Archive post. Issued by SAMNET on 9 September 2024. The objection deadline of 13 September 2024 has long passed, and the Waqf Amendment Bill has since moved through the Indian legislative process. Published here as part of SAMNET’s advocacy archive.
The Indian government is considering legislation that, in our view, would usurp the rights and endowments of Muslim community trusts. We called on colleagues and family in India — Muslim and non-Muslim — to take a few moments to register an objection before 13 September.
Use the process
Legislative processes in most democracies carry checks and balances, but they only work if they are used, and they fall away if citizens do not protect them. If we do not use these mechanisms we are left acting reactively to an outcome, rather than proactively mounting a defence against it.
Numbers matter
In legislative processes quantity often trumps quality. Legislators rarely have the time, the resources or the appetite to work through thousands of objections — and the sheer number of them can shift direction. Objections are also time-bound, and meeting the deadline matters more than polishing the detail.
Why this is more than a community matter
Whatever the theological differences, we regard this as an existential threat not only to Muslims in India but to minorities and religious groups generally — and one that fits the Ten Stages of Genocide framework. Genocide Watch, which developed that framework, has placed India at an advanced stage on its scale.
India is also dealing with what amounts, in our view, to a civil war in places such as Manipur, with elements that resemble colonisation and the targeting of minorities. It has conflicts in Assam, Kashmir and elsewhere that individually involve more people than many national conflicts elsewhere in the world.
A strong push by Indian citizens at home and abroad, and collective solidarity from civil society and governments across the world, is needed — and can shift the tide before India’s extremists divide the country further and entrench that division in law.
Further reading
- Conference in city calls for objections against Waqf Bill — Times of India.
- AIMPLB to gather mass feedback on Waqf Amendment Bill — Qazi Faraz Ahmad, Hindustan Times.
- Dr Stanton: the 10 stages of genocide that threaten India — Genocide Watch.
- Reject Waqf Bill — video.
Shared by the South African Muslim Network (SAMNET) in the interest of human rights, fighting Islamophobia and preventing genocide across the world.