Hindustan Times: New Delhi: Monday, November 17, 2014.
As if finding
a piece of land to live on wasn't difficult enough, the search for an eternal
resting place, those precious 'two-yards', is making many Muslims lose their
sleep. With an increase in the Muslim population and the absence of urban
planning in many cities, the hunt for graves is becoming a serious problem and
has led to such trends as the advance booking of graves and the reuse of old
family graves.
In 1971,
Muslims in Delhi formed just 6.5% of the population. Now they form 11.7% of the
city's 1.78 crore population. 18.56% of Mumbai's population of 1.26 crore are
Muslims, while Lucknow has 29 lakh Muslims. Most Muslims in these cities are
ghettoised, often living in close proximity with each other in a small
geographic area. These areas lack basic resources; so having a graveyard near
your locality can then even be considered a luxury.
But every
luxury comes at a price. These days, the cost of your final resting place can
range between a few thousands and more than a lakh. Many sniff a business
opportunity in the space crunch that afflicts graveyards across the country.
Pervez Khan,
who came to Delhi from Patna five years ago, earns about Rs. 5,000 a month
tailoring clothes on the sewing machine that he operates at the side of a road
in Jamia Nagar. When Khan's sons, Shabbir (9) and Sohail (8), were accidentally
electrocuted to death late last year, he went to the Jamia Nagar graveyard to
bury them. He was asked to pay a total of Rs. 10,000 for the burial. After much
negotiation, the graveyard caretaker agreed to Rs. 6,500. "They don't
think about the situation of the person. For them, it is someone else's
problem. They demand whatever they feel like," says Khan who had to borrow
the money from his landlord.
Reclaiming
graveyards
Earlier this
year, a campaign led by Ameeque Jamei, a local CPI activist, urged locals to
speak out against the irregularities in the running of the only available
graveyard in the locality. Parvez Khan's plight was shared widely on social
media.
The graveyard
serves a population of around 5 lakh people and witnesses about 150 burials a
month. According to a survey conducted by Dr Firdous Azmat, assistant professor
at Jamia Millia Islamia university, the lack of sufficient burial places is one
of the main problems faced by Jamia Nagar's migrant population.
"The two
portions of land, which serve as the graveyard, is engulfed in a dispute
between the family of the caretaker and the Wakf board," says Jamei, who
adds that a committee formed by the Board was supposed to take over the land.
"But a nexus between local politicians and the caretaker, who claims it is
his ancestral land, is preventing the proper functioning of the
graveyard."
Caught in
this trap are poor people like Parvez Khan.
An RTI filed
with the Delhi Wakf Board revealed that, according to the state Wakf 's 1970
gazette, there were 488 Muslim graveyards in the city. Khurshid Farooqui, a
section officer at the Board, put the number of existing graveyards in the city
at around 75.
Two
graveyards of the listed four in Jamia Nagar area survive; Nizamuddin has 25
listed graveyards, of which about four survive; Mehrauli has 41 against its
name, but in reality only a few remain. The same RTI also revealed that Rs.
13.9 lakh was spent on the maintenance of the surviving graveyards between 2006
and 2013.
"Many of
these listed graveyards are not even directly overseen by the Wakf board, but
are done by local committees," says Farooqui who adds that in several
areas where the local Muslim population has dwindled, the local land mafia has
been encroaching freely upon the graveyards as the Board dare not raise its
voice.
Real
estate of graves
Delhi is not
alone. Other major cities are facing a similar crisis. Mumbai has 71 Muslim graveyards.
Fourteen of these are managed by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC)
with the remaining 57 being entrusted to Muslim organisations. Until 1984, you
could pre-book a grave at Badakabristan, the largest Muslim graveyard in the
city with 7,000 graves. That system was abolished and the graveyard now reuses
land after a year. Incidentally, Christian burial which requires a coffin,
Muslim burial only requires the body to be swathed in cloth with a layer of
wood or stone then being placed over it.
The Wakf
Board in Lucknow is divided into individual Shia and Sunni boards, which look
after the graveyards of their own community. A few years ago, Asad Jafar from
Lucknow was forced to take his father's body to the family's ancestral village
for burial as he would have otherwise had to pay ` 20,000 for a grave.
"The
sale of graves is like a property deal nowadays. It even involves brokers, who
in turn, have deals with the mutawallis (caretakers)," says Jafar.
Of the 47
Shia graveyards registered here with the Shia Central Board of Waqfs (SCBW), 31
have disappeared and have been replaced by shops and buildings. As a result,
there has been a surge in demand for Hayati Kabr or pre-booked graves. Prices
range between Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 1.5 lakh.
"The way
these graves are bought and sold, it seems like they are a door that opens
directly into heaven," says Syed Waseem Rizvi, former chairman of the Shia
Wakf Board. "People who prefer a place near their dear ones after death
buy such Hayati Kabr. Poor people who can't afford them are forced to the
outskirts." Rizvi claims the problems are not so severe in the city's
Sunni graveyards, but there too, prices range around Rs. 25,000 per grave.
Patna is no
different. The Sheikhpura graveyard is now part of a golf club and the
Sultanganj graveyard is part of a police station. A petition managed to wrest a
graveyard back from the proposed site for AIIMS in the city. "Encroachment
is a major issue in the city. The government should be held responsible for the
widespread encroachment that has been happening even after the launch of the
central scheme to protect every graveyard by fencing it," says social
activist Adil Hasan Azad.
Encroachment
and graveyard mismanagement has also led to communal violence in many places.
In July this year, Muslims and Sikhs clashed in UP's Saharanpur when a
structure was being constructed on a vacant plot that the Muslim community
claimed was a graveyard. In Goregaon, Mumbai, two sects (Barelvi and Tablighi)
of the Muslim community clashed over the treatment of a graveyard. In 2012,
Jats and Muslims in Mathura (UP) clashed after a protest against the alleged
encroachment of a graveyard. In 2011, the Meo Muslims and the Gujjar Hindus of
Gopalgarh in Bharatpur (Rajasthan) rioted when the latter laid claim to land
near a Muslim graveyard. In 2006, Maharashtra's Bhiwandi witnessed local
Muslims clash with police over the construction of a police station on land
adjacent to a graveyard.
Fighting
corruption
The fight to
get land allotted for a graveyard is almost as intense as these riots. And it
isn't just cities that suffer. In Chakarnagar, a small village near Etawah,
people bury the dead in their homes or even on the road as there is no
graveyard. In 2010, the Shia community in Mumbai got seven burial grounds after
fighting for two decades. It took eight years for Muslims in Delhi's Dwarka, to
get a graveyard. The situation isn't entirely hopeless. Millennium Park, one of
the biggest gardens in the capital that usurped around 14 acres of graveyard
land will return it to the Wakf board so that a new burial ground can come up
in the area.
Celebrations
might be premature, however. While the land is being given back to the Board,
its fate is still in doubt. At the crux of the issue of the encroachment of
graveyards is the widespread corruption in Wakf boards across the country.
Wakf, an Arabic word, is used typically for donations of a religious or
charitable nature.
According to
the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Wakf under K Rahman Khan it was estimated
that the total land under the Wakf in India is over four lakh acres. According
to findings submitted in its ninth report in 2008, the JPC mentioned that about
80% of Wakf properties have been encroached upon. Clearly, Wakf property worth
thousands of crores has been illegally handed to the land mafia. Several
committees, including the Sachar Committee and the JPC, had suggested stringent
actions to curb encroachment and misuse. The Union Ministry of Minorities
Affairs had even directed state Wakf boards to undertake an assets survey and
computerise records. However, responses to RTIs filed suggest that there has
been no progress. Perhaps the Wakf (Amendment) Act, 2013, will bring some order
to Wakf boards, helping to mitigate encroachment problems and make Wakf
properties commercially viable.
Bahadur Shah
Zafar, the last Mughal, who was banished to Rangoon by the British after the
events of 1857, lamented that he couldn't be buried in his own country: Kitnaa
hai badnaseeb Zafar dafn key liye/Do gaz zameen bhi na mili kuu-e-yaar mein
(How unfortunate is Zafar that he can't get two yards for his burial in the
land of the beloved).
It would seem
that, though the world has changed, the fight for do gaz zameen continues.
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