Very like the triple talaq laws, the proponents of the Waqf (Modification) Act 2025 reinforce a well-known trope: “Saving the Muslim lady”. The Act, which is being met with robust opposition from the Muslim neighborhood, was pitched by the Union authorities as a bit of laws that can be “inclusive” of Muslim ladies.
The Assertion of Objects and Causes of the Waqf Invoice highlighted the introduction of three particular provisions purportedly geared toward empowering Muslim ladies. One among them is guaranteeing that there is no such thing as a “denial of inheritance rights to ladies” within the creation of waqf alal aulad. One other provision is to make sure that Muslim ladies are included within the composition of each the Central Waqf Council and the State Waqf Boards.
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Muslim ladies are invoked all over the place, but stay unseen. The presence of solely two Muslim ladies in Lok Sabha, as highlighted by MP Iqra Choudhary in her speech, is a testomony to this truth. Every bit of laws in regards to the Muslim neighborhood is framed as a step ahead for Muslim ladies — the Waqf Act’s case adopted an identical trajectory. Nevertheless, a better studying presents a diametrically reverse story — a narrative of political optics masking the erosion of rights.
Out of the three provisions which were repeatedly highlighted as furthering the reason for Muslim ladies’s rights, the primary provision is expounded to waqf-alal-aulad. Waqf-alal-aulad is an association by which a Muslim proprietor of a property (waqif) dedicates it for the advantage of her kids and within the occasion that the road of succession ends, subsequently for a spiritual or charitable goal. A waqif is usually a man or a lady. This proper loved by the waqif to designate choose heirs as beneficiaries whereas excluding others parallels the suitable of a testator when creating wills and the suitable of a donor to create a present.
The waqif’s proper can be much like the suitable of an individual, professing every other faith, to dedicate her property to a spiritual endowment excluding the rights of some heirs over others. The Act selectively and arbitrarily imposes restrictions on a waqif when no equal limitations appear to be imposed on testamentary rights underneath the non-public legal guidelines of different non secular communities. The Act additional negates the intent of the waqif rendering the idea of waqf-alal-aulad otiose. The 2025 Act encroaches upon the constitutionally protected proper to determine waqf-alal-aulad underneath the guise of safeguarding ladies’s inheritance rights when ladies heirs obtain particular shares as Quranic heirs.
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Secondly, let’s take a look at the inclusion of ladies within the Council and the Boards. The 2013 Modification of the Principal Act had already made it obligatory for a minimum of two Muslim ladies to be appointed on the Boards and equally within the Council. The 2025 Act, curiously, removes the phrases “a minimum of” and retains an area for 2 Muslim ladies on the Board/Council. Topic to an expansive and subsequent judicial interpretation, on the face of it, what the 2025 Act does is cut back the rights of Muslim ladies, not increase them.
Setting apart the truth that these provisions, although offered as advancing Muslim ladies’s rights, neither help their trigger nor uphold the neighborhood’s non secular rights however undermine waqf-alal-aulad and weaken ladies’s illustration—the bigger query is: Are these the one provisions regarding Muslim ladies?
Why would a legislation that dilutes the rights of the waqif and mutawalli not impression Muslim ladies when they’re each? Why would a legislation that restricts a brand new convert from dedicating a property as waqf, a restriction that’s not discovered underneath every other legislation, not jeopardise the rights of ladies who’ve transformed to Islam? Why would a legislation that arbitrarily empowers an officer of the federal government to adjudicate issues wherein the federal government itself is a celebration doesn’t concern Muslim ladies?
Yet one more query is: Why is the robust opposition of varied outstanding Muslim organisations — Darul Uloom Deoband, All India Muslim Private Legislation Board, Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, Jamaat-e-Islami-e-Hind — not thought-about opposition from Muslim ladies too? Are Muslim ladies not part of the neighborhood these organisations characterize? With Muslim ladies protesting the Act, whose voice is the federal government claiming to characterize?
Who does the establishment of waqf advantages is one other query. Waqf is a type of charity. Waqf properties are used as shelter houses, hospitals, graveyards, colleges, and so forth. Clearly, the establishment doesn’t solely cater to Muslim males — however the poor, and the needy, together with ladies. An Act diluting the establishment of waqf is an affront to the rights of Muslim ladies — a longtime celebration to the establishment of waqf.
Three token provisions carrying the time period “ladies” and diluted restatements of what the legislation already assured, can’t be used as among the justifications for wrecking the system of waqf and attacking the rights of Indian Muslims. This Act doesn’t empower ladies. It disenfranchises them and the neighborhood they’re part of.
The author is a lawyer practising on the Supreme Court docket of India
