The Law Has Spoken

The Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, came into force last week as a limited but necessary reform aimed at improving the governance of Waqf Boards, which oversee one of the largest networks of religious endowments in the world. The Act neither dismantles Waqf institutions nor intrudes upon Islamic practices. It restructures board appointments, mandates audits, and enhances oversight—all tools of institutional hygiene, not of religious interference.

And yet, the reaction in some quarters has been one of curated indignation. The familiar script of victimhood has been dusted off and performed yet again—declarations of persecution, warnings of authoritarianism, charges that secularism is under siege. But behind the noise lies a striking truth: the loudest critics of this legislation did not speak when it mattered.

Parliament saw no resistance from those now claiming betrayal. No interventions. No amendments. No procedural protest. The chamber where democracy is performed was abandoned, only to be re-entered through social media feeds and televised moral posturing.

This is not democratic dissent—it is dereliction masquerading as conscience. At its core, the amendment does what any sound institutional reform should: introduce transparency into public bodies tasked with managing charitable assets. These are not theological organisations. They are custodians of land, rent, and revenue, operating under a secular legal framework. To argue that financial scrutiny of such institutions constitutes an attack on faith is not just mistaken, it is a dangerous conflation.

The real anxiety, it seems, is not about principle but control. For decades, Waqf Boards have been treated as patronage platforms by political actors across parties. Reform threatens the insulation such actors have enjoyed—and so the instinct is not to examine the law, but to sabotage its legitimacy.

What makes the outrage more untenable is its selective logic. Those calling for state regulation of Hindu temples in the name of transparency now balk at similar scrutiny of Muslim institutions. This is not secularism. It is secularism on stilts—lofty when convenient, evasive when challenged.

Secularism in a plural democracy does not mean the state must steer clear of religion altogether. This means that the state must treat all religions with the same standard of accountability. The Constitution is clear: religious denominations have autonomy in matters of faith, but secular functions—like the administration of endowments—are subject to regulation. To demand transparency in one domain while resisting it in another is not just inconsistent, it is corrosive to the idea of equal citizenship.

Critics of the amendment have raised concerns about the inclusion of non-Muslim members on Waqf Boards. But such inclusion does not dilute religious autonomy—it merely ensures that institutions meant for public service are not locked into closed, unaccountable systems.

Oversight is not intrusion. It is the scaffolding of trust.

Across the Muslim world, Waqf institutions are being modernised. In Malaysia and Turkey, oversight bodies manage Waqf assets with greater fiscal clarity and civic purpose. These are not “Hindutva laboratories”, but Muslim-majority democracies recognising the necessity of institutional reform. That India should do the same is neither alarming nor exceptional.

The real scandal is not the amendment, but the long-standing dysfunction it seeks to address. Waqf land lies encroached or underutilised. Records are fragmented. Beneficiaries—the poor, the marginal, and the aspirational—are left with broken promises and crumbling infrastructure. Reform, however modest, is not an affront to the community. It is a beginning of returning Waqf to its purpose of service over symbolism, of moving from grievance to governance, and of unmasking dysfunction too long draped in the language of faith.

Many within the Muslim community recognise this. The pushback against the politics of manufactured outrage is growing—not from outside, but from within. Professionals, educators, legal scholars and social workers are asking the obvious: if Waqf is meant to serve the community, why shield it from accountability?

This internal questioning matters because for too long, Muslim political agency has been hijacked by a narrow cohort of leaders who appear only to stoke grievances, never to build institutions. They retreat from parliamentary process, then emerge as moral arbiters. But grievance politics without legislative participation is not empowerment, it is dereliction of duty dressed as dutiful defiance.

The amendment is not flawless. It does not yet lay out a roadmap for digitisation, monetisation, or better public delivery. But to oppose even the baseline of accountability is to perpetuate the status quo—one that serves the gatekeepers, not the beneficiaries.

India’s democratic order is not threatened by laws that enhance transparency. It is threatened by those who weaponise identity to protect dysfunction. The real crisis is not overreach, but underperformance—not the presence of oversight, but the absence of courage.

The Waqf (Amendment) Act is not a rupture in our secular compact. It is a reminder that public institutions, no matter how sacred their mandate, are not above the law. Parliament has acted. The law has spoken. And it is time those who chose to stay silent reckon with what they chose to ignore.

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