Architecturally, there is little to connect Delhi’s Parliament Street mosque with the 27-floor vertical palace in Mumbai that is the private home of Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest person. The Mughal-style mosque has been a place of Muslim worship for some 300 years. The Ambani home, billed as “a prototype for buildings of the future”, houses the tycoon’s family, along with 600 staff, a 168-car garage and a room that blows artificial snowflakes from its walls.
What binds them is a long-running dispute over waqf property in India. The term usually refers to land or buildings given as endowments by Muslims for religious or charitable use, often as mosques or graveyards. Although waqf properties are found across the Islamic world, India has more than any other country, with about 872,000, worth $14bn. That makes the “waqf boards” that control them (on Allah’s behalf, they say) count collectively as India’s third-biggest landowner after the armed forces and the Indian railways.
Many of these properties could soon come under Indian government control if a new law is passed, as expected, in April. The government says the bill improves outdated legislation that allowed widespread abuses in management of waqf properties. Narendra Modi, the prime minister, accuses the Congress party (now in opposition) of giving waqf boards too much autonomy to “appease” Muslim voters. Supporters of the bill also note that a lot of waqf properties (such as the land where Mr Ambani’s home was built) have been sold to private owners.
Opponents see the bill as an epic land grab and the latest blow in Mr Modi’s campaign to promote his Hindu nationalist ideology. It would allow the government to take ownership of thousands of waqf properties it already uses, having partly or fully occupied them, and to scrap a “waqf by user” designation for many older sites lacking documentary proof of their status.
Affected properties could include prominent national monuments. An attempt in 2005 to register the Taj Mahal, built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in the 17th Century, as a waqf property was blocked by the Supreme Court, which asked to see the emperor’s signature on a title deed. But the Archaeological Survey of India, which controls that monument, says that another 256 properties it manages are waqf, complicating its work.
“This bill has nothing to do with protecting waqf properties or increasing their revenues,” says Asaduddin Owaisi, a Muslim parliamentarian. “It has been brought to take away Muslim properties and to have more government control over them.” The law could also lead to the destruction of many such properties, worries Syed Sadatullah Husaini, president of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, one of India’s largest Muslim social organisations.
Independent scholars, and some Muslims, concede that waqf boards need reforming to include more members of Shia, Sufi and other sects, to make management more transparent and to protect the interests of widows. But advocates of such limited reforms say that the new law imposes burdens not demanded of Hindu and other religious endowments, and was drawn up without properly consulting Muslim community leaders.
Critics see this as a fresh front in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s efforts to erode the rights of India’s Muslims. Since taking power in 2014, Mr Modi has granted fast-track citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from neighbouring countries, stripped Muslim-majority Kashmir of its autonomy and pledged to scrap provisions for Muslim family law. In January 2024 he inaugurated a new Hindu temple in Ayodhya on the site of an ancient mosque destroyed by Hindu nationalists in 1992.
Mr Modi seemed to change tactics after losing his party’s outright majority in a general election in 2024 that showed voters were more worried by economic issues. He tempered his anti-Muslim rhetoric. The leadership of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Hindu nationalist movement from which the BJP emerged, issued a rare warning in December against Hindu groups stirring fresh controversies over disputed sites such as Ayodhya.
Similar caution was evident in Mr Modi’s referral of the waqf bill to a joint parliamentary committee in August. In his first two terms he used the BJP’s majority to ram legislation through parliament. He now needs support from coalition partners. Recently, though, there are signs that he is growing more assertive again following BJP election victories in Haryana, Maharashtra and Delhi. Some Indian Muslims also fear that Mr Modi may be emboldened by Donald Trump’s return to the White House, given Mr Trump’s aversion to criticising other leaders on human rights.
In a report submitted to parliament on February 13th, the committee reviewing the waqf bill accepted some suggestions from BJP allies but rejected all the opposition’s. Hindu nationalists have also flooded the Supreme Court with petitions against a law preserving the identity of religious sites as they were at India’s independence in 1947. On February 17th, the government missed a second deadline to respond to those petitions. Many Hindu nationalists saw that as a sign of support.
In some parts of India, BJP leaders are using the waqf bill to rally the party faithful. Yogi Adityanath, the BJP’s chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, has been especially critical of waqf boards. Mr Adityanath, a potential successor to Mr Modi, said in January that his government was examining records to check on properties improperly designated as waqf. ‘’We will reclaim every inch of such land,” he said. The issue is potentially incendiary in Uttar Pradesh as it has over 232,000 waqf properties, more than any other state. It is also a touchy subject in Delhi, where government agencies have occupied many waqf properties. In 2023 the government announced its intention to seize control of 123 of them, including the Parliament Street mosque, which has been used by Muslim parliamentarians since 1947.
Mumbai is another contentious area because of its high concentration of waqf properties. Mr Ambani’s sky palace was built on land donated to a trust in 1894 to establish a Muslim orphanage. The trust then sold the land in 2002 to a company controlled by Mr Ambani. The Ambani company that bought the land says it obtained all necessary permissions, including from the waqf board. But the local waqf board has challenged the sale in court (unsuccessfully). Such a challenge is even less likely to succeed if the waqf law is passed, legal experts say. They expect many more battles over waqf property in the years ahead. Alarmingly, some Indian Muslims warn of unrest if their religious sites are seized. Many, though, are resigned—and bracing for the next blow. ■
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