New Waqf law reeks of divisive agenda

I recently read a blog post by Shriya Handoo, an advocate from the Kashmiri Pandit community. It said, “The Waqf amendments aren’t about transparency — they’re about tyranny”. I could not agree more with that analysis. The whole rigmarole built around the legislation that was recently voted into law by Parliament was entirely unnecessary. The entire Opposition decided to participate in the debate and expose the ruling party’s real intent. It was high time these parties displayed unity and maturity.

The real intent of the party in power was revealed by our Prime Minister himself when he addressed the ‘Rising Bharat Summit’, organised by a media group, on April 8 in New Delhi. He alleged that the Congress’ politics of appeasement had led to the Partition, even as he accused the party of tweaking the Waqf law “to serve the interests of Muslim fundamentalists and land-grabbers”.

The RSS has always claimed that Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were responsible for the Partition. What I did not know was that the Waqf law was an instrument used for that purpose. Most friends of mine were blissfully unaware of the Waqf role in the implementation of the two-nation theory propounded by Muhammad Ali Jinnah. (A caveat — I don’t see any connection between the Partition and the Waqf law).

I knew that the 1995 Act (first amended in 2013) was being misused by unscrupulous operators connected to the Waqf Board and scamsters on the lookout for avenues to make a quick buck. Two respectable Muslim sisters, friends of my elder daughter, had complained once to me about some Muslim residents of Mahim (Mumbai) eyeing their property located along the Mahim beach, near the place where the would-be land-grabbers resided. The Waqf Board was mentioned. I had conveyed these fears to the police in charge of that area with a request to safeguard the legal rights of two defenceless ladies.

The sisters were running an orphanage for destitute Muslim girls on the prime property owned by a trust set up by their deceased father. The girls were housed, fed, clothed and cared for by the staff employed by the trust. Except for the Gurkha watchman, the entire staff was female. They needed the assurance of police assistance in case of an emergency. And that was why the sisters had approached me.

There are wicked elements in every community waiting to pounce on the weak and the defenceless. Greed is not confined to Muslims. Wherever money flows, greedy individuals of that community or belonging to the government agency concerned plot and plan to dig their own soiled hands into the pie. Surely, our Prime Minister knows that. The machinations he is trying to prevent in the Waqf administration are also prevalent in other religion-based trusts.

Any independent but fair-minded observer will conclude that the BJP has picked on the Waqf boards as they are connected to the Muslim minority. The principle of “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas” that Modi glibly parrots at the drop of a hat is soon forgotten when it comes to this minority, in particular. Modi asserts that the amendments to the Waqf Act are necessary in the interests of society, including poor Muslims. These lofty sentiments are neither shared, unfortunately, by those entrusted with the implementation of the laws nor by the Muslim masses that the PM says will be benefited by his concern.

Ever since the BJP-led government was installed in 2014, the Muslim community has felt that it is being targeted for punishment, meted out unjustly. Lynching of cattle traders who are mostly Muslims and accusations of ‘love jihad’ against Muslim boys in love with Hindu girls has become a regular feature over the past decade. One of the first pieces of legislation targeting them was the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The Act itself was supposed to reassure Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and Parsis migrating from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan of acquiring Indian citizenship on demand, a facility already enjoyed by them before this BJP government arrived on the scene. Thousands, nay lakhs, of Hindu refugees from Pakistan and Bangladesh had already been granted Indian citizenship and rehabilitated. No special CAA was required. The government had plenipotentiary power to grant citizenship to these refugees and it had no hesitation in doing so, irrespective of the party in power. These refugees were welcomed with open arms and that was what other citizens expected its government to do.

In my view, laws such as the CAA and the Waqf (Amendment) Act are meant to needle the Muslim community and send a message to the hardcore votaries of Hindutva that the Modi-Shah government is going all out to tame Muslims and rub their noses in the dust. I concede that such manifestations of majoritarianism have gone down well with many of my own acquaintances, consolidating and widening the BJP’s electoral base.

The party has fuelled hate and divisiveness across the country. I have heard Modi repeatedly appealing for ‘unity in diversity’, which is a sine qua non for a rising world power. On the ground, there is no sign of the government encouraging unity.

Protests and later, riots, broke out in Delhi after the CAA was passed by Parliament. The Waqf amendments have triggered unease and violence. In West Bengal’s Murshidabad, hundreds of Hindus fled to avoid Muslim vandals. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee failed, like the Gujarat Government in 2002, to follow ‘Raj Dharma’.

There is no doubt that the Waqf Act was sometimes misused by those who were in a position to do so. If any citizen grabs someone else’s land or commits a cognisable offence in the course of administering the Act, that offender should be identified, prosecuted and punished. This is what the people of India expect of the government. Histrionics and false propaganda do not improve their quality of life, as Handoo and Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Kumar Jha, who wrote in an English-language daily earlier this week, have insinuated.

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