Waqf Amendment Act: Kashmir Chooses Silence, Once Again

Eighty-four-year-old Yaseen Zahra sits on a wooden ledge covered with a faded namda (woollen rug) at the Khanqah-e-Mo’alla, a 650-year-old shrine in the middle of Srinagar, built in the memory of a Sufi scholar and saint from Iran’s Hamadan province, also known as Shah-e-Hamadan. Zahra is the mujawir (traditional caretaker of the shrine), like his father and his grandfather. He is among hundreds of mujawirs who were pushed aside after the Jammu and Kashmir Waqf Board—now under the control of the Union government since the abrogation of Article 370—issued a directive in August 2022. The board banned nazr-o-niyaz, the age-old practice of devotees offering alms to shrine caretakers. Zahra’s box for offerings was taken away too.

“I don’t take a rupee,” he says. “Not from anyone. The income that comes from the shrine’s property goes to the government, including the money people leave in the donation boxes.” Still, he says he won’t leave this place. “I’ve given my life to this place. I’ll stay here as long as I breathe,” he says.

He nods towards an elderly man sweeping the courtyard. “He doesn’t get paid. He comes here because he wants to. Will the government, which measures everything in money, ever understand devotion that asks for nothing in return?”

In every corner of the Kashmir Valley, there are shrines, mosques, seminaries and Sufi lodges. Like many other places, in Kashmir too, religious and charitable land was often created through oral trust-based agreements. A Sufi lodge might have been built where a mystic often stopped to pray and share his teachings with the local community.

According to data from the Jammu and Kashmir Waqf Board, over 32,000 kanals of land fall under its administration—one kanal is about 5,445 square feet. Yet, large portions of land remain undocumented or partially registered. The ‘waqf by user’ principle allowed such properties to be legally recognised based on their consistent communal use, even in the absence of formal documentation. With the new Waqf law to govern Muslim properties—that gives the government a larger role in validating their landholdings—there’s a fear among the local people that these sacred spaces might be reclassified, disputed or even quietly erased.

BJP’s Reshaping Of J&K’s Waqf Board

In Parliament, while defending the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2025, Minority Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said he was “highly impressed” during his recent visit to J&K. He went on to mention that Darakhshan Andrabi, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-appointed chairperson of the Jammu and Kashmir Waqf Board, had told him that under her leadership, the Board had generated Rs 40 crore in revenue.

The increased revenue generation is one part of the picture. The other is the quiet restructuring of Muslim institutions in J&K since 2019. Before that, the system worked differently. The chief minister of J&K automatically served as the Waqf Board’s chairman. If the chief minister wasn’t a Muslim, he could appoint a Muslim minister from his cabinet to fill the role. Similarly, the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board in Jammu was chaired by the state’s governor. If the governor wasn’t a Hindu, the shrine could choose a Hindu person to lead.

But since the abrogation of Article 370, while local shrine boards continue to oversee Hindu and Sikh religious sites, the Muslim Waqf institutions have been restructured.

The newly-formed J&K Waqf Board dissolved all local Waqf and Auqaf committees. “When the new board took over under my chairpersonship in March 2022, we were surprised to see that no proper accounting system was in place,” says Andrabi. “We took measures to streamline the Waqf Board, and a proper accounting system was put in place. For the first time ever, we were able to undertake upgradation of all major shrines throughout J&K using the board’s own finances,” she claims.

Yet, not everyone sees this as a move in the right direction. Naeem Akhtar—who served as the first chief executive of the Waqf Board when the People’s Democratic Party (PDP)-led government took control of the board for the first time in 2003—says that during his tenure they also brought many reforms, including the establishment of J&K’s first nursing college, the Bibi Halima College of Nursing and Technology, which was funded by waqf money and is a waqf property.

However, Akhtar criticises the new management. “Why is a political party (BJP) member heading a religious body at all? That speaks volumes.” Leaders from across the political spectrum in Kashmir say that the BJP has reduced the Waqf to a “real estate property issue” to generate money. “No one opposes transparency, and no law has ever stopped the government from making things transparent,” says Srinagar MP Ruhullah Mehdi. “But what we’re against is the takeover of Muslim properties. This kind of overreach violates Article 26 of the Constitution, which protects our right to manage our own religious affairs.”

While the Waqf Board claims to have brought transparency in the system, for many, especially those tied to these waqf spaces, some changes are unwelcome. The rent hikes on waqf shops have quietly unsettled the lives of small shopkeepers. Andrabi says that there was no proper rent-collection system and huge liabilities of rent were pending at all rented complexes throughout J&K. “We took special initiatives to collect the pending liabilities of rent,” she said. “Many rented waqf properties were not paying rent and many were paying as minimum as Rs 50, but now they are being charged between Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000.” However, many people who have shops on waqf land claim that their rent was raised unfairly. One shopkeeper in Srinagar, on condition of anonymity, says, “The rent was hiked by five per cent each year. Unfortunately, since 2022, the Waqf Board has been asking for huge rent—a hike of over 500 to 1,000 per cent.” “We are not against the reforms, but you can’t generate money at the cost of poor shopkeepers. This way, the purpose of waqf is being lost, and we’re being priced out,” he says.

Chief Minister In The Tulip Garden

There’s never really a wrong time for a photo opportunity in the Tulip Garden in spring—unless you’re Omar Abdullah posing with Rijiju, on the very same day when chaos broke out in the J&K Assembly over the Waqf bill. The Kashmir-based Opposition criticised Abdullah for laying out a “red carpet welcome” to the BJP minister who introduced the Waqf Bill in Parliament.

On April 7, in the assembly, the legislators of the ruling National Conference (NC) and a few non-BJP Opposition members introduced an adjournment motion to discuss the Waqf Act. The BJP legislators stormed into the well of the house and sat on the floor in protest. They shouted “Bharat Mata Ki Jai,” and the NC members fired back with “Nara-e-Taqbeer, Allah-o-Akbar”. Neither side was willing to back down. Speaker Rahim Rather, who’s a senior NC leader, adjourned the House sine die. He refused to allow any discussion on the Waqf Bill, saying the matter was “sub judice”.

When the Opposition pointed out that state assemblies in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu had passed resolutions against the bill, the NC spokesperson and MLA Tanvir Sadiq said: “Unlike other states, every resolution in the Union Territory of J&K must go through the Lieutenant Governor.” He further added that the party has approached the Supreme Court to challenge the law on legal grounds.

In a post on X, MLA Sajjad Lone asked where the chief minister was during the protests. “Where were you for three days? I know for some time, you were in the Tulip Garden,” he wrote. Later, Abdullah told reporters that his meet with Rijiju was a “coincidence”. “He asked me to take a photo with him. Should I have been rude and refused?” he said.

But people on the streets aren’t buying his response. Across Srinagar, many have already lost hope. While there are protests happening across many Indian cities after Parliament passed this controversial bill, Kashmiris have chosen silence, once again.

Outside the Dastgeer Sahib Shrine in Srinagar, a local shopkeeper says, “Our government has stopped talking about anything important. Article 370, remember that? They got votes for it. Do they even mention it now?” “Waqf wasn’t even mentioned in their manifesto. And now? The Chief Minister must be in the Tulip Garden.”

Toibah Kirmani is a sub-editor at outlook, based in Kashmir

This article is part of Outlook’s May 01, 2025 issue 'Username Waqf' which looks at the Waqf Amendment Act of 2025, its implications, and how it is perceived by the Muslim community. It appeared in print as 'Sacred Silence'.