Think about this: a 100-year-old bungalow, constructed by your great-grandfather – a quiet, serene place devoted for many years to a single, noble objective: Charitable work. Its doorways have all the time been open to these in want, a haven of compassion and repair. This isn’t only a constructing; it’s your loved ones’s legacy, a duty handed down out of your grandfather to your father, and finally, to you.
Then, in a single day, the whole lot modifications.
A brand new regulation. A deleted clause. A lone authorities official standing on a distant hill, raises his hand to his forehead, surveys the land, and casually factors. “That one,” he says. “I don’t consider that land, or the property on it, was entrusted to you, or to the needs you’ve devoted it to.” With bureaucratic calm he declares the land to be authorities property. You at the moment are an encroacher.From that second ahead, the land stops being below your guardianship. The state steps in and assumes management. And similar to that, the bungalow cared for by your loved ones for generations and used for goodwill, is not below your guardianship.
There isn’t any due course of. They are saying there can be an investigation. Finally. They provide you no date, no deadline. Till you hear from them, all you are able to do is wait. Outdoors. For you now require permission from the state to step into the constructing your ancestors constructed and tasked you with defending.
Sounds dystopian? To not Indian Muslims, for whom that is the lived actuality below the Waqf Amendment Act – a chunk of laws that turns foundational rules of possession, due course of, and spiritual neutrality on their head.
Waqf, by its very definition, is a perpetual endowment to God – meant to profit the neighborhood by offering providers, corresponding to schooling and healthcare. It isn’t “owned” by a person. It’s held in belief, safeguarded by a mutawalli (custodian), and guarded – one would assume – by the state.
However the Waqf Modification Act, 2025, flips that assumption.
Gone is the troublesome clause that allowed land to be declared “waqf” by person – the normal understanding that land held in belief for charitable functions needs to be protected against arbitrary claims, primarily based on historic utilization. As a substitute, we now have unilateral govt management. Consequently, a single authorities official can now determine, with the wave of a hand, whether or not a property is waqf or government-owned. And to help him on this process, he shall be unaided by proof, unencumbered by due course of and free of the necessity for justification. One opinion. One notification. One completely authorized expropriation. And the appeals course of? Delightfully round. You attraction to the identical equipment that accused you.
The amended regulation, in a stunning show of secular theatre, now requires non-Muslims to be included on Waqf Boards. A requirement no different non secular belief faces. Temple trusts aren’t requested to induct imams. Church committees want no agnostics. However Muslim waqfs, below this perplexing, amended regulation, should open their administration to these with no stake of their theology, custom or scholarship. At what level does inclusivity cross the road into dilution? One would possibly ask. Equality, on this model, seems to be little greater than selective intrusion.
Then comes the audit. The central authorities now holds the suitable to order audits of waqf properties by way of its personal appointed auditors. Transparency, they name it. To examine corruption inside Waqf Boards. However if you happen to squint, you’ll discover it appears suspiciously like oversight with out the mandatory checks and balances. The watchdog, in spite of everything, isn’t neutral when it stories to the kennel.
This isn’t a frontal assault. It’s comfortable erasure.
No bulldozers. No headlines. Simply notices, footnotes, and shifting definitions. And all of it completely “authorized”.
So sure, the bungalow nonetheless stands. Its partitions are intact. Its gates nonetheless swing. However the which means behind them – the sacred idea of waqf, as soon as a present to God, now rests on the discretion of the state’s temper.
What we’re witnessing isn’t a heist at nighttime – it’s one thing way more elegant. A reconfiguration of possession, carried out not by shadowy middlemen however by the equipment of the state itself. There aren’t any land mafias right here, solely laws. No backroom offers, simply coverage. And so, with the quiet certainty of officialdom, a system as soon as meant to guard charitable trusts is now completely positioned to soak up it – one signature, one “willpower”, one hilltop look at a time.
This isn’t reform. That is asset appropriation – sluggish, quiet, and absolute. Engineered with paperwork, not pistols. As a result of in the long run, this isn’t a Hindu-Muslim difficulty, it’s an actual property one.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
