Modi's Waqf Bill buries Indian secularism with bulldozer justice

In India, ongoing protests against the recently passed 2024 Waqf Amendment Bill, which alters the legal framework by which endowments for Islamic religious, charitable and educational purposes can be made and managed, were paused while the Indian government carried out a military operation against Pakistan in response to the Pahalgam attacks.  

The furore of Indian nationalism unleashed in its wake seems to have stifled efforts to draw attention to the latest assault on the civil, political and religious rights of Muslims in India.

But as the recent war has yet again stirred anti-Muslim sentiment, the ongoing structural changes enabled through the waqf amendments alongside earlier efforts to impose a uniform civil code and disenfranchise many through the 2020 Citizenship Amendment Act gain further legitimacy and deliver much longer-term exclusionary effects.

The waqf amendments, also currently being contested in the Supreme Court, remove protections from historic land or properties long used for Islamic religious and/or charitable purposes which lack official registration documents (usually because they precede any such requirements); mandate that all Waqf State Boards and the Central Waqf Council have at least two non-Muslim members and allows them to have non-Muslim majorities going against Article 26 of the Constitution which specifies that people from the same religious community administer their religious endowments and charitable institutions; bars non-Muslims from making a waqf; and prohibits a property from being considered waqf if it is contested as government land.

There are further restrictions on the ability of Muslims to make a waqf; changes to the functioning of Waqf Tribunals and the surveying of Waqf property; and provisions for requiring Waqf properties to be registered digitally.

No Waqf, no rights

In reality, waqf boards are already statutory authorities and most of the nominees of the board are selected by the government. This amendment bill effectively works to weaken the boards’ power, reducing their financial accruals, aiming instead to centralise power.

Much as the legislation adds to the assault on India’s constitutional commitment to secularism and religious pluralism, and subsequent riots erupting in West Bengal serve the BJP’s political agenda as a tried and tested technique for winning elections, the Waqf Bill fittingly captures the duality of rampant neoliberal capitalism and Hindu majoritarianism that define the governing ethos of India’s ruling party.  

If the winning card of the version of Hindutva currently in power is its ability to synthesise Hindu majoritarianism with unchecked neoliberal capitalism, then the Waqf Bill ticks all boxes.

The justification of the bill in the familiar language of improving management, efficiency and transparency operates in many ways as doublespeak. On the one hand, it reasserts the ruling power’s quest to portray itself as an efficient and effective technocracy moulded in the image of a ‘Hindu’ nation. Here, smooth digitisation and ‘Hinduness’ operate as an amalgam in a state of harmony, in this context, able to eliminate the ‘corruption’ of Muslim trustees and caretakers of waqf properties.  

This ethno-racial nationalism is also expressed in terms of a doctrine of self-victimisation, where waqf has been referred to as a "colonial hangover" that privileges Muslims over other religions. Such a framing effectively flags distorted collective memories of national humiliation even as the measures taken in response reproduce colonial temporalities by fixing identities and legalising property dispossession.

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At the same time, the language of efficiency and better management denotes market ethics of proficiency to drive India’s aspirations for seamless digital tech futures that will be realised only through a centralised, one market-one nation ethos.

Since waqf takes the donated asset out of private ownership or circulation for future sale or alternative use, its ethos is at odds with capitalist ethics of private property and profit.  The Indian government reports that the Waqf Board controls 870,000 properties spanning 940,000 acres at an estimated worth of 120 million RS. This makes the Waqf Board the third-largest landowner in India after the Armed Forces and the Indian Railways.

Though for now it is suggested that most waqf properties will be honoured and retained "unless they are disputed or deemed to be government property", it is these concessional cases where the essence of the bill comes to be exposed. Would it be in the market's or the government's interests to assign a monetary value of zero to property based in potentially lucrative development sites?

The Eidgah Maiden ground in Bangalore, an area over which long-running disputes have given impetus to these latest waqf amendments, captures the ways in which the distinct interests of corporate capital and right-wing Hindutva come together. The site of a nineteenth century Muslim prayer wall that is used for prayers on religious festivals, Eidgah Maiden has been targeted by Hindutva groups since the 1990s who sought to declare the land a public playground, have marched across the area to celebrate Hindu festivals and Indian Independence day, and who have used the campaign to build a political base in the area.

The land, located in the Chamarajpet neighbourhood of the city, close to the affluent area of Whitefield, is also claimed by the local municipal corporation, which argued it belongs to the revenue department, no doubt recognising the site’s prime real estate value. In recent years, RSS groups have been permitted by the state High Court to celebrate a three-day festival of Ganesh pandal at the site and to install a Ganesh idol.

Concerningly, most of the mosques and Muslim burial grounds in India are maintained by Waqf Boards, and these legislative changes raise questions regarding their future management and autonomy.

Some argue that the amendments act as part of contemporary India’s drive against distortive feudal practices, showing a commitment to an inclusive, multicultural, secular democracy, captured mostly in the clause that specifies there should be representation of women and low-caste Hindus on Waqf Boards.

Since no such provisions are made conversely for the largely Brahmin/upper-caste managed temple boards across states in India, while non-Muslims are now also prohibited from making waqf, a documented historical practice which testifies to the lived secular India of days past, any such claim of democratic secularism seems to be insincere.

Nisha Kapoor is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick. She is author of Deport, Deprive Extradite: 21st Century State Extremism (Verso, 2018).

Follow her on X: @NishaKapoor07

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