It is one of the big lies that the Sangh Parivar has been spreading for some time that the Waqf Boards own 38 lakh acres of land, the largest land holding after the Defense Department and the Railways. Since 1913 to 2013, the Waqf Boards were in possession of 18 lakh acres of land. Only after the Congress-led UPA government amended the Waqf Act in 2013, 21 lakh acres were annexed, Home Minister Amit Shah stated in the Lok Sabha without any evidence.
The big lie that the Waqf properties in India are larger than the land area of Pakistan was also spread by the Sangh Parivar through social media after the Waqf Bill was introduced in Parliament in August 2024. The Waqf properties are said to be 9.40 lakh square kilometers, while the size of Pakistan is only 8.81 lakh square kilometers. Lies were inculcated among non-Muslims that another Pakistan was formed not only outside India but also inside it and that this was a threat to the country. However, the propaganda was stopped after the fact-finding by ‘India Today’ revealed that Waqf properties is 9.4 lakh acres and not 9.40 square kilometers which is 231 times less than the total land area of Pakistan.
It is interesting to note that it was the RSS mouthpiece ‘organiser’ that debunked the claim that India’s third largest land holdings were held by the Waqf Boards. The weekly openly claimed that the country’s Catholic community owns seven crore hectares (seven lakh square kilometers) of property and that the largest non-government landowners are Catholics. The general belief that the Waqf Board is the largest property owner after the government is wrong. The Catholic Church holds more than the Waqf Board’ – RSS Weekly pointed out. The total area of India is 32.87 lakh sq km. That means the Catholic Church has taken over 21 percent of the country’s territory – argues the ‘Organizer’. Although the article was suddenly deleted from the website, the disclosure is literally a pointer.
The Sangh Parivar and Bishops launched attack against the Waqf by keeping silent about the assets of Hindu and Christian religious institutions. In the major cities of the country, Christian churches having assets worth crores of rupees and Hindu temples with hundreds of thousands of acres of land were deliberately avoided and only the Waqf was captured by the interested parties.During the British rule lands worth crores of rupees at prime locations were gifted to Christian churches. Even after independence, various state governments gave lands to churches.
Nobody is talking about properties in the name of Hindu temples across the country. Temples and shrines in Andhra Pradesh alone have 4,65,000 acres of land. The property of temples in Tamil Nadu is more than 4,47,000 acres. The temple property in Telangana is estimated to be more than 87,000 acres. According to the CAG report, 13 temples control 12,776 acres of land in Odisha. Only four states have ten lakh acres of land under Hindu temples. Figures for states like UP, Maharashtra, Bihar, Bengal, Assam and Jharkhand are not included. The assets of the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram are estimated to be worth more. Inventory of gold and gems worth more than 20,000 crore rupees was found in the vault A.The secrets of the yet-to-be-opened B vault are still unknown. If we look at it this way, we can see that there is a big conspiracy behind the campaigns showing increased size of Waqf properties.
The Sangh Parivar has launched a campaign saying that the Waqf properties have been developed by seizing the properties of Hindu temples and other places of worship and that this is land jihad. A post shared on X by Sangh Parivar Pracharak Anshul Saxena on 13 September 2024 reads: As of January 2020, there are an estimated 6.1 lakh waqf properties in India. About two lakhs of these properties came under various Waqf Boards through encroachment. He had attached a list titled ‘Particulars’ and a column titled ‘Properties encroached in various states’ along with the tweet. The tweet tagged the Vice President, Prime Minister, Minister of the Department, etc. was retweeted 2200 times and received more than 12,000 likes.
However, this was one of the many big lies spread by Hindutva agents through social media in the name of Waqf properties.
The above mentioned list had first appeared in an article published in ‘The Times of India’ on February 8, 2020. The article titled ‘6.1 lakh Waqf properties across India, most in UP, West Bengal and Karnataka states’ said that Waqf Boards are victims, not predators. Data accessed from the Ministry of Minorities Affairs shows that nearly 3 percent of the 6.1 lakh properties have been encroached upon as of December 2019. Punjab (5610), Madhya Pradesh (3240), West Bengal (3082), Tamil Nadu (1336) and Karnataka (862) accounted for the highest number of encroachments…’
Modi Government’s Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi’s reply to a question by BJP member Ajay Nishad in the Lok Sabha on December 14, 2018 that 16,844 Waqf properties in various states have been encroached by individuals and public bodies was spread distorted by the Sangh Parivar Lie factories. In addition to the above- mentioned states, the Waqf land has been encroached in Haryana (754), Himachal Pradesh (503) and other states including Kerala (‘The New Indian Express’, December 15, 2018). According to the report, waqf land has been grabbed in twenty States and two Union Territories. The ‘Deccan Herald’ (November 21, 2019) quoting PTI also reported that around 17,000 waqf properties have been encroached across the country.
Addressing the 76th session of the Central Waqf Council, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi stated in a statement released by the Central Government’s Press Information Bureau on June 29, 2017 that more than two thousand criminal cases have been filed across the country in connection with the encroachment of Waqf properties.
Sambit Patra, a member from Puri, who spoke on behalf of the BJP while debating the Waqf Bill in the Lok Sabha presented another lie. He argued that there is no tradition of Waqf in Muslim countries including Turkiye, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Tunisia and Iraq. He posted the speech on his X account and got nearly 6,000 likes. While Sambit Patra mentioned only a few countries, BJP member from Jharkhand Nishkant Dubey claimed that none of the 57 Muslim states have Waqf properties !
Interestingly, Sambit Patra’s words were taken from the press release issued last year by the government’s official propaganda arm, the Press Information Bureau. In the note, PIB said that there is no Waqf system in nine Muslim countries, Waqf Boards are the largest landowners in India, and there are departments in the country to legally protect said properties.
When such falsehoods were widely spread by Sangh Parivar profiles, ‘Alt News’ picked up on these hoaxes and brought out with evidence the existing Waqf systems in the above nine countries. Even in Lebanon, where the Muslim and Christian populations are almost equal, Alt News also pointed out that there is a separate Waqf system for Sunnis and Shiites.
It was the Chief Minister of the state who said the lie that the Uttar Pradesh Waqf Board had stated that the Maha Kumbh Mela in Allahabad was held on Waqf land. After the Waqf Bill was passed in the Lok Sabha, Adityanath repeated the statement and mocked the Waqf Board as Land Mafia. However, UP Waqf Board did not make such a statement. The Muslims of Allahabad had said that the 54 Bhiga land set aside for the Akhadas in Kumbh Mela is Waqf property. They have proof of that. However, Adityanath and some media spread this as an official statement of the Waqf Board. Some pro-Sangh Parivar channels organized discussions on this for several days.
In the Waqf discussion held in the Lok Sabha, B.J.P member Anurag Thakur also made a false statement. It has been alleged that the Waqf Board has claimed rights over two islands in Bet Dwarka which is in the name of Krishna in Gujarat. The BJP member also sarcastically asked in the House that ‘Did Islam exist before Krishna?’. As early as 2021, Gujarat Waqf Board Chairman Sajjad Hira had stated that no claim was made on Dwarka. He clarified that the case was filed by the private Sunni Trust based on their conviction and the Waqf Board had no role in it.
BJP’s moves to make Waqf a campaign tool during the November 2024 by-polls in Karnataka failed. It was spearheaded by hate campaigner South Bangalore MP Tejashwi Surya. BJP has made the poor farmers the scapegoat for that. The BJP campaign was that the Waqf Board under the Congress government is hunting the farmers alleging that the Waqf land has been encroached upon by them . However, the state’s popular Kannada daily ‘Prajavani’ brought out through several reports that most notices were sent against farmers and encroachers during the previous BJP regime, not during the Congress government. Between 2008 and 2024, the Waqf Board has sent 3,519 notices in Karnataka related to the misappropriation of Waqf properties. Among all notices, 2011 were sent during BJP rule (2008-2013, 2019-2023). During Congress rule (2013-2018, 2023 to date) only 1404 notices were sent. Tejaswi Surya through his X account also spread the big lie that the State Waqf Board had acquired more than 1500 acres of Hindu farmers’ land in Honvada village of Vijayapura district with the support of the Congress government.
In response to a question in the Lok Sabha on November 27, Central Minorities Department Minister, Kiren Rijiju said that Waqf Boards have the power to issue notices and that more than 800 cases of encroachment have been reported in Karnataka alone. The same man later came with a bill in Parliament describing the Waqf properties as encroachments!
Home Minister Amit Shah has also served half-truths on the Waqf issue, warning Muslims that everyone is bound to accept the laws passed by Parliament. Shah alleged that the UPA government under the leadership of Manmohan Singh had handed over 123 properties in Delhi to the Waqf Board. It is enough to look at the history a little back to know that the Home Minister was misleading the country by hiding the facts. During the British rule (1911-1945) land acquired in the Raisina Hills to build the city of New Delhi included mosques, madrasas and graveyards. When the Muslims protested, the British government came forward with consensus. 123 properties were not acquired and registered as religious property under Muslims’ management.. During 1943-45, the British government handed over 123 objects to the Sunni Majlis Auqaf. After independence, even when the Sunni Majlis Auqaf became the Delhi Waqf Board, the above properties were managed as Waqf properties.
In 1973, the Government of India brought the said properties under the purview of the Waqf Act, 1954 and notified it in the Delhi Gazette. However, after the Delhi Development Authority and the Land Development Office questioned their ownership, the Indira Gandhi government appointed the Burney Committee to study the matter and submit a report in 1974. The committee, which reported in 1976 that all 123 properties were waqf, recommended that the land be leased to the Delhi Waqf Board at a rate of Rs 1 per acre per annum and the ownership vested in the government. The court-ordered stay lasted until 2011 after the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) approached the court in 1984 seeking an increase in the lease amount. Then, in 2014, the central government handed over the ownership of all 123 properties to the Delhi Waqf Board as directed by the Delhi High Court. Because all these things remained as waqf. The VHP again approached the Delhi High Court and the Election Commission. After the Narendra Modi government came to power in 2016, a single member commission headed by Justice JR Aryan was appointed to review the decision of the UPA government. In the report submitted by the commission in 2017, it was clarified that the ownership rights of all 123 properties belong to the Delhi Waqf Board. However, the BJP government appointed a two-member committee again in 2018 without releasing the report. On the basis of this committee’s report, the Land and Development Board declared that the Waqf Board had no cash on 123 properties. The Waqf Board is fighting a legal battle against this.
(Original version of this article in Malayalam appeared in Prabodhanam Weekly on 18 April 2025)
