This is the first election where you are at the opposite camp of Sharad Pawar. He is targeting you; are you feeling the heat of his attack?

This is just like any other election in my 40 years political life. When we decided to stand against him, we were prepared to do so with full force.

Just four months back, Mahayuti faced a debacle. Do you believe the situation has improved in since then?

Yes, definitely. The fake narrative of the Lok Sabha election is not making a comeback despite Maha Vikas Aghadi’s (MVA) attempts. We have corrected our mistakes. For instance, there was the onion ban. We suffered a lot because of this in north Maharashtra. After the Lok Sabha election, the ban was lifted and farmers are getting a fair price. The “400 paar” slogan met with the allegations of Constitutional change and the formation of a Hindu Rashtra. I cannot comment on the defeat in Uttar Pradesh, but in Maharashtra, the backward class believed the propaganda of the opposition. The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) agitation led minorities to believe that they will be thrown out of the country. The opposition successfully made people believe that we needed 400 seats to do all this. After results all these fears have turned baseless and issues no longer matter.

Despite this experience, why is it that your ally BJP is raising slogans such as “vote jehad” or “batenge to katenge”?

We as NCP has already made our stand clear. We are opposing it. North India may accept this, but not Maharashtra. We have people with different backgrounds in our State. I am of the opinion that such things should not be said. We belong to the ideology of Shiv (Chhatrapati Shivaji), Shahu (Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj), Phule (Mahatma Phule) and Ambedkar and only this ideology can take Maharashtra forward.

But senior BJP leaders including Modi, Yogi Adityanath, and Devendra Fadnavis are the ones saying this. What would you tell them?

Modi never said this. Don’t twist his words. “sabka sath, sabka vikas” is the motto of the Central government. “ek hai toh safe hai” is exactly on this line. He is asking everyone to remain united. Your interpretation is different, ours is different.

Will the rebels lead to a large number of independents getting elected?

Last time such a thing happened was in 1995. But then, there was internal rebellion within the Congress. This time, we decided seats on the basis of the strength of the candidates and even we exchanged candidates. So, I don’t think independents will get a large number of seats.

Don’t you think contesting on fewer seats will dilute the possibility of you becoming a Chief Minister?

Don’t drag me into yet another controversy. For your information, there are people who have become Prime Ministers or Chief Ministers with a strength of 40 legislators behind them. But I am not going to comment on anything. People like Nawab Malik have said that I will be a key player, but I do not want to comment on it. We three will sit together after the results and the Chief Minister will be finalised.

If situation demands, will you join hands with Sharad Pawar after the election results?

There is absolutely no possibility of it. In any case, there is no comeback now.

Are you confident about Baramati? Because in the Lok Sabha election, your wife was trailing in this Assembly segment. This time, your nephew is contesting against you.

Our family is divided on this. As per my study, the voters of Baramati chose Pawar sahib (Sharad Pawar) for the Lok Sabha by electing Supriya (Sule). For the Assembly, I am always among the voters and work for them. I am not somebody who is coming in just for the election. They (voters) see, know and acknowledge my work. I have full confidence that I will win Baramati and as Mahayuti we will win more than 175 seats across Maharashtra.

Maratha activists like Manoj Jarange-Patil have given a call to defeat certain candidates of Mahayuti. How do you see it?

That’s his democratic right. Ultimately, people will decide and vote.

Is an OBC consolidation happening on the other side in Mahayuti’s favour?

Maharashtra has largely avoided voting on caste consolidations. There was a time when BJP had stalwarts like Gopinath Munde and Anna Dange who led to the consolidation of the Vanjari community. But I don’t see that happening to that extent now.

What is your plan to calm farmers agitated over falling prices of soybean and cotton?

We helped farmers by announcing Rs. 5,000 per ha. There are two sides to the coin. If we increase soybean prices, the oil will get costlier. If that happens, you will cry about inflation. The same thing happened with milk farmers. We have spoken to the Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who has assured us that we will find a way after the code of conduct is lifted.

Do you think Sri Lanka is at a pivotal moment in its history?

In terms of where Sri Lanka stands now, I would say it’s at a historic conjuncture. Sri Lanka is going through its worst economic crisis since probably the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the huge social and political changes we are seeing are related to this crisis. So it’s definitely at a pivotal moment.

It’s also significant here in Jaffna because it’s been 15 years since the end of the war. Just as there have been major changes in politics in Sri Lanka’s south—who would have imagined that a coalition led by the JVP would come to the helm of state power? They tried twice through armed struggle and insurrections to capture state power, and now they’ve achieved it through democratic means. What they will do and can do is, of course, the big question.

Similarly, Tamil politics is finally going through tremendous changes. Tamil nationalism started to gain ground in the 1950s, particularly in reaction to discrimination by the Sinhala elite who held power and played divisive politics. The Federal Party first took forward the demand for federalism, and eventually they backed various militant groups. As we know, the LTTE then wiped out all other militant groups, claimed they were the sole representative, and in my view, took the Tamil community on a disastrous, suicidal path which ended in that cataclysmic end to the war in 2009.

The year 2009 should have been a moment of reckoning for the country. After a 26-year civil war, what do you do? In the south, the Rajapaksas decided to use it for their own consolidation. They strengthened Sinhala Buddhist nationalism and further militarised the country, particularly the north, in a very humiliating way towards minorities. But there wasn’t also the kind of self-criticism that was necessary within the Tamil community. The political elite here—whether parliamentary parties or militants and eventually the LTTE—owe some responsibility for where they have brought the Tamil community. There should have been self-criticism about the strategies needed to move forward. That didn’t happen.

And why do you think it didn’t happen?

One thing the LTTE systematically did was wipe out the entire second-rung leadership. They not only wiped out all other militant groups, but as we all know, they murdered Amirthalingam, Sivasithamparam, Yogeswaran—all of them were gunned down. Even the second-rung leadership and the left here were completely decimated. So there weren’t enough people left.

A number of them were put forward as LTTE proxies. When the LTTE disappeared from the scene, these proxies decided to hold on to the parliamentary mantle and politics without really mobilising or engaging the people. Their claim was that with support from the international community, using the diaspora and with support from New Delhi/India, they would be able to deliver some kind of solution. But it was clear to many of us that when you have a political leadership that cannot mobilise the people, no solution is going to be real if they are negotiating that way.

So are you trying to say that there’s been a delayed churn in Tamil politics in the North?

Yes, this should have happened, in my view, 10-14 years ago. Then we could have moved on. This has kept things on hold, and in a way, the kind of unravelling we are seeing might immediately mean there is no clear Tamil political voice. But it’s a necessary change we are confronted with, just as there is this long-overdue change in the south as well. Whether these changes will lead to something lasting, something progressive, something that the people are looking for is yet to be seen.

On the other hand, we are facing the biggest crisis in our independent history. Poverty has more than doubled. Sri Lanka, as you would know, along with Kerala and Cuba, was considered a development model in the 1970s. Our human development indicators were extremely high, even though our per capita income was very low, because of our policies—free education, free healthcare, food subsidies. Now all of that is at risk because of the economic crisis. For the first time in our history, we defaulted on our debt two years ago in 2022. The IMF and creditors have us by the throat, saying we should repay. All these crippling austerity measures are being pushed down on us so we can repay the creditors.

How much can a new government do to address this suffering? Will it lead to other uprisings because of this economic situation? There’s a lot at stake now because when a new government like this comes, and if they fail, there’s also the chance of a much more polarising chauvinist regime coming to power. So there’s a lot at stake in terms of the need for this new government to succeed in meeting the aspirations of not just the singular people, but the minorities as well.

What we’ve seen over and over again in Sri Lanka is that when things go wrong, the ethnic card is used. First, the discrimination against Tamils which ended up in that horrible civil war. But what happened in the last 15 years? When the Rajapaksas started to realise they couldn’t manage the economy or meet the aspirations of the Sinhala people, the next round was against the Muslims. In 2012-2013, riots against Muslims started, constructing them as the new enemy with all kinds of fabricated stories. You see similar things even in India—it’s a regional and global phenomenon.

Enemies are important.

Yes, enemies are important—

And building up those enemies is important.

And trying to gain power on the basis of constructing these new enemies. So there are some dangers. But at the moment, there is also a hopeful moment in Sri Lanka.

So basically what you’re saying is there’s hope, but also the fear of a mischance again. From the little that I see in the campaign for your parliamentary elections, at least that rhetoric of Sinhala nationalism or even Tamil nationalism is not dominating the discourse. So do you think that’s a good thing, a welcome thing?

That’s definitely welcome. I think it’s important that we build on that because in the history of nationalisms here, I always say they are objective allies—the two extremes are good friends, they need each other. When one starts to sink, the other becomes even louder trying to wake them up. Right now they have both been disrupted, and this is an opportunity for the north to work with the south.

Which is quite rare in Sri Lanka, isn’t it?

A rare one. But there have been opportunities in the past. I should mention here one of my mentors whom you might have known, Kethesh Loganathan. I worked very closely with him.

A real towering intellectual.

Yes. Sadly, he was assassinated in 2006. If people like him were around today, Neelan Tiruchelvam and so on, the Tamil community would be much stronger for having these kinds of intellectuals. One of Kethesh’s books is titled Lost Opportunities because Sri Lanka has also been a history of lost opportunities. Hopefully, we would use this opportunity to its fullest and try to take it forward. There’s huge enthusiasm, particularly among the younger generations—both in the south and north—they want to see change in politics.

But at the same time, because of the grave economic crisis, there’s this push to migrate, to run away hoping to find better pastures. I don’t think that’s the case. Even the West is in turmoil with anti-immigrant mobilisations, whether in Europe or North America. Nevertheless, a section of the youth feel their future is outside.

About 2,00,000 people are migrating or immigrating out per year. Is that the figure?

Yes, possibly more than that. Historically, people have gone to the Middle East to work and some come back, but now professionals are trying to permanently migrate. While a large section might be migrant labour, a sizable portion are professionals who want to permanently migrate because they’ve lost hope. More importantly, the food crisis we’re seeing here, malnutrition—these are things we didn’t worry about in Sri Lanka in the past.

We need to really rethink the structure of our economy. We’ve come full circle. In 1977, Sri Lanka was the first country in South Asia to liberalise its economy—India came a decade or more later. We liberalised the economy, weakened the public sector, and I feel now we are paying for it. This idea that free trade, free flow of capital, and privatisation was the way forward has proven to be a disaster. Sri Lanka is now the first country in South Asia to default on its external debt. Hopefully, this is a wake-up call for us to rebuild our economy in a different direction. From time to time we have done that. It’s that kind of historic moment. It is to be seen whether the new NPP government will be up to that task.

I know it’s still early days as far as the government is concerned. It was only in September that Anura Kumara Dissanayake, or AKD as he’s known here, was elected. It’s barely been a month and a half. But how would you assess some of the decisions he’s taken, especially appointing a Citibank appointee to head the Bank of Ceylon? Is he trying to signal to the business community and the rest of the world that he’s not going to rock the boat? Is that the signal he wants to send out?

We have to keep in mind that he was elected president when they only had three parliamentarians out of 225. So after dissolving parliament soon after, saying they need a majority to be able to govern, the entire focus has been on winning the parliamentary elections, which take place in a couple of days.

Having said that, they were worried about what forces would disrupt their possibilities. Certainly, the Colombo elite are very wary of what they see as an outsider having taken power. I think to some extent the international actors, the global actors, the West and so on, are also wary about the election of Anura Kumara Dissanayake. What we saw even in the days before the presidential election, as the wave became clear that they might win, was rhetoric saying “here’s a Marxist who’s going to head this country.” That they won’t be able to manage the economy, that they would disrupt any attempts to rebuild it. So this kind of messaging in the Western press in particular was almost like blackmail—saying okay, if you’re not a Marxist, then you should stick to the IMF program.

Like there’s nothing in between.

Nothing in between. Even though they had come a long way to the political mainstream—I characterise them as a left-of-centre party. So that kind of pressure… And keep in mind, the election was on September 21st. We go into what we call a blackout in terms of campaigning on the 18th. On the 19th, the former president Ranil Wickremesinghe announces he has sealed a deal with Sri Lanka’s creditors, the bondholders. Then immediately the Western press goes into this hyper discourse saying, “Will this president continue with this?”

So he was presented with a kind of fait accompli.

Yes. Within a week of being inaugurated, the IMF arrives in Sri Lanka, and within 10 days the Finance Ministry announces they will accept this bond deal. You can imagine how he was muscled into accepting, which of course for people like me, we see this as an unsustainable deal.

In 2027, when the IMF program ends—and the IMF has been the arbiter of this deal—when we start repaying our creditors, we are going to be paying 4.5 per cent of our GDP in external debt servicing. That’s about 30 per cent of our revenues. But not only is it 30 per cent of our revenues, it’s about 30 per cent of our exports. So we have to collect that 30 per cent as revenues, convert it into dollars using our exports.

This whole push to increase taxes and claiming that we need to increase our exports—all of it is so we can repay the creditors and the IMF. People talk about this as an IMF bailout, and I’ve written about it as the myth of the IMF bailout. The IMF is only giving us $3 billion over four years. There’s no bailout because $3 billion over four years amounts to $60 million a month. Sri Lanka’s foreign earnings from the garment sector, tea exports, rubber, coconut, migrant remittances—every month is 30 times that amount: $1,800 million. So there’s no bailout. But because we defaulted and the IMF is the arbiter, they are able to impose these huge austerity measures. The IMF is giving us $3 billion, but over the next 10 years, we will be paying them $2 billion in interest alone.

So it is a trap.

It’s a trap. I think we are learning it the hard way. At some point this government will have to find a way out of this IMF program if they are to implement the kind of people-friendly policies they have promised.

Coming back to the issue of ethnic politics in Sri Lanka and the delayed churn we were talking about earlier—you rightly pointed out that an entire generation of Tamil leadership was wiped out by the LTTE, which already weakened the leadership. But what is your sense now? When the LTTE was around, the 13th Amendment wasn’t even considered a basis for discussion. When President Chandrika Kumaratunga presented her proposals to Parliament, it was a tragedy it was never put to vote. Even if it were defeated—that was my view when I was a correspondent here—she should have put it to vote. Even if it fell through because of the UNP and Ranil Wickremesinghe, at least she would have proved a point that she was a president who moved in that direction.

We saw this bloody civil war, the insurrection, human tragedy at an unimaginable scale. Now, would it be that the hope Anura Kumara Dissanayake has generated, which was visible to some extent even in his political rally in Jaffna, might attract more people? His party got 27,000 votes, I think, during the presidential election. Is it your sense that many more people will come out in his support now?

I think so. There is a wave towards the NPP. It’s partly his charisma, but more than that, people want change. People want change in the south, people want change in the north. They are ready to give the NPP a chance. So in that sense, I think more people in the north and east will also vote for them. But going back to this question of…

A political settlement or agreement…

Yes, our demands have changed with time. In 1956, it was mainly a language issue. Then it eventually became a question of territorial devolution. Now there are minorities living all over the country, so I’m not sure how much we can rely on territorial basis alone. We probably also need power-sharing at the centre, like what you have in India—a Senate or a second chamber to be able to check all of that.

But I think at a very basic level, having gone through this tremendous destruction, when people talk about a solution, first they are looking for an acknowledgement from the south that something horrible has happened here. Let’s all come together as a country and say these people have suffered so much—there needs to be a solution.

Now, what that solution means… Sometimes lawyers think they have all the solutions. It’s not about this clause or that clause. I think people are open to see and they’re practical about it. The economy has changed—what we thought in 1987 is not what the Sri Lankan economy is today in terms of what we want to do with devolution. Even though we sometimes stick to the same slogans, there are certain realities.

For example, I am the chair of a provincial-level federation of cooperatives called the Northern Cooperative Development Bank. It’s a very positive thing that cooperatives are a devolved subject under the 13th Amendment. So if we want to sort out a problem, we can go to the commissioner here; we don’t have to go to Colombo. And cooperatives are very local institutions, so there it makes sense. We have to think where it makes sense, what is possible, and work that out. So we can use the experience of the 13th Amendment.

So what you’re saying is that if there’s goodwill, more than clause A or clause B, it’s how you go about the process. And what kind of political leadership emerges in the north would also be important.

Because we don’t want one arrogant elite in Colombo to control politics and then just transfer power to another arrogant elite in the north, if you’re serious about democracy. There is also the problem of caste here, the problem of other minorities. The northern Muslim community, who in 1990 were evicted from the North within 24 hours, are now trying to return. There are people from the plantations who, during the riots in the south, were displaced to the north—many of them are still landless or feel discriminated against. So there are many things we need to sort out in the North as well. But nationally, there has to be a recognition. We need to come to terms with this long conflict and the war and give people confidence.

When you say there are some voices from within the Tamil community, including in the University of Jaffna, which came out in open support of the NPP—would you say that this is perhaps for the first time in many decades? I’m not so familiar with your history. Is it the first time that even a section of enlightened Tamil leaders are wanting to work with a political party which is based in the South?

It is a new opening. There have been openings from time to time. In a way, I would say in 1994, when Chandrika came to power on a peace platform after the UNP ruled for 17 years, that was also a fresh moment and she was broadly welcomed.

And till the LTTE literally torpedoed the whole process in March of 1995, I think.

So there have been moments like this, and with the LTTE, people did not have the space to express that. That to some extent continued. There are virulent sections of the diaspora who would use their financial and political clout even today to try to label anybody who says we need to work with other communities in the south, because they’re very wedded to this notion. But I think the last month or two has been a major change. This opening has made even shutting down people, shutting down voices difficult because I think just like the mainstream Sinhala leadership has been exposed, the Tamil political leadership has also been exposed.

Recently the government announced that the Jaffna-Achuveli Road will be opened. And at his public meeting in Jaffna the other day, the president spoke of returning lands and a number of other issues. Can you explain what would be the outstanding issues as far as day-to-day living of people here in Jaffna, in the peninsula, is concerned?

The Jaffna and Northern Province is still very rural. People’s mainstays are agriculture, fisheries, livestock and so on. So the land question is central. There was no reason why the previous governments after the war could not release all these lands—there’s absolutely no excuse for it in my view. In fact, they used the Forest Department, the Archaeological Department, various ploys to even take over more land. When Sirisena became president, a substantial amount was released, but still so much more should have been done. So in that sense, the land issue is crucial.

If they can release these lands and then get the existing government machinery working—Sri Lanka has a very extensive state structure in every village. In India what you call a Gram Sevak, here we have a Samurdhi officer, an economic development officer. The state reaches deep down, so you can do a lot with that or you can also curtail the people by using the state structure.

Take fisheries—there is the Fisheries Department which is controlled by the central government and the Fisheries Ministry. A fifth of our population depends directly or indirectly on fisheries. They could be an enabling actor or a stifling actor. Unfortunately, I must say they’ve been a stifling actor. Whether this government can have that vision and work with actors in the north to address that remains to be seen.

These are the ways in which they can address the day-to-day concerns of the people. Some issues are also due to external conditions—the economic crisis has meant that fuel costs have gone up, which has had a huge impact. So I think not only in the north but in the entire country, how they deal with the rural sectors and the food system is going to be crucial for this government’s survival. In terms of the North, I think it’s high time demilitarisation takes place.

Are there a lot of camps here?

Yes, if you go to Mullaitivu, Kilinochchi and so on, large swaths of land are still controlled by the military. There’s absolutely no need for that, and it continues to be a humiliating presence for the local people. What happened was after the war we had a bloated military, and no government had the guts to start a national discussion about the need to slowly demilitarise after the war.

Actually, the Rajapaksas really thrived on militarisation.

They further militarised even Colombo, for example. It’s the way in which they embraced neoliberal policies, urbanisation, financialisation and so on. We know that neoliberalism works well with a certain kind of securitisation and an authoritarian state. That was their model.

Now the NPP and the JVP, coming from a very strong Sinhala base in my view, are the kinds of actors who can also bring about these changes because they can’t be labelled as traitors to the Sinhala cause, so to speak. If they can have that forthright vision and try to work out these issues about militarisation, the release of land, about ensuring that the state structures work in each region for the benefit of those communities, that would go a long way.

But there is also the political question of how, after these long decades of polarisation, you bring the country together politically. You have to show some goodwill by bringing about changes in the way things are run in the north as well.

And the structures as well?

Right. And that will also depend now on if they are to bring about a new constitution. That would of course depend on the kind of strength they have in parliament to be able to do that, but either through that or through passing different kinds of laws to show their goodwill.

But it’s pretty tough to amend your constitution. I mean, your new president has even promised, or his party had promised, the removal of the executive presidency. That’s a pretty long shot.

That’s a long shot because you need a two-thirds majority in Parliament and also a referendum. So those challenges remain, but whether they can step by step build the confidence in that direction… I think people have been waiting to see what they will do after the parliament election because their whole thrust was to try to be able to govern by getting a majority in Parliament. And if they do get it, what they will then do after that is what people are waiting to see.

This is the first election in a decade where you are not a candidate. How is the response to campaigning for other candidates?

I don’t feel that I am not a candidate. I have to appeal in several constituencies to vote as if I am the candidate. So, I don’t feel I am not contesting. Rather, I was looking forward to take up the organisational responsibility and devote time entirely for it. I am getting a huge response all over and I can sense it.

The lotus (BJP) symbol is missing from the Parli Assembly constituency for the first time in almost four decades. Do you feel sorry?

Of course I feel sad. It is my father’s constituency. I have been here since I was a toddler. For the past five years when I had nothing, the workers remained by my side. Thousands joined me when held a meeting to campaign for Dhananjay [Munde of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), also her cousin]. They felt sad too. But I appealed them to campaign for the clock [NCP] symbol, thinking it is the lotus.

Is your party worker worried about your political future?

Every worker would worry about the future of their leader. My job is to reduce that fear as we don’t know what the future has to offer.

Has the situation changed in Beed district after the Lok Sabha election?

I am campaigning in all seats in the State. But I am sure we will win Parli and all other seats in Beed district.

But just a few months ago, you lost in the Lok Sabha election.

I do not think about the past. I am for the future. I lost by 6,000 votes only despite such a terrible condition. Technically, I won. The situation has changed, yes, and it has changed for the better: to the extent that we will win the State once again.

According to you, what were the reasons of the Lok Sabha debacle?

The biggest reason was a fake narrative. It was about many things, including the Constitution. But it is not working anymore, and people are not going to vote merely to defeat someone. They know that development will take place because of good people. People want a State government that will work under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

Do you agree with the new narrative “Batenge to Katenge” [if we are divided, we will be slaughtered] being peddled by your party members in Maharashtra?

Frankly, my politics is different. I won’t support it just because I am of that party. My belief is that we should work on development alone. A leader’s job is to make every living person on this land as our own. Therefore, we need not bring any such topic to Maharashtra.

The leader who said it did so in a different context and in the political situation of that land. The meaning of that is not what we are using in Maharashtra. PM Modi ji has given justice to everyone. He did not see caste or religion when he gave ration, housing, or cylinders to people.

Is the BJP relying on its old strategy of OBC consolidation in this election? The proof of it being you are campaigning all around?

This is not the first time when I am travelling across the State as a star campaigner. My focus has always been developmental policies and issues and to seek votes only on that. In the early days, my father the late Gopinath Munde, the late Pandurang Fundkar, Anna Dange, and others gave a Bahujan face to the party. They made combinations that are needed in politics. Those political changes were positive ones. They brought common people into politics and we are taking forward that legacy. Working for the downtrodden, oppressed classes cannot be termed as a strategy but it is who we are ideologically—that’s our core.

Is the BJP indulging in caste-based campaigning?

That’s not true. It is natural for a leader to campaign in an area where he/she has a large following. Every party does it. That does not mean we are doing caste-based campaigning. I think this is being looked at differently after the Lok Sabha [election].

Is it true that [Deputy Chief Minister] Devendra Fadnavis is not campaigning in Marathwada?

I don’t know who plans his rallies. We have a war room which decides where the rally will be held. Devendra ji follows the same procedure. He addressed a rally in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and now he will campaign in Nanded. I really have no time to check where he is addressing rallies.

Is falling prices of soya bean becoming a political issue in this election?

It is important to know that certain things depend on the international market. There could be a way out of this where farmers are given certain subsidies if rates fall below the MSP [minimum support price]. It will change the picture.

Do you think that the rebellion in Beed district would harm your chances?

Not only Beed, but across the State. And not only within us, but even the MVA [Maha Vikas Aghadi, the opposition bloc] is facing the same. I don’t belong to Beed alone now. I am an MLC and belong to the entire State. Rebellion is because people are eager to contest. But we have managed to curb most of it.

Do you eye a bigger role in State politics?

I can’t say this now. My seniors will decide my role after the election. Even in the past five years, I never expressed any discontent in my speeches or interviews. It was all a media creation. When people asked me why I was not getting the position, I told them it was a party decision and we have a culture to accept party decisions. We never expressed unhappiness.

Various State Waqf Boards together control 8.7 lakh properties spanning 9.4 lakh acres across the country. This number is striking and has led to a lot of speculation about how the Waqf boards came to own such huge parcels of land.

It is important to clarify that the Central Waqf Council or the State Waqf Boards do not own even an inch of property. Waqf Boards merely oversee auqaf (plural of waqf) donated at some point of time in the past. Large chunks of lands were given as “inams” (land grants) by royal personages (of all faiths) over the centuries to mosques, dargahs, cemeteries, idgahs, and other centres muof religious activities, and this is what constitutes a sizeable proportion of the Waqf properties.

One Waqf Act amendment was that the properties managed by the Waqf Boards should be digitalised, and the WAMSI (Waqf Management System of India) portal was launched. The figure of 8.7 lakh properties was updated through this process. The [Waqf] number may seem striking, but if one were to add up the lands owned by, or associated with the religious activities of, other communities, the figure will be proportionate to that community’s share in the country’s population.

For instance, the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments boards in just Telangana, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka together manage around 11 lakh acres of land. Thus, when we compare this data and see it alongside the properties managed by the various Waqf Boards, we should not be surprised. There are more than 6.5 lakh villages in the country, and Muslims are present in at least 80-85 per cent of them. This means that each settlement will have, at the least, a mosque, a cemetery, an idgah and several dargahs. (The idgah itself will at least be an acre in size).

In bigger centres, such as taluk headquarters, district headquarters, towns, and metropolitan cities, this number will obviously be much higher and may even run into hundreds of acres. One should not be surprised by this figure of 9.4 lakh acres; the real figure will be much more.

Much of this land is dedicated to religious activities, but has it been used for the socio-economic uplift of the Muslim community?

In some parts of the country, especially in south India, administrators of shrines and mosques have genuinely done welfare for the community by astutely managing Waqf lands. They have used the land and its resources to establish educational institutions, vocational and professional institutions, and activities relating to health and education.

In most of the places, small entities have been created to support the activities and maintenance of the Waqf institutions. Significant work may not have been taken place in many places due to the lack of financial means.
BJP members ask why this land has not generated any revenue. What they fail to understand is that investments are necessary to transform them into revenue-generating spaces, for which one requires generous financial assistance. Has the Union government or BJP-run State governments done anything in this regard in the last 10 years?

Large parcels of Waqf lands were located in rural areas and could not be converted into revenue generating properties. Many of these have been incorporated into urban areas because of rapid urbanisation. These land parcels can now be developed as they have tremendous commercial potential but the government must step in as huge sums of investment are required. It is extremely difficult for any government (both at the Centre and in the States) to cater to the educational and health requirements of its total populace, which is why the state itself encourages private entities in these sectors. Religious institutions may be utilised to take care of the educational and health requirements to fill the gap to the extent possible.

One of the intentions of the Waqf Bill is to provide greater transparency to prevent mismanagement of Waqf properties. Should you not welcome it as investment can follow only if mismanagement is curtailed?

There is no clarity about the government’s intentions. The government states that it wants to bring about greater transparency by digitalising information regarding properties managed by various Waqf Boards, but this has already been done.

The Union Ministry of Minority Affairs even gave a statement to the effect that all information regarding Waqf property has been digitalised. All this data has been gazetted by state governments after surveys by Survey Commissioners of Waqf appointed by respective state governments. It does not make sense after this to launch another portal to do the same task and waste government resources. Does the Union government not trust state governments, including many governed by the BJP, to provide reliable data?

There have been allegations of corruption in the management of Waqf properties and of encroachment by “mutawallis” (managers of Waqf properties), but what has the BJP government done to get these encroachments cleared? Has anyone been held culpable and convicted under these accusations or has an FIR been filed? It is also shocking that the new Bill reduces the punishment for an encroacher from two years to one year. The Central Waqf Council has been in limbo for the past three years. State governments where the BJP is in power have not framed rules after the 2013 Act. When one considers these aspects, I seriously doubt the government’s intentions.

Certain provisions of the Bill have become controversial. For instance, the compulsory appointment of two women in each Waqf Board; the Survey Commissioner’s replacement by the Deputy Commissioner; the appointment of non-Muslims to the Central Waqf Council and the Waqf Boards; the Waqf Tribunal’s decision can be appealed in the High Court; and the inclusion of sectarian minorities as members of the Waqf Boards. Why do you disagree with these provisions?

The strangest among all these provisions pertains to the inclusion of women in Waqf Boards. The Minister of Minority Affairs [Kiren Rijiju] displayed his ignorance when he mentioned this in the Lok Sabha, pitching it as a measure to empower women. The 2013 Act already provides for this, and all Waqf Boards in the country have two women members each. Clearly, the Minister has not read the 2013 Act.

The Bill wants to take away the powers of the Survey Commissioner and give it to the Deputy Commissioner [DC] but the Survey Commissioner is a senior IAS or State services officer specialising in survey methods. It is doubtful that DCs, who are general administrators and burdened with managing some 60-80 departments, can find the time or have the expertise to conduct detailed land surveys.

Disputes over Waqf properties are mainly between the Waqf Boards and the State governments. In such a scenario, it does not make sense for a DC to be a party in a case when he or she is a representative of the State government. Even the Supreme Court has given a judgment that a DC cannot decide on titles of land suits.

In a secular country, an administrator of any faith could ideally be appointed in any department. I do not have a problem with that personally, but laws governing the functions of Hindu endowment boards, temple trusts, etc., in States across the country explicitly mention that only a Hindu can be a member of the governing board or trust. When that is the case, why is a different yardstick being used for the functioning of Waqf Boards?

Moreover, Waqf or Hindu endowment boards deal with the religious activities of a particular faith. How will a person from a different faith understand the customs, traditions, and religious practices of a different faith? The appointment of non-Muslims will not improve the functioning of Waqf Boards in any way. It is only a way of saying that the government does not trust the Muslim community.

The tribunal appointed to arbiter disputes on the status of Waqf properties consists of three persons: a district-level judge, a State government official, and a domain expert on Islamic law. Tribunal members are not appointed by the Waqf Boards but by the State governments. There are several tribunals adjudicating on a variety of issues all over the country and their decisions are deemed to be final on facts. Globally, only two main sects are recognised within Islam: Sunni and Shia. Sectarian minorities such as Aghakhanis and Bohras are sub-sects of Shias. It does not make sense to have compulsory representatives from these two sub-sects when a Shia member (or members) is already represented. This just seems like a ploy to divide the Muslim community.

Another contentious provision is that only a person who has been practicing Islam for at least five years may declare a waqf. What is your opinion on this?

This is against the secular and liberal traditions of our country. Any citizen of the country should be allowed to donate to any person and, especially, to support any religious activity or institutions of any faith. We have innumerable examples from history when adherents of one faith have donated generously to religious institutions of other faiths.

Kings and queens, nawabs, and sultans, have given grants to people of all faiths in their kingdoms and empires. This provision that one should be a practicing Muslim is meaningless. I cannot fathom as to who will be the authority to certify the religious credentials of an individual. Why should a person be restricted to donate only to religious institutions of his or her faith?

Throughout history and even to this day, members of a faith have generously patronised religious centres of other faiths because of their syncretic beliefs and this is the beauty of India. Basically, the BJP wants to “desecularise” the country.

What is Union government’s intention with the proposed Bill?

The BJP’s agenda is clear: they want to polarise the electorate. They have an established method to do this. It starts with an issue getting immense traction on social media followed by massive fake news. Then, this propaganda is picked up by BJP politicians, who will provide specious arguments to give legitimacy to false claims, which is eventually followed by legislative measures.

The BJP wants to be seen as a party that is showing Muslims their place and making them second-class citizens. Through this, their aim is to create a social constituency which will vote for them in perpetuity.

Do you think that if this Bill is passed in Parliament, claims made by Hindu right-wing groups on historical Islamic sites will increase?

If this Bill becomes law, it has the potential to ignite religious divisions in every village of the country. Anybody can go to the DC and create doubts about the provenance of historical monuments and land titles leading to major communal contentions. All this will lead to litigation on communal linest, which in turn will be utilised to polarise [people]. That is why this Bill is dangerous for the democratic secular fabric of the country.

If the BJP wanted the Bill to be passed, it could have prevailed on its allies and done this instantly. Why did it send the Bill to the JPC?

This Bill was ill-conceived, poorly drafted, bereft of legal logic and hastily tabled in Parliament. No stakeholders were consulted in its preparation and there was no need for it at all, as there have been no serious complaints or judicial prodding about the functioning of the Waqf Act 1995 and its amendments of 2013.

The Bill was brought in to rake up political controversy. All opposition parties opposed its introduction; even some BJP allies such as the Telugu Desam Party suggested that it should be sent to the JPC. Sensing that the Bill would not get Parliament’s approval, they forwarded it to the JPC for further consultation.

Now that the Bill is being discussed by the JPC, are stakeholders being consulted and their views sought?

As a member of the JPC, I cannot discuss its proceedings, but I can say that there is an attempt to not just consult stakeholders but to also enlist support from many non-stakeholders who have a clear leaning towards BJP’s right-wing ideology. (Some of the invitees are part of institutions that are offshoots of the BJP/ Sangh Parivar.)

The Bill was sent to the JPC for wider consultation, and deeper study and understanding of the issue so that only stakeholders such as members of the State Waqf Boards, Muslim theologians, academics, and legal experts should be invited for the discussions. Inviting any random person to mobilise support for the Bill will only worsen the situation. If the government’s intention is to really help the Muslim community as it has stated, only stakeholders must be consulted.

Several farmers all over the country have complained about notices from district Waqf Boards claiming their agricultural lands. What do you have to say about this?

I cannot comment as I am not well versed with the facts of different cases but broadly, what is happening shows the disjuncture between laws related to land. Inam Abolition, Land Ceiling and Land Reform Acts were passed in many States. As part of this, land has been redistributed to the tiller but such laws were challenged legally and the Supreme Court delivered a judgment that a Waqf land cannot be alienated [part of the judgment reads: “Once a Waqf, always a Waqf”].

This has led to situations where the Waqf Boards feel that they have the right to claim such lands that were taken away. In such cases State governments should step in and come up with a solution so that the aggrieved farmers and the waqf do not suffer any loss and are compensated appropriately.

There are several misconceptions about Waqf properties. A common misunderstanding is that any property can be claimed by a Waqf Board. What do you have to say about this?

This would have been humorous but for the fact that so many people believe it. Nobody in this country can claim any property as their own unless they have documents establishing ownership or it has historically been under their use. There is no provision in the Waqf Act that allows for this.

Some people believe the myth that if the Quran is recited at a particular spot, it becomes a Waqf property. That is complete rubbish and has been created by the BJP to buttress their propaganda to discredit the auqaf. BJP members are acting as rabble rousers and using blatantly spurious means to emotionally provoke people. This is part of the BJP’s effort at polarising communities and to defame Muslims.