The Wakf Bill 2024, amid heated debates, demands more than just rhetoric. While the bill stirs controversy, it’s crucial to focus on substantive reforms that protect Wakf properties, ensuring transparency and accountability. The real challenge lies in transcending the noise to achieve meaningful change for the Muslim community.
A reading of the Bill makes it evident that a blind and politically-motivated rejection of its provisions in toto might be something akin to throwing the baby out along with the bathwater.
Divine entities don’t care for material wealth, but temporal institutions that take care of the spiritual needs of humans are awash with wealth.
Donations pour into the spiritual abodes of various deities in every part of the world, most places of worship being famed as the wealthiest places even amid extreme poverty and deprivation, often attracting the attention of fortune-seekers like the medieval warriors, who plundered the wealthy Indian temples, to the latter-day manipulators in high positions who confiscate or divert much divine wealth for their private ends.
The need for transparent and effective administration of the immense riches of the spiritual places in India, whether they belong to Hindu, Christian, or Muslim places of worship or any other smaller denominations of faith, is a matter beyond any doubt.
A substantial number of civil litigations languishing in the Indian courts relate to disputes over such wealth, involving members of different communities, members of different factions in the same community, and also members of families who are connected to the administration of such wealth for generations.
This is a gray zone in jurisprudence as often the courts have little material evidence or precedence to go by as mostly the issues of contention are steeped in history and traditions, and subject to different interpretations of the faith and their traditions and beliefs, rendering the deliverance of fair judgment rather difficult or time consuming.
What is Wakf property?
The dispute over the lands occupied by Babri Masjid in Ayodhya is a case in point, as the original dispute over the property started in the 1850s, as the Supreme Court itself had pointed out.
According to historical records, a communal riot had taken place there in 1856-57, the dispute taking over one and a half centuries and huge convulsions and much bloodshed in independent India before it could arrive at a final settlement.
This is one example of the complexity of the wakf properties that are spread across all parts of the vast subcontinent of India, and most of these properties are rooted in history as the practice of offering property as wakf — an Islamic endowment of property to be held in trust and used for a charitable or religious purpose — has been in existence among Indian Muslims from the time of the advent of Islam to the subcontinent.
Mostly these properties are held in perpetuity and their administrations are entrusted to wakf boards constituted for the purpose.
Wakf boards in India
The Wakf boards in India were first constituted for the administration of the properties during the British administration in 1913, and the Mussalman Wakf Act, 1923, was enacted for the smooth administration of these institutions.
In independent India, a Central Wakf Council was brought into existence in 1964, under the provisions of the Wakf Act, 1954, as a statutory body under the Ministry of Minority Affairs as an advisory body to the Central Government on matters concerning the wakf boards in various states as also the administration of Auqaf, the endowments that come under the purview of wakf boards.
The Wakf Act of 1954 was further amended in 2013, which streamlined the functioning of the Central Wakf Council as well as the state-level Wakf boards under the provisions of the Wakf (Amendment) Act, 2013. As per this amendment, the Central Wakf Council had been empowered to advise the central and state governments and the state Wakf boards on matters concerning Wakf properties.
With this, the central council had been empowered to call for records from and issue directives to the state governments and the state wakf boards on matters like their financial affairs, survey of properties, maintenance of revenue records, encroachments on wakf properties, annual and audit reports, etc.
The state-level wakf boards, functioning under the provisions of the Wakf Act, 1995, are in charge of the administration of wakf properties in their respective states and Union Territories, and are in the process of involving themselves in the religious, social, and economic life of Indian Muslims with their activities and responsibilities spread across the mosques, dargahs, graveyards, etc, and also supporting the activities of the schools, colleges, hospitals, dispensaries, orphanages and other institutions focused on community welfare with their financial resources accruing from the wakf properties.
Looking back at the history of the Wakf Acts promulgated and amended by various administrations, both British and Indian, it is evident that the present amendments proposed to the Wakf Act, 1995, by the Narendra Modi government cannot be faulted only based on the fact that the present government has had a history of anti-Muslim and anti-minority prejudices in its administrative and legislative practices in the past.
Alienation of wakf properties
The debate that took place in the Lok Sabha earlier this week, as Kiren Rijiju, Minister for Parliamentary and Minority Affairs, introduced the Bill in the House, reflected much of the concerns and apprehensions other than the need for further and better streamlining of the administration or these properties across the country.
It is a fact and also a matter of shame for the country’s administration that huge chunks of wakf properties that should have gone for the benefit and welfare of the members of one of the most backward and impoverished communities in the country are now alienated, with little hopes of their recovery.
It is known that one of the most brilliant residential homes of a business tycoon in India’s “Maximum City” stands on wakf land where once stood a rickety madrasa for Muslim children! But that is not an exception, but a widely seen practice in most parts of the country as far as wakf properties are concerned.
The debate on the Bill in Parliament was thus on predictable lines, as both the Opposition and Treasury benches stuck to their oft-repeated stances — the Opposition considered it “undemocratic,” “anti-Muslim” and “anti-minority.” Most of these charges were based on the record of the Modi government in the past and not necessarily based on a closer reading of the text of the Bill.
For example, most Opposition members found objection to the provisions in the Bill that allow two non-Muslim members and two women members in the Wakf Council, replacing the provisions in the original 1995 Act that allow only Muslim members in the statutory body. But the objection appears to be far-fetched, as the Bill makes it clear that those non-Muslim members are only for categories like Members of Parliament, former judges, and eminent persons appointed to the council as per the Act.
The original Act had provided that all members of the council shall be from the Muslim community, including two women members.
Wrongful declaration of property as wakf
Another contentious change proposed in the Bill is the provision to prevent the wrongful declaration of property as wakf, unmindful of the legitimate claims of various heirs to the property in question. It appears the Bill takes into account a widespread complaint of denial of equal share and property rights to women inheritors.
This is a matter that has evoked much debate and calls for reforms in the Muslim personal laws about inheritance rights to women in the community including daughters of a deceased person, as at present the law does not provide for equitable division of family properties among all the children.
There are several civil disputes in various courts including the Supreme Court of India over such anomalies in Muslim property rights. Several Muslim couples in Kerala, who had been married for decades as per the Sharia laws, had re-registered their marriages under the Civil Marriage Act, as a mark of protest against Sharia laws and also to ensure that their daughters would receive equal rights over ancestral properties after their deaths.
Throwing the babies out
The Bill makes provisions to prevent a person from unilaterally declaring his properties as wakf, denying the legitimate rights of the legal heirs. The Bill makes it mandatory that the person who declares his property as wakf should be a practicing Muslim for at least five years, and that he must own the property being declared as wakf. It also adds that the property being declared as wakf-alal-aulad must not result in the denial of inheritance rights to the donor’s heirs, including female heirs.
Thus a reading of the text of the Bill makes it evident that a blind and politically-motivated rejection of its provisions in toto might be something akin to the practice of throwing the baby out along with the bathwater. There are substantial elements in the new Bill that take care of the interests of the various sections of the Muslim community whose rights are often ignored by the traditional laws, ulama leaders, and patriarchal community leadership.
Now that the Bill is going to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) consisting of members from both sides, it would be a good idea to take a careful review of the various provisions in the Bill beyond the sound and fury of parliamentary debates and seek to arrive at a consensus that might ensure better justice to all sections in the community.
It is imperative that the legislation, in its final form, should take care of some of the most glaring concerns of those less visible sections in the community, foremost among them being Muslim women. #hydkhabar
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