The Parliament of India early Thursday has transferred a controversial bill by the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to amend Laws on Muslim land gifts.
The bill will add non-Muslims to the boards that manage WAQF land provisions and give the government a greater role in ratifying their land ownership. The government says the changes will help fight corruption and mismanagement while promoting diversity, but critics fear that it will further undermine the rights of the country’s Muslim minority and can be used to seize historical mosques and other property.
Debates in the lower house were heated, as the opposition of the congress firmly opposed the proposal and called it unconstitutional and discriminatory against Muslims. Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party does not have a majority in the lower house, but its allies have helped accept the bill.
The debate that started on Wednesday ended with 288 members voting for the bill, while 232 was against it early Thursday. The bill will now have to clean up the top house before it is sent to President Droupadi Murmu for her consent to become law.
Minister of Minority Affairs, Kiren Rijiju, enacted the bill to change a 1995 legislation that drafted rules for the foundations and drafted state level councils to administer it.
Many Muslim groups as well as the opposition parties believe the proposal is discriminatory, politically motivated and an attempt by the ruling party of modes to weaken minority rights.
The bill was first established in parliament last year, and opposition leaders said some of their subsequent proposals were ignored. The government said opposition parties use rumors to discredit it and block transparency to manage the endowment.
What is a waqf?
Waqfs is a traditional type of Islamic Charity Foundation in which a donor property sets aside horses – but not always real estate – for religious or charity purposes.
WAQFS in India controls 872,000 properties that cover 405,000 hectares (1 million hectares) of land, worth an estimated $ 14.22 billion. Some of these donations date back centuries, and many are used for mosques, seminars, cemeteries and orphanages.
Law would change who runs waqfs
In India, WAQF property is managed by semi-official boards, one for each state and the federal trade union area. The law would require non-Muslims to be appointed to the boards.
Currently, WAQF directives are manned by Muslims, such as similar bodies that help administer other religious charities.
During the parliamentary debate, Interior Minister Amit Shah said non-Muslims would only be included in WAQF alexes for administration purposes and helped to run the donations smoothly. He added that they were not there to interfere in religious issues.
“The (non-Muslim) members will monitor whether the administration runs by law or not, and whether the donations are used for what they were intended or not,” he said.
One of the most controversial changes is to ownership rules, which can affect historical mosques, sanctuaries and cemeteries, as many such properties do not have formal documentation, as it was donated decades, and even centuries ago, without legal records.
Questions about title
Other changes can affect mosques on land held in age-old waqfs.
Radical Hindu groups claimed various mosques around India, arguing that they were built on the ruins of important Hindu temples. Many such cases are pending in the courts.
The Act requires WAQF boarding to ask approval of a district level officer to confirm the claims of the WAQFS on property.
Critics believe that this would undermine the board and could lead to the stripping of Muslims of their country. It is not clear how often the boards would be asked to confirm such claims on land.
“The WAQF (amendment) Bill is a weapon aimed at marginalizing Muslims and using their personal laws and property rights,” said Rahul Gandhi, the most important opposition leader, on social media platform X. to target other communities in the future. ”
Fear under Muslims
Although many Muslims agree that WAQFS is suffering from corruption, offenses and poor governance, they also fear that the new law can give India’s Hindu nationalist government much greater control over Muslim properties, especially at a time when attacks on minority communities became more aggressive among Modi, with Muslims often aimed at everything from their food and clothing.
Last month, the US Commission for International Religious Freedom said in its annual report that religious freedom conditions in India continue to deteriorate, while Modi and his party propagated “hateful rhetoric and disinformation against Muslims and other religious minorities during last year’s election campaign.
The government of Modi says India is being carried out on democratic principles of equality and there is no discrimination in the country.
Muslims, which are 14% of the 1.4 billion population of India, are the largest minority group in the Hindu majority nation, but it is also the poorest, a 2013 government’s survey found.
