How the BJP is using the Waqf bill row to push its Hindutva politics

At the end of October, Bharatiya Janata Party MP Tejasvi Surya visited farmers in Vijaypura district who had received notices contending that the land that they were occupying was actually owned by the Waqf board that administers Muslim charitable properties.

Surya claimed that the notices had been sent out “with no evidence or explanation”. He added, “The extent of these claims is staggering, with nearly 1,500 acres claimed in a single village of Honavada.”

The Karnataka government claimed that the notices to farmers in the Vijaypura village were the result of an error in a gazette notification. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah directed officials to withdraw such notices issued to farmers in other parts of the state as well.

But the notices sparked violence 300 km away in Haveri district, as villagers in Kadakol district threw stones on the homes of Muslim residents, fearing that their land would also be claimed as waqf property. Farmers in Dharwad and Kalburgi also held protests, motivated by the same anxieties.

The events in Karnataka were an example of how the BJP is tapping into public anger to advance the perception that Waqf boards are land encroachers and urgently need to be reformed. It plays into the Hindutva conspiracy theory that Indian Muslims have launched a so-called land jihad to illegally take over tracts belonging to Hindus or the government.

Waqfs are charitable endowments made by Muslims for community welfare. They are administered by state-level bodies that have powers laid down in the Waqf Act, 1995. India has 30 waqf boards, for each state and Union territory. Together, they control nearly 9 lakh properties across the country.

Playing politics

The developments in Karnataka came even as the Lok Sabha on November 28 extended the tenure of a joint parliamentary committee reviewing a bill proposing amendments to the functioning of Waqf Boards. The draft legislation was sent for review in August after Opposition parties and Muslim bodies opposed the bill, contending that it would curb powers of the boards.

They contend that the amendments would allow the government to have greater control of the boards, restrict the donation of properties for charity and change the functioning of waqf tribunals which resolve property disputes.

The parliamentary panel was slated to file its report on November 29, but will now do so at the end of the next Budget session, scheduled to start in February. The extension came after Opposition leaders in the committee demanded further discussions on the bill.

While this comes across as a victory for those opposing the bill, Opposition leaders and representatives of Muslim bodies told Scroll they were wary of the BJP’s strategy of portraying Waqf boards as land encroachers. They said the BJP was doing this to shore up public opinion in favour of the bill curtailing powers of the boards.

Trinamool Congress MP Kalyan Banerjee, a member of the parliament panel, said that the “BJP has raked up non-issues to create an atmosphere within common people against Waqf boards because they are finding it difficult to push the bill through in Parliament”.

Added Wajeeh Shafiq, a former counsel for the Delhi Waqf Board, “This is BJP’s new ploy to portray Muslims as villains and polarise voters against the community.”

BJP’s ‘land jihad’ charge

Critics of the Waqf bill have claimed that its primary objective is to allow greater government control over the boards. For instance, the bill proposes to make the office of district collector the adjudicating authority in the case of a dispute between the government and the waqf board.

In Karnataka, BJP MLA Basanagouda Patil Yatnal went a step further demanding that all waqf properties be nationalised.

The BJP also used the dispute as an election issue when three Assembly seats in Karnataka went bye-polls in November. The Hindutva party accused the Congress of appeasing Muslims by wrongfully identifying plots being farmed by Hindus as waqf property.

The party’s strategy of leveraging land disputes to make a case for amending the Waqf bill and polarising voters on communal lines has been evident in the recent months in Kerala too.

Here, a 404-acre strip of land along the Munambam coast of Ernakulam district has been at the centre of a legal dispute since the 1960s between the Waqf board and around 600 Hindu and Christian fisher families.

This matter re-emerged around the same time as the Karnataka dispute after Christian organisations led by the influential Syro-Malabar Church wrote to the joint parliamentary committee alleging that the Waqf board had illegally laid claims to properties owned by members of the community.

Union minister Kiren Rijiju assured them that the committee would address their grievances.

Since October, the BJP in Kerala has lent its support to residents and the church pushing for amendments to the Waqf bill. Like in Karnataka, the BJP made the dispute into an election issue here too.

At a campaign rally for last month's byepoll in the Wayanad Lok Sabha seat, BJP MP Suresh Gopi said amendments to the bill would suppress the “brutality” of the Waqf board. He claimed that the Sabarimala temple in Kerala and Velankanni church in Tamil Nadu would be claimed by the Waqf board if voters did not support the BJP.

In November, the BJP followed a similar template to accuse the Waqf board of “land jihad” in Tamil Nadu. Union minister Shobha Karandlaje made the charge alleging that the Waqf Board has illegally claimed land belonging to 600 people and Thiruchendurai Temple in Trichy.

A ‘soft target’

Congress MP Imran Masood, a member of the parliamentary panel reviewing the Waqf bill, said that the BJP was propagating the conspiracy theory of land jihad to target the entire Muslim community using Waqf boards as a proxy.

“The main target is to alienate Muslims,” said Masood. “How will they achieve that target? First they want to prove that Muslims have encroached on the land owned by farmers, Hindus and Christians and then they will use that as a reason to snatch powers from the Waqf boards.”

Masood’s colleague on the panel, Trinamool Congress MP Kalyan Banerjee, also said that the BJP was playing a “fixed match” to create animosity towards the Waqf boards to serve its political motives. “Within weeks of the committee being formed, suddenly there are protests in Karnataka and Kerala where there are bye-polls,” Banerjee said. “Can this be a coincidence?

Faced with land-grabbing charges of the BJP, waqf authorities are on shaky ground in some places due to a provision in the Muslim personal law that recognises donations made by oral testimony. Syed Shakir Hussein Jahagirdar, a lawyer in Karnataka. said that this was the reason many waqf properties often do not have proper documentation. leading to legal disputes.

“Add to this that Waqf boards are [collectively] the third-largest landholder in the country after the Armed Forces and Indian Railways, it makes a fertile ground for propaganda that Muslim bodies have illegally acquired huge tracts of land as waqf properties,” Jahangirdar said.

The lawyer, who is also a trustee of a dargah in Vijaypura, added that Waqf boards are mismanaged and beset with corruption making them soft targets for a legislation aimed at restructuring them.

“But the aim here is not to undo corruption,” Jahangirdar said. “Corruption is everywhere, but the aim here is to disenfranchise Waqf boards and say that Muslims are grabbing land from farmers.”

Wajeeh Shafiq, the former counsel of the Delhi Waqf Board, added: “...This narrative serves a political purpose. Saying that a law will snatch away illegally owned land from Muslims can be a very effective election pitch in today’s India.”