Waqf Bill and the bogey of land jihad

India has indeed changed over the last decade or so. For Muslims, it is changing for the worse. They now suffer many canards intended to pillory them. They are slandered the most by the impish connotations of the
word jihad.

Indeed, the Quran exhorts Muslims for jihad, which in the spiritual sense means to fight against their own evil temptations, and in the physical sense, it means to fight in the way of Allah with those who fight against Muslims, and that too with the condition that they must not transgress, for Allah does not like a transgressor. Yet, the expression is mischievously used to convey Islamic aggression.

In recent times, the phrase has been taken to a new level of farcicality to build at least five deceitful narratives suffixing jihad: love jihad, land jihad, UPSC jihad, Bollywood jihad, and thook (spit) jihad. These, the narrative claims, are intended allegedly to convert India into a Muslim nation by 2050.

Their parochialism prohibits them from realising that Muslims constitute only 14% of the country’s population and Hindus constitute a dominant majority despite a thousand years of Muslim rule.

Interfaith marriages, until recently, were a progressive idea. We seem to be going backward. In today’s environment, if a Muslim boy falls in love with a Hindu girl or is seen together in friendship, he is accused of and harassed for committing love jihad.

It is in the national interest that all sections of society contribute equally to nation-building and economic prosperity. It is ironic that efforts to help Muslims appear and qualify in competitive examinations for careers, especially the one conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) for entry into civil services, are labelled as UPSC jihad by today’s majoritarianism. They argue that Muslim candidates opt for Urdu language in the ‘mains’ exam; answer scripts are examined by Muslim teachers. This works to their advantage, enabling more Muslims to join IAS, IPS, and allied services. This fallacious argument is used to build a narrative that Muslims are conspiring to dominate these elite services. Nothing could be further from the truth. Muslims in these services are infinitesimal.

Bollywood produces anywhere between 1,500 and 2,000 films every year. A minuscule number of them might portray Muslim culture in the right spirit, but their directors are accused of venerating Muslim culture and thus spreading Bollywood jihad. The popularity of three Khans of Bollywood (Shah Rukh, Amir, and Salman) is also cited as a glaring example of Bollywood jihad.

The most bizarre of all is the recently popularised thook jihad. The communal forces spread rumours that Muslim cooks, vendors, hawkers, and shopkeepers spit on their wares to contaminate and convert their consumers to Islam. Systematically spreading such unfounded rumours is more malevolent than merely being roguish.

They incite innocent people to boycott Muslims and thus deprive them of their precious means of livelihood. This unfounded fib triggered the Uttar Pradesh government’s recent diktat to all retailers and eateries to display the names of their proprietors and workers on signboards. Thankfully, the Supreme Court of India intervened and restrained any such mindless move.

The latest trend is land jihad. Muslims are being indicted of having usurped and monopolised large chunks of land and property across the length and breadth of the country through waqf. It is charged that waqf provisions have been used to expropriate land and properties purportedly belonging to Hindu temples and other religious places. The secular parties that enacted central and state legislation to protect and regulate waqf properties are often mocked as ‘sickular’.

The bogey of land jihad is gaining currency to craft and curate a narrative emanating from the political compulsion to avert attention from the caste axis and bring back the focus on religion to polarise votes.

Waqf can be best understood as an endowment or as a charitable trust created by a benefactor by which s/he earmarks land, properties, or funds for some specified social, cultural, or religious purposes. Waqf properties could neither be sold nor transferred or used for other purposes. Proceeds or income from waqf property can be used only for the designated purposes.

Waqf properties are regulated through central and state waqf councils and boards, which have existed since 1913 and were codified in 1923. Now, they are governed by the Waqf Act 1995. The Union government has introduced an amendment bill in Lok Sabha, which has now been referred to the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to amend this legislation. Muslims are opposing the move, though the government claims that Pasmanda (backward) Muslims favour the amendment.

Waqf is exclusive to Muslims. Only Muslims can earmark their properties as trust. This, however, does not mean that similar privileges are not available to non-Muslims. Most states have passed legislation to protect and safeguard Hindu shrines, temples, and Nyas. One of the latest and most prominent on the list is Shri Ram Janam Bhoomi Nyas. So is the case with the Sikhs, whose social, cultural, linguistic, educational, and religious properties are governed by similar legislation.

Besides, it is far from true that the waqf boards are the third largest land owners in India after defence and Railways. The government itself mentions that Waqf owns 9.4 lakh acres of land. Sachar Committee, in 2006, calculated such lands to be about six lakh acres. In comparison, Hindu trusts in three states of India (Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana) hold more than 10.37 lakh acres of land, which is more than the land of the Waqf Board across the country.

The narrative that waqf boards have usurped and can proclaim any property as waqf property is a fib to frighten innocent masses. In reality, over time, a large chunk of waqf properties have been encroached upon, and waqf laws provide for reclaiming such properties.

Government officials must survey the land under dispute to free the waqf properties from encroachers. When it is established that it is indeed waqf property, the district magistrate orders the eviction. Further, the aggrieved party can approach tribunals and seek recourse to courts of law. It is beyond imagination to believe that the government-constituted Waqf Council and state boards, along with district officials, can conspire in tandem to deprive people of their property to the advantage of waqf boards.

Like many others, the phantom of land jihad can be addressed if vested interests, communal forces, and fringe elements spread it. The government’s silence on such hatemongering
and support by a section of politicians create a condition of distrust, leading to abysmally unbridgeable fissures within society.

(Navneet Sharma teaches at the Central University of Himachal Pradesh. Furqan Qamar, former adviser for education in the Planning Commission, teaches at Jamia Millia Islamia)