THE WAQF (AMENDMENT) ACT, 2025 (‘the Act’) is currently under a rigorous constitutional scrutiny before a Division Bench led by Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna in the Supreme Court. One question we have not explored enough is what this Act means for Muslim women of this country.
What I aim to explore is the legislation’s envisioning of women’s representation through mandatory inclusion as members on both the Central Waqf Council and each State Waqf Board, as well as through the provision related to Muslim women’s inheritance before Waqf can be made. But the most important question that emerges is whether these provisions and new conditions have the practicability to genuinely translate into empowerment.
The politics of visibility
Historically, the politics revolving around Muslim women in India has been marked by complicated dynamics, and deep contestations have ensured that it is a conversation with many fissures. Be it marriage, divorce (triple talaq), maintenance, or how Muslim women dress, we have routinely witnessed a systematic politicisation of their issues even as Muslim women have been peripheralised. The women are put upfront as part of legal reform discourse, but not as active stakeholders. They are always framed as subjects of state-led empowerment, yet their religious identity has often been instrumentalised to infringe their right to autonomy while simultaneously contributing to a broader dispossession of the Muslim community. Much of this dispossession is exhibited in the language of inclusiveness and empowerment.
