Each act, amendment and law by Hindutva state needs to be thereby interpreted for the way its shells on Muslim agency.
Interpreted hence, the Wafq law, in material terms, primarily amounts to economic strangulation of the Muslim community in India by dispossessing the ethnic group and gradually ripping it off of security and stability. Muslims in India collectively hold about 8% of the country’s wealth and Wafq properties do not generally belong to a particular Muslim individual. Hence, the general logic of private property—through which majoritarian emotions are being riled up against a marginalized minority—does not apply here. As charitable donations, Wafq has historically also served the emancipation of marginalized population, namely enslaved people, in the second Caliph Sayyidina Umar Ibn Al-Khattab times.
Waqf board can decide to which marginalized community the ‘returns’ from properties, example, rent, temporary shelter, food, can be provided as alms. But given the burgeoning lynching, demolition and displacement of Muslims, these properties might soon be needed for economically depraved Muslims seeking shelter away from the debris of their demolished homes. It is by ripping Muslims off of the material power required for community resilience and emancipation, Waqf amendment amounts to economic strangulation of a community.
Secondly, the amendment requires the registration of all Waqf properties. Indian Muslims are at an excruciating stage of violence where interpreting one event does not do justice to the abysmal state of affairs that confronts Muslims today. Stories from the violent pasts of the world need to be told in this moment as these stories help us to imagine possibilities, without falling into the trap of spinning conspiracy. Imagining the possibilities of the violence, however painstaking and conspiratorial they are, enables one to be precautious. Imagining possibilities of resistance helps one to go beyond the fear that underlies the precaution.
Conspiring literally translates as breathing together (in a suffocating system), feminist scholar Nassim Parvin reminds. Ayesha Azka in an erudite analysis of the Waqf law states that the narratives about Waqf blur the line between conspiracy and legitimate concern. After analysis of key amendments, Azka is left with questions. Pointing to the need for District Collector in Waqf mediation, she asks, “what happens when the collector himself has recklessly demolished a religious endowment owned by Muslims?” Asking questions and telling stories help to make sense of the insensible, breath and resist expropriation. In this way, every question asked, and story told, points to a possibility of expropriation.
The amendments brought forth to Section 36 on Registration of Waqf properties through portal and database is specifically important. ‘Registers’ have been the basis for the violence that had followed in world’s genocidal histories. In Nazi Germany, a 1938 law mandated the registration of all properties owned by the then marginalized community, Jews. This was part of Nazi’s Aryanization agenda. This eventually led to the expropriation of Jewish property by the Nazi state, leading to an economically abysmal situation for Jews. Such confiscated property, on the other hand, accrued revenues that covered 5% of the national budget between 1938-1939. Much of the budget in Nazi Germany was allocated for the violent military that was carrying out mass murders.
The major amendments put forth to section 36 include (1) registration of Waqf property through “portal and database,” (2) power to Central Government, which was previously with the board, to demand additional details about the property at the time of registration, (3) disputed property not to be registered unless reviewed by the court but also (4) no court can review unregistered waqf property under dispute after six months from the commencement of the act. The question remains, what happens to unregistered waqf under dispute after six months?
Section 36, the Waqf act, 1995, endows the Waqf board with the power to judge “the genuineness and validity of the application” before registering a property as Waqf, or charitable donation. This power, if the amendment is passed, will be transferred to the District Collector and as of 2022, only 2.22% of IAS officers are Muslim. The amendment also provides positions for non-Muslim on the board. Alongside, BJP leaders namely Mohsin Lokhandwala, Darakhshan Andrabi and Shadab Shams have been elected into the Gujarat, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand Waqf boards. The provision and the events, patched together, constrains the representation of religiously inclined common Muslims on the board and enables those who are politically associated.
Waqf is donated by a practicing Muslim with a hope that, after their death, they would still benefit from the good deeds accruing from the property or, Sunnah. A practicing Muslim believes that realizing one’s Sunnah will provide them with a fulfilling eternity. Would the non-Muslims on the proposed Waqf board comprehend this spiritual meaning—where taking care of needy in the world even after one’s death, promises a fulfilling afterlife? Imagining Waqf needs to go beyond the regimented logics of administration, like corruption and managerial efficiency and, Hindu nationalist passion for unifying everything Muslim under the harsh rays of a thousand saffron suns. Imagining Waqf requires resisting the amendment as a form of Islamic Spirituality—reclaiming resilience, empowerment and our capacities to do Sunnah after our worldly lives have passed.
Misria Shaik Ali is a researcher and writes on the alterity of Muslims in/of India.
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