For all those ardent supporters of Secular Liberalism, here are a few questions. If India is a truly secular country, why must the state manage Hindu temples? Doesn’t this blur the line that is supposed to separate the state from religion? If India is a truly secular country, how it is that Muslims are allowed to be polygamous but not Hindus? Doesn’t this inequity violate Articles 14 through 22 of the Constitution that guarantees the Right to Equality to citizens?
There are several other contradictions that blight secularism as it is conceived in India. Each of these contradictions begs confounding questions.
Truth be told, there are no convincing answers. After all, if all religions and people are considered equal in the eyes of the state, such aberrations shouldn’t exist. But they do. In the process, some religions (Islam) and their adherents are more equal than others under the law.
There’s no greater example of the out-of-turn privilege extended to Muslims than the promulgation of the Waqf Act of 1954, and its sequel, the Waqf Act of 1995.
Consider the facts. Among the many arbitrary clauses contained in the Waqf Act of 1995, one is especially skewed against all other communities. After the 2013 Amendment to the Waqf Act of 1995, the Waqf Board got summary powers to “grab land” if it was deemed pious to Muslims. All a person, “any person”, had to do was to proclaim that a piece of land has religious significance for Muslims and then go on to gift the real estate to the Waqf Board. The transfer, believe it or not, is irrevocable. And Waqf boards have made merry. So much so that they have come to acquire a total of 9.4 lakh acres of land spread across the country valued at a whopping Rs 1.2 lakh crore.
The various Waqf boards hold the third largest consolidated parcel of land in the country after the railways and defence forces. Only Muslims have an absolute right to take over land by citing a law. The Hindu community, for instance, doesn’t even have the right to manage its own places of worship.
Needless to mention, handing Waqf boards unbridled power has allowed them to make some outrageous claims. Not so long ago, a Waqf Board woke up and audaciously staked claim to the land on which the Supreme Court of India presently stands. At another point in time, the Surat Municipal Corporation building was claimed because it supposedly served as a “Sarai” for pilgrims on Haj during the Mughal era. The Waqf boards have also sent notices to Kolkata’s Tollygunge Club, the Royal Calcutta Golf Club, and the ITC Windsor Hotel in Bengaluru.
We should be grateful that a Waqf Board was modest enough not to act on claims made on the land on which the iconic Kartavya Path cuts through on its way to the Rashtrapati Bhawan.
The NDA government says that the Waqf Act of 1995 needs to be amended to curb its discretionary power. The amendments the government has proposed are not new. The clauses of the proposed amendment bill are a facsimile of recommendations made by the Sachar Committee set up in 2006 and the findings of a Joint Parliamentary Panel set up in 2008 to look into the Waqf Act of 1995. Yet, Opposition parties continue to oppose the amendment bill.
In sharp contrast, those committed to hard secularism have urged the NDA to go a step further. These militant secularists want the Waqf Act of 1995 scrapped, to end what they refer to as state-sponsored Muslim exclusivism.
Indeed, political parties driven by electoral compulsion have long pandered to a sense of Muslim separatism. The tendency to view themselves as above the body politic most visibly manifested itself among Muslims during the Constituent Assembly debates. At the dawn of Independence, the Constituent Assembly’s members were confronted with demands for religious reservations. The demand came from several Muslim notables who were part of the Minorities Sub-Committee of the Constituent Assembly.
A larger Committee led by Sardar Patel looked into these demands. After lengthy debates, the Sardar Patel-led panel noted that “separate electorates had in the past sharpened communal differences to a dangerous extent…” and that’s why, as a corollary, the demand for religious quotas “would lead to a certain degree of separatism…”
Speaking on the issue, Begum Aizaz Rasul, a Muslim League member who had stayed on after partition, settled the matter. Rasul admitted that quotas for Muslims should not be entertained as they would, “keep up the spirit of separatism and communalism…” H.C Mookherjee, a Christian and member of the Patel-led panel also backed Aizaz Rasul, saying it was “the path of wisdom for minorities to trust the majority.”
Despite the sage counsel, Muslims in India have been reluctant to trust the majority community. Instead, they continue to expect political parties to legalise their exclusivist demands.
Keeping the wise counsel offered by the likes of Mookherjee in mind, it is worth asking: Are those who are today vociferously championing the Waqf Act of 1995 not perpetuating a dangerous exclusivism?
Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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