First of all, to believe that something that “just affects Muslims is not an Indian issue”, is a mistake.
Anything that affects 14.2% of India (there has been no Census in 14 years, so these are old figures) matters to all of India. Life 101.
But surely, some will say, the Waqf Bill is a Muslim sideshow and need not matter to anyone else?
This Bill, soon to be law, is a key ideological issue for the BJP. The erasure of Muslims – already seen in the changing of names, the cultural invisiblising of the community and in its absence politically – contributes heavily towards making India what M.S. Golwalkar and V.D. Savarkar spoke of as ‘punyabhumi’. They defined the land bound by the Indus and the oceans as the holy land to be occupied by Hindus alone, not by ‘Muslims, Christians and Communists’, who do not see it quite in this way.
And it is land which is literally at stake in the Waqf matter. So there is an added interest in making sure that minimum land is occupied by Muslims, and where it is occupied, that it comes under all kinds of scrutiny.
But the question has gone beyond being about Muslims. The passage of the Waqf Bill should have all of India heeding its many lessons.
1. BJP being a minority ruling party matters
To those who think everything is the same as when BJP won 303 seats in 2019, walk back to how the bills on August 5, 2019, bifurcating Jammu & Kashmir, and then stripping down their status to union territories were passed.
Nothing was known, no consultations done, bills were passed in the absence of the state assembly, along with a full political lockdown, stifling all residents of Kashmir for years.
Waqf may not have been Kashmir in so far as the top three items on the Hindutva to-do list go, that is, Ayodhya, Uniform Civil Code and the reading down of Article 370, but it has been a consistent, even if low key ingredient in the hate stew directed towards Muslims. It has also been central to the many speeches made and hate directed towards minority communities over decades.
And yet, a committee had to be set up, however inadequate.
A degree of to-and-fro had to be gone through.
And political allies had to be cajoled and then badgered.
Those aggrieved got time to air issues and pretence had to be made of suggestions taken. Union home minister Amit Shah did try to steal the thunder from the relevant minister, Kiren Rijiju, in order to signal to the RSS-BJP constituency that all was well on the way to the Hindu Rashtra, but there was deliberation.
That the opposition was able to assert itself on grounds of principle comes from confidence it could muster and showcase in the House. This was completely unlike what happened in 2019, when the ‘mood of the House’ dictated that several opposition parties play along meekly.
2. Uniform Civil Code?
There has been much said about reform needed with civil codes across communities, to make everyone more ‘equal’. The real intent is perhaps to make everything ‘uniform’ or more in keeping with the Hindu Code.
A former Union minister for minority affairs, who last piloted Waqf amendments in 2013 points to how the essence of Waqf is to emphasise the role charity and welfare play in the Islamic scheme of institutions. This is sought to be erased and gagged by attacking the spirit of it. “Zakat, qurbani and waqf are critical indicators of Islam’s preoccupation with charity and human welfare”, he writes. This unique slice of diversity is nixed with a preoccupation to meet a larger ideological goal and end up with more ‘uniformity’.
This, once allowed to succeed, does not hurt Muslims alone or their ‘way of life’ alone.
As innumerable examples make clear, the uniforming impulse will come for all of India. The lack of tolerance for language diversity, regional identities and lack of respect for a spectrum of political ideas has already made that very clear.
3. A Muslim? After five years, please
The proposed law has a clause, whereby someone who has converted to Islam can only make an endowment five years after conversion.
But in Islam, only the acceptance of the kalma is needed to turn a person into a Muslim. No third-party or cleric plays a role.
For the Indian state to suddenly introduce five years as a minimum period needed to qualify as a bonafide Muslim is more indicative of Zia-ul-Haq’s Pakistan where definitions of who a ‘good’ (or better) Muslim were set.
Today, with Muslims, tomorrow with any faith…
Can arbitrary rules be made up for when someone is a Hindu and when not? Allowing the BJP-led NDA to do this opens a backdoor for all faiths to now receive benediction from the union government on who they are!
4. When Article 14 is violated for any group of Indians…
…its implications resound for all Indians.
Article 14 says that all Indians are equal. What must apply to Waqf boards should apply to similar institutions of other faiths.
Legal expert Faizan Mustafa asks if this is the right Waqf. He asks if non-Hindus would be even allowed, let alone mandated “on temple boards”. Buddhists are already protesting what they see as effective control by Hindus of the most holy site for them, the Mahabodhi temple at Bodhgaya. They want the Bodh Gaya Temple Act 1949 repealed. The effective primacy of non-Buddhists – the Hindu heading the Buddhist temple’s board – has been in place since 1949. Insecurity has led to agitations as Buddhists sense the temperature being raised by Hindu majoritarian forces in the country.
There can never be an exception carved out for just some considered as less equals. It will slowly, but surely come after anyone a controlling government wants to turn against.
That the Waqf bill was the single-minded preoccupation of the government in India’s highest forum for lawmakers at the exact time when Trumpian economics was casting its shadow on the multilateral trading system, when India confronts a shrinking manufacturing sector, a disturbingly low employment ratio and a rising demand for MGNREGA tells its own story.
The BJP arm-twisting – both the country’s constitution, as well as allies who claim to be not joined at ideological hip with the RSS – speaks volumes about why the Waqf Bill is anything but “just a Muslim issue”.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
