2 days Ago By Mid-day
The pretentious nomenclature of UMEED, the ironic acronym for the Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency and Development Act—the title of the new waqf law—can’t camouflage its brazen discrimination against Muslims and encouragement for usurping their common properties. This is most eloquently exemplified by the UMEED Act denying Muslims an assured majority on the state waqf boards, which superintend moveable and immoveable properties that Muslims gift to God in perpetuity for religious and charitable purposes.The UMEED Act explicitly says that only four of the waqf board’s 11 members have to be Muslim—a representative of mutawallis or managers of the waqf, an eminent scholar of Islamic theology, and two or more elected members from the municipalities or panchayats.
The board’s other seven members can be non-Muslim. The objections of Muslim members in a board meeting can, thus, be routinely overruled.It is ostensibly a puzzle why the Act also provides that two members of the waqf board shall be non-Muslim.
This seemingly counters the possibility of non-BJP state governments appointing all 11 members from among Muslims. This provision is, at best, a provocation to the Opposition and Muslims—and, at worst, gives the Hindus a meddlesome role in the management of Muslim endowments.All the board’s 11 members are to be nominated by the state government, signifying India’s democratic slide.
This is because under the Waqf Act, 1995, subsequently amended in 2013, only three of the board’s members were to be nominated. All others were to be elected, with Muslim MPs from the state, Muslim MLAs, mutawallis, and Muslim members of the Bar Council electing “one or two members” each from amongst themselves. This provision guaranteed an elected Muslim majority on the board, which, therefore, enjoyed autonomy from the government.
The imposition of non-Muslims on the waqf board flouts Article 26 of the Constitution, which says every religious denomination has the fundamental right to “establish and maintain institutions for religious and charitable purposes.” The Act violates Article 14’s provision of equality before law, for some Hindu endowments and religious institutions, as pointed out in the parliamentary debate on the UMEED Act, explicitly bar non-Hindus from managing them, or denies them the right to vote in case they are associated with it.Recently, the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam, in Andhra Pradesh, took punitive action against 18 Hindu employees for participating in non-Hindu religious activities.
The Bodh Gaya Temple Act provides for a committee of four Hindus, four Buddhists, and Gaya’s district magistrate as ex-officio chairperson to manage the Mahabodhi temple complex, where Gautam Buddha attained enlightenment. However, in case the District Magistrate is a non-Hindu, s/he must nominate a Hindu as chairperson, thereby ensuring a Hindu majority in the committee. It’s hypocritical, and malevolent, to deny the waqf board a Muslim majority.
A waqf board packed with government nominees, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, cannot be expected to challenge the State’s appropriation of waqf land. A telling example of this came last month from Ujjain, where authorities bulldozed 250 properties to clear 5.27 acres of land for building a corridor around the Mahakaleshwar Temple.
The evacuated land was waqf property, yet the Madhya Pradesh Waqf Board did not object. Asked for an explanation, its chairman, Sanawar Patel, told Al Jazeera’s Kashif Kakvi, “I would do what the party orders because I am here because of the party.”The new law, in fact, facilitates the occupation of waqf land, for whenever a dispute over whether a property is waqf or government arises, an official above the joint secretary’s rank will inquire into it.
It’s a settled law that title disputes are decided in a civil court, not by an official, who has a conflict of interest as s/he is a member of the government and vulnerable to manipulation.The official’s order can be challenged in the Waqf Tribunal, whose decision will not be final, as it was under the 1995 Act, and the aggrieved can go in appeal to the high court. Earlier, the high court could only review the Tribunal order, whether it was in accordance with the law.
So now, such cases will likely drag for years, during which the disputed property cannot be used as waqf. The Act also disallows suits to be filed against individuals who have occupied waqf properties for over 12 years. This 12-year bar on suits is not there for Hindu endowments.
Hindutvawadis claim that government properties have been arbitrarily declared as waqf. The truth is to the contrary, as pointed out by the Rajinder Sachar committee report, which said, “..
.Occupation by the governments and their agencies..
.has resulted in large scale abrogation of the cherished and charitable objectives of the Wakfs.” In five states and Delhi alone, the Sachar committee counted 604 waqf properties under the government’s unauthorised occupation.
Another narrative, citing the Sachar committee, claims that waqf properties total six lakh acres, and constitute India’s third largest land bank. Former Special Chief Secretary of Telangana Md. Shafiquzzaman, in an article, pointed out that Hindu endowments in just two states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh own 9.
4 lakh acres. On such dubious narratives rests the UMEED Act, a symbol of the tyranny of law over Muslims.The writer is a senior journalist and author of Bhima Koregaon: Challenging CasteSend your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.
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