// any considered opinions on this? Frontline magazine has an extensive
coverage of the Waqf takeover of the Taj. we are of course searching for
wider interpretations of this issue, before our beloved cons privatize
it and take their pseudo-principled stands to court //
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CONTROVERSY
A claim to the Taj
V. VENKATESAN
in Lucknow and New Delhi
The Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Wakf Board lays a claim to the Taj Mahal
on the basis that the monument and affiliated structures within the
complex are still used for religious purposes.
cont'd...
http://flonnet.com/fl2216/stories/20050812004611500.htm
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The order and the law
V. VENKATESAN
IN its hurry to own the Taj Mahal, the U.P. Sunni Central Wakf Board
appears to have missed a crucial provision in the Government of India's
Wakf Act, 1995. Section 36(8) of the Act on `Registration of Wakfs'
reads: "In the case of wakfs created before the commencement of this
Act, every application for registration shall be made within three
months from such commencement, and in the case of wakfs created after
such commencement, within three months from the date of the creation of
the wakf. Provided that where there is no board at the time of creation
of a wakf, such application will be made within three months from the
date of establishment of the Board."
cont'd...
http://flonnet.com/fl2216/stories/20050812004011600.htm
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The imperial waqf
Jehangir receives Prince Khurram on his return from the Mewar campaign',
from Lahori's Padshahnama. Reprinted from King of the World: The
Padshahnama, an Imperial Mughal Manuscript from the Royal Library,
Windsor Castle by Milo Cleveland and Ebba Koch, 1997. Prince Khurram
assumed the name Shahjahan when he ascended the throne.
The following is a literal translation of the passage in Abdul Hamid
Lahori's Padshahnama (written, c.1650), the official history of the
first two decades of Shahjahan's reign (1628-58). After a description of
the Taj Mahal, the official history proceeds:
"Thirty villages within the limits of the sub-district (pargana) of the
Capital City (haveli-i daru'l khilafa) of Akbarabad (Agra) and Nagar
Chand, whose total standard revenues (jama) amount to forty lakh dams,
that is, one lakh rupees, if the full standard were to be realised
(`twelve-monthly'), the particulars [of villages and their names] being
as follows... . [details here omitted] - and, owing to the abundance of
attention given, with the aid of seasons (lit. `year and month') even
more than this sum is obtained - together with the revenues from the
shops of the bazaars and the well-used inns aforesaid [in Tajganj],
which amount to two lakhs of rupees, have been placed in waqf for this
illumined tomb, so that should there occur any need for repairs, the
requisite amount be drawn out of these endowed resources (mauqufat) and
spent on the repair of these buildings; while the balance is to be spent
on the established disbursements that have been set aside for the salary
of persons placed on annual and monthly pay, and the subsistence (lit.
`broth and bread') of the [tomb-] keepers, servants, pious devotees and
servants of this grand edifice and other needy and destitute persons.
Whatever remains in excess, let the sovereign of the time (khalifa-i
waqt), with whom the custody (tauilyat, the position of mutawalli) of
this auspicious building would vest, use in whatever manner he deems fit."
Abdu'l Hamid Lahori, Padshahnama, ed. Kabir Al-Din et al., Bib. Ind.,
Calcutta, 1866-72, Vol. II, pages 330-31.
Commentary:
A summary of this passage will also be found in Salih Kanbu Lahori,
`Amal-i Salih, ed. G. Yazdani, Bib. Ind., Calcutta, 1912-46, Vol.II,
p.385: No substantive difference.
The Mughal pargana of Agra was much larger than the British or present
pargana of Agra. Nagar Chand is presumably the same as Chandwar, a
pargana, adjacent to the Mughal pargana of Agra, on the left side of the
Yamuna. Salih omits its name and mentions only pargana Agra, as the one
in which the waqf villages were located.
A very significant point is that it is not the Taj but 30 villages and
Tajganj that were placed in waqf. The Taj Mahal itself was not made into
a waqf.
As for the custodian, the designation of Khalifa was conventionally used
for the Mughal Emperor in the days of the Mughal Empire, usually in
phrases like khalifa-i zaman, khalifa-i waqt (as here used), etc. The
Emperor's favoured seat was called daru'l khilafa, `seat of the
caliphate' (the designation used in Lahori's passage above for Agra). It
has no reference to the theological jurists' khalifa, the supposed
political head of the entire Islamic community, a position that
pan-Islamicists claimed for the Ottoman Sultan in late 19th century.
It seems to have been the normal practice in the Mughal government to
attach villages to particular imperial tombs in waqf; and government
officials were appointed to collect the revenues of the villages and
bazaars, etc., so endowed. Thus we read in a report of 1701, from
Aurangzeb's late years, that one Khwaja Musa who was the Superintendent
of the Market Revenues (darogha-i sa'ir) of Mumtazabad (Taj Ganj), was
now in addition appointed as collector of revenues (amin) of the
villages attached to Akbar's tomb, obtaining a slight increase in his
official rank or mansab (by which officials drew their pay) in
recompense for this enlarged jurisdiction (Akhbarat-i Darbar-i Mu`alla,
Royal Asiatic Society, London, 45/118). Quite obviously, there was no
special `management' of the waqfs of villages and shops established for
the tombs, separate from the apparatus of Mughal administration.
(Translation and commentary by Professor Irfan Habib.)
http://flonnet.com/fl2216/stories/20050812004711800.htm
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`The Taj is not wakf property'
Interview with Irfan Habib.
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Should the case for the public ownership of India's historical and
cultural legacy be pegged on supporting historical evidence? In the case
of the Taj Mahal such evidence is fortunately present in the historical
record. But in the case of other monuments on which ownership claims
could be made in the future, such supporting evidence may not be
available. Nevertheless, the argument for our historical heritage to be
safeguarded by the state on behalf of the people remains strong. What
are your views on this?
When the government drew up the Wakf Act, it never thought of ancient
monuments, and as I said, new legislation is required to exclude
protected monuments from the Wakf Act's purview. There are many
monuments in Agra that are still under Fuhrer's category 1B. The
argument that because there are religious buildings that come under the
Wakf Board in the Taj complex the Taj too is wakf property is not
acceptable. Just because there are mosques inside the Red Fort, Delhi,
and the Agra Fort, does that make these monuments wakf property too? In
any case, Central legislation should carefully clarify the matter, and
keep our historical buildings under proper national management.
cont'd...
http://flonnet.com/fl2216/stories/20050812004411900.htm
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Distorting history
PARVATHI MENON
THE arguments presented in the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Wakf
Board's July 13 order claiming possession of the Taj Mahal are flimsy
not the least because they distort the historical record but because
they are a loosely worded, rambling and repetitive chain of claims.
The central argument appears to be that the Taj's ownership cannot be
viewed in isolation from the ownership of the subsidiary monuments in
the complex that are used for religious purposes even today. If these
are wakf properties, so indeed must be the Taj, the argument goes.
The Wakf Board in its order is unable to establish a documented legal
claim on the monument. Although it refers to Lahori's Padshahnama, the
official history of the first 20 years of Shahjahan's reign that has the
earliest references to endowments for the upkeep of the Taj, it does not
directly quote from the Persian text or from a translation. It makes a
serious error in its claim that "Shahanshah Shahjahan dedicated the
income of 30 villages of Pargana Haveli and Nagar Chand of Akbarabad for
the construction of Roza Taj Mahal and management of Mosque and annual
urs of Mumtaz Mahal and nominated himself sole Mutawalli of the said
wakf" (emphasis added). Nowhere in the Padshahnama does Lahori say that
the endowment of 30 villages was used for the construction of the Taj.
Indeed, the Taj was completed when Lahori wrote his work. Work on the
monument commenced around 1631, three years after the accession of
Shahjahan and following the death of his wife Mumtaz Mahal. It was
completed in 1648, and Lahori's work was written around 1650.
Lahori's Padshahnama then is a "basic historical document" on the Taj,
as Irfan Habib, a leading historian on Mughal India, says in his
interview to Frontline. W.E. Begley, the principal author of the
well-known work Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb, told Frontline: "There is
no mention of an endowment for the Taj in any other contemporary source
other than Lahori. The express purpose of the endowment of the revenue
of 30 villages, shops and caravanserais around the tomb, according to
Lahori, was the maintenance of the Taj." The Taj was maintained by a
huge staff, and these persons had to be paid and fed. "The excess
revenues were never assigned to anyone, but were vested, according to
Lahori, in trusteeship with the `sovereign of the time'." Lahori, it
would appear, leaves no room for any ambiguity here. "It was
unquestionably a government building," Begley argues. "Besides, in that
period wakf only meant an endowment. It is only now that it means a
religious endowment. There was certainly no Wakf Board in Shahjahan's time."
From the hands of the Mughal state, the Taj passed into the possession
of the British government. Evidence of this is available in a major
catalogue of the monuments of the region prepared by A. Fuhrer in 1891.
The historical record, it would appear, is thus clear: from the custody
of the "sovereign of the time" in the Mughal period, the Taj Mahal
became the property of the colonial state, and of the Indian republic
after Independence. Apart from the weak historical foundation upon which
the order of the Wakf Board rests, its very legality may be challenged
under Section 38(8) of the Wakf Act, 1995. It is unfortunate that the
Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has shown little evidence of having
been alive to any of these issues in its defence of this precious
national legacy.
http://flonnet.com/fl2216/stories/20050812004312000.htm
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oh! hell!