13 Sept, 2024
The Joint Secretary,
Lok Sabha Secretariat,
Room No. 440,
Parliament House Annexe,
New Delhi – 110001
Sub: Submissions to the JPC on The Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024
I write this as a deeply disappointed citizen of Bharat at the fact that Modi government has thought it fit to merely introduce very nominal and misleading amendments to the Legal Monstrosity called the Waqf Act of 1995.
It is shocking beyond belief that such an outrageous law aimed at subverting national security and endangering the very survival of Hindus and other non-Muslim communities in India could be passed by the Indian parliament with the full cooperation of Opposition parties.
At the very least, the Waqf Act deserves to be speedily abrogated and junked.
This should be speedily followed by nationalization of Waqf properties in order to repair the humungous damage it has caused to the social and political fabric of India, making a total mockery of the secular pretensions of India.
My objections to this Legal Monstrosity are summed up as follows:
- The Waqf Act is Land Jihad in action at the service of Ghazwa-e-Hind. Such a horrific law can exist only in Sharia compliant Islamo-Facsist regimes. If the Waqf Board dealt only with property rights and disputes within the Muslim community, we could have ignored it. But giving it the power to arbitrarily take over public lands as well as all kinds of properties and assets belonging to non-Muslims, amounts to imposing Sharia through the back door on Hindus and allowing Muslims to indulge in outright loot.
- Muslims living in India dare not claim that they, or their ancestors, brought millions of acres of land from Saudi Arabia, Turkey or any other Islamic country! Most of it is land forcibly taken from the sons & daughters of the soil by barbaric invaders & their progeny through force and fraud. The Waqf-claimed-lands constitute the most brazen example of loot of the most valuable asset in India, namely land, through sinister means.
- The Waqf Act of 1995 is inspired by the belief that all the land on this planet has been created by the Allah of Mu’mins for Mu’mins alone. They also believe that whatever land or territory is currently owned by kafirs or other non-Muslims, has to be taken away from them through whatever means possible, including force, fraud, violence, deceit and finally, decimation of kafirs. It is beyond comprehension how the Indian state, with its secular pretensions, chose to become an aider and abettor in this lawless mission derived from the predatory ideology of Islam!
- If the entire land mass of this planet is Allah’s gift to Mu’mins, they should demand and secure it from Allah, NOT from the Govt of India!
- The Waqf Act Amendment Bill 2024 is a LETHAL TRAP laid out for Hindus by Modi government to sabotage a growing movement demanding the abolition of the Waqf Boards and abrogation of the Waqf Act, Amending the Waqf Act amounts to giving further legitimacy to this lawless Act. No other country in the world–not even Jihadi Islamic countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh– have such a draconian law on their statute books, even though they put such noxious provisions in practice.
- The proposal to amend the Waqf Act, instead of scrapping it, legitimises the position of Waqf Boards as a predatory Islamic body which has managed to emerge as the third largest landowner in India, (after the armed forces and the Indian Railways) through force and fraud. It has allowed countless mini-Pakistans to be planted within the territory of “secular” India, thus compromising India’s national security and civilizational integrity in shocking ways.
- The Waqf Board has its own legislature, its own land surveyors, its own executive and its independent tribunal which arrogates to itself judicial powers higher than that of the Supreme Court of India. The Waqf Board Tribunal is designed to promote Land Jihad. Merely amending the Act allows them to continue running a predatory parallel government within India.
- The Waqf Act makes the Indian state as well as the non-Muslims of India subservient to Islamic Sharia. The orders of the Waqf Board have to be obeyed by all District Collectors. This implies that the agencies of the Government of India and its bureaucrats are slaves to its dictates and use the tax payers money to enforce the orders of a lawless extra-constitutional agency carrying out Land Jihad.
To cite just a couple of examples, among many more, of the lawless and draconian powers acquired by the Waqf Board (comprising ONLY of Muslims) under the Waqf Act 1996:
- Section 54 of the Waqf Act gives the Waqf Mafia the power to declare a rightful owner of a property as an encroacher.
- Section 40 empowers the Board to get any property surveyed, if it desires to lay claim to it as Waqf property. The Board can also unilaterally decide if a property is Waqf property or not.
- Section 6 lays down that if there is a dispute about whether a property can be considered Waqf, the decision of the Waqf Tribunal is final.
- Under Islamic law, properties can be dedicated as Waqf through oral declarations. The Waqf Act does not explicitly mention oral dedication of property, but if the Waqf Board claims that there was an oral declaration regarding a property being a Waqf asset, its decision will be final and the District Collector must obey it. When even routine acts like marriages require documentation, such as a Nikaanhama, how can large tracts of land be conveyed through oral dedications?
- The Board can also claim any and every property by declaring it ‘Waqf by Use’ This lawless, and unconstitutional provision cannot be legislatively guarded for the Muslims through an Act of parliament.
- Section 101 of the Waqf Act declares that the Survey Commissioner, every member of the Waqf Board, every officer, every auditor of the Board and every other person appointed for discharging any duties imposed on him by this Act, shall be deemed to be a public servant as is understood by the IPC. As per Indian law, anyone who resists or deters a “public servant” from performing his/her duties can be punished with imprisonment for up to two years, a fine, or both. This means that if the Waqf Board comes to forcibly and illegally evict me from my own ancestral or self-owned property, I am denied the right to even resist the lawless, predatory act of the Waqf Board, while they can even use police powers to deprive me of my legitimate right to my property.
Emboldened by the servility of the Indian state, the Waqf Board is claiming that 77% of the capital city of India is Waqf property, including the Delhi High Court complex, all the newspaper offices at Bahadur Shah Zafar Road, several government office complexes, including the CGO Complex in Lutyens Delhi and so on.
Neither any high court official nor any other authority was aware of this bizarre claim. And yet, the mighty judges of the Delhi High Court have not gathered enough courage to take the Waqf Board to task for this audacity against the Indian state.
Worse still, the Waqf Mafia has been claiming entire villages as Waqf lands, even though they are populated only by Hindus since centuries. In those villages, they are even claiming rights over lands on which millennia old Hindu temples are present till date. Some of these temples predate the birth of Islam.
Tragically enough, various state governments throughout the last seven decades have helped the Waqf Board to acquire properties through dubious means, or looked the other way when it was happening right under their nose. This is a direct outcome of vote bank politics combined with outright corruption of our bureaucrats and politicians. To provide a colourful example: As per media reports, just two weeks before the 2014 general elections, the Congress govt gave 123 VVIP lands in Lutyens Delhi and other expensive sites to the Waqf Board. It was clearly an unholy deal to secure Muslim votes in return. Countless such deals have vitiated our electoral process in a very dangerous manner.
Gross Corruption Under Pious Pretence: It is not only Hindus who are outraged at having discovered rather late that the Waqf Board has been looting Hindu properties and public assets with the active connivance of the Indian state. There is a lot of dissatisfaction within the Muslim community also at the brazen corruption by prominent Muslim leaders in handling Waqf properties. They are assigned to Allah, only in name, that too in order to escape paying property and wealth tax.
Just to give a few illustrative examples of the angst within the Muslim community against the misuse of Waqf properties for personal aggrandisement:
As per a joint parliamentary committee headed by former Rajya Sabha chairman, K Rehman Khan, the list of encroachers, illegal occupiers and perpetrators of misappropriation of Waqf properties include high and mighty figures such as Ahmad Bukhari– the Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid in old Delhi, Maulana Muazzam Ahmed, the Naib-Imam of the Shahi Masjid at Fatehpuri, Delhi and several other well-known Islamic organisations and individuals. They have been openly accused by fellow Muslims of misusing Waqf properties, including commercialization of the precincts of iconic masjids, for personal enrichment. These cases involving fraud and other criminal acts have been languishing in court for years.
Criminal cases against Aam Admi Party MLA, Amanatullah Khan over misuse of Waqf Board property have also been filed by fellow Muslims. In many cases, as in UP, burial land was sold by the Waqf board to local politicians for building a shopping mall. Muslims complained against it because it did not benefit the community at all. Wealthy board members, all Muslims, appropriated the entire amount given in lieu of the sale.
The Maharashtra Waqf Board sold 4,535 square metres in the upmarket Altamount Road to Mukesh Ambani for his 27-storey palace. Similarly in Bangalore, the Windsor Manor Hotel worth several hundred crores has been leased under a shady deal. There are thousands of such examples involving fraud against their own Allah!
- Not Enough to Abrogate the Waqf Act, Nationalise All Waqf Properties:
- Given its predatory past, it is not enough that the Land-Jihad Friendly Waqf Act be abrogated. The Govt of India should speedily Nationalise all Waqf Properties.
- Such a move would not be unprecedented. To cite one among many such instances, in August 2023, the Urban Ministry decided to assume control of 123 properties owned by the Delhi Waqf Board, including mosques, dargahs, and graveyards. This was done on the recommendation of a two-member committee regarding denotification of certain Waqf properties. Amanatullah Khan, the Waqf Board’s chairman, has been held personally responsible for gross misuse and corruption in handling Waqf assets assigned to Allah. He is currently in judicial custody on account of the above scam.
- After nationalization, only those properties should be returned to the Muslim community for which they have proper documentary proof of legitimate purchase and ownership through lawful means. They should be required to prove each claim in a court of law.
- Thus far, hapless individuals who were totally unaware of Waqf’s sinister activities, were unable to reclaim their assets because they were told they did not protest within the legally defined time frame. Nor did most such aggrieved individuals have the financial resources and political clout to take on the Waqf Mafia and fight lengthy battles in court. Sadly enough, the Waqf Boards have the resources to purchase the loyalty of bureaucrats as well as the judiciary. The muscle power at their command is more intimidating than that of underworld dons.
- The tide needs to be reversed now: Let the Waqf Board prove its ownership rights over each and every property—exactly as they forced Hindus to fight centuries long battles and finally to prove in court that the infamous Babri Masjid was built by vandalizing the Ram Janmasthan Mandir or that the Aurangzeb vandalized Kashi Vishwanath Mandir to build a mosque on its ruins.
The nationalised lands should be used in the following manner:
- Those Hindu families who have documents to prove that Islamists took away their property through fraud and force, should have the first right to reclaim their forcibly acquired property!
- The remaining land should be distributed among the landless poor Hindus—be they Balmikis or Brahmins, Ahirs or Telis, Banjaras, Banias or Bunkars, Nats or Nais, Kumhars or Kanjars, Bawarias or Bazigars, Chamars or Jatavs, Rehgars or Ramdasias, Valayas or Vanniyars, Jogis or Doms! Justice mongers and supporters of land reforms should welcome the empowerment of those rendered destitute during Islamic and British rule! And those whom British demeaned as SCs, STs and Backward Castes after rendering them destitute.
Nationalisation & redistribution of Waqf Properties would set a genuine example of ‘Land Reforms’: Those who think that this is too harsh a measure, would do well to remember that in post British India, lakhs of acres have been forcibly taken away by various governments–both central and state–from the rightful Hindu owners in the name of Land Reforms.
Land reforms were carried out waving the flag of “social justice”. Most of the lands taken away were assets inherited by families from their ancestors who had farmed those lands for centuries. Only some lands were grants by the British to their loyal zamindars. Lakhs of acres of Temple Lands have also been stolen by various state governments as well as the central govt under the guise of managing them better. In the process billions of rupees, gold and silver have been looted by government appointees manning those boards.
It is high time for the government to pay attention to gross mismanagement and brazen corruption of Waqf leaders who are cheating even their own Allah!
Nationalization of Waqf Board acquired lands would provide a worthy role model of land reforms in favour of landless poor. Redistribution of the nationalized Waqf-Board-claimed-lands among the poor Hindu victims of Islamic Land Jihad will be a step towards liberating our grievously wounded civilization from the deadly clutches of Jihadi Mafias.
I sincerely hope my submissions will receive due consideration.
Sincerely,
Madhu Purnima Kishwar
Founder MANUSHI
- Senior Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (2021-23)
- National Professor, Indian Council of Social Science Research, 2017-2020
- Professor, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies & Director Indic Studies Project (Till 2016)
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