Why India Should Abolish
The Haj Subsidy
Nikhil Patwardhan
Why India Should Abolish The Haj Subsidy
On December 7th, 1999, in a scene which can only be described as
an obscene travesty of justice, the Rajya Sabha witnessed a furore
over the topic of "overcharging of plane fares to Haj
pilgrims" by some Opposition members in Parliament. The
discussion was initiated by Congress (I) member K. Rahman Khan. He
was immediately joined by his erstwhile partymen in a barrage of
outlandish conspiracy theories, wherein the BJP led government was
charged with "cheating the Muslims of India"! Not a
single person present in the Rajya Sabha that day, dared to utter
a whisper of protest against such an arrogant claim. Not one voice
had the courage to fling the truth in Mr. Khan's face.
And what is that truth? The truth is that, for decades, it is the
Indian taxpayer who has been cheated by a charade called the Haj
subsidy! Has no one the guts to question why in a supposedly
"secular" nation like India, it is only Muslims who are
enjoying the favor of Government paid trips to their place of
pilgrimage. Year after Year, a staggeringly obscene figure
encompassing Crores and Crores of Rupees is being spent on a
"Haj subsidy" that not only insults the very ideal of
secularism as enshrined in our Constitution, but also charges me
and you, the Indian taxpayer for this. What can one call this but
another form of Jizyah - the Islamic term for tax imposed on
non-Muslims?
A closer look at the politics and history behind the Haj subsidy
exposes the shocking story of corruption, religious bias and
outright injustice which underlies the basis of this condemnable
policy. Haj is the term for the annual Muslim pilgrimage to the
Islamic holy sites of Mecca and Medinah. The pilgrimage usually
takes place in March-April, following the trend set by the Prophet
Mohammed of Islam, hundreds of years ago. This unjustified policy
of having the Indian government pay a "Haj subsidy" to
compensate the Indian Muslims for their airfare and related travel
expenses for the Haj pilgrimage, was promoted initially by the
Congress Party led by Jawaharlal Nehru. The efforts of the
Congress bore fruit with the Haj Committee Act of 1959 which
outlined the legitimacy of this flawed policy and also predicated
the formation of an organizational body led by Muslims for the
purpose of fund distribution, called the Central Haj Committee.
Over the years, there has never been any such comparable subsidy
for ANY OTHER RELIGIOUS group in India.
The government spends what can only be termed peanuts in
comparison, on special arrangements for Sikhs and Hindus for the
Nankana Sahib and Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra, respectively. These
arrangements added up to less than 2 Crores last year! In
comparison let' s take a look at the costs which are covered
directly through the Indian taxpayer's money, in order to meet the
required amounts for the Haj subsidy sanctioned by the government
over the past six years .
Year No. of Pilgrims Rs. per Pilgrim Total Subsidy
1994 25,685 Rs.9,700 25 Crores
1995 30,503 Rs.10,200 33 Crores
1996 50,346 Rs.8,340 42 Crores
1997 53,826 Rs.20,400 111 Crores
1998 63,000 Rs.18,777 123 Crores
1999 66,000 Rs.19,640 129 Crores
Thus from 1994 to 1999 alone, the Haj subsidies for Indian
Muslims, have cost the Indian taxpayer a whopping 463 Crore
Rupees! The increase in the subsidized amount rings in at a mind
blowing 500 percent!!! The entire state of Orissa has received
less as rehabilitation money for the disastrous Cyclone which
killed over 30, 000 people this year! In the year 2000 the Indian
taxpayer will be paying for a Haj subsidy which will account for
the travel and lodging expenses of a staggering 91,000 Muslim
pilgrims!
Aside from the airfare and lodging subsidies, every year more
government funds are spent on creation of district-level
orientation camps, for the purpose of "familiarizing"
Muslim from the rural areas with the travel and accommodation
arrangements during the Haj. These camps will be held in the
second week of December in 1999. This year "extra" funds
are also being diverted to publish "Haj literature" in
various Indian languages, besides the English, Urdu and Hindi in
which it is already available. And guess who will be picking up
the tab for publication of these booklets...
To add insult to injury however is the saga of the overwhelming
evidence of rampant corruption on the part of the Central Haj
Committee (CHC), the body which was instituted to oversee the
subsidy distribution and organization of the Haj arrangements.
Last year, only after the Congress had been driven out of power,
was it was discovered that not only were our tax Rupees
responsible for such jaw dropping Haj subsidy amounts, they were
also lining the pockets of the utterly corrupt and immoral 19 Haj
Committee members with gold!.
When the BJP finally came to power last year, the Ministry of
External Affairs was immediately engaged in a fierce battle of
words and court petitions over this issue. The battle began in
June 1998 when Minister of State for External Affairs Vasundhara
Raje Scindia had given the clearance to reconstitute the
five-year-old CHC. For years, the Committee has been populated by
Congress(I) members and sympathizers. Some of these members
included confirmed Muslim fundamentalists such as chairman Salamat
Ullah who has for long been known to have shady connections with
Islamic terror groups such as Nadwatul Ulema and the extremist
fringe at Aligarh University . The threatened CHC members
immediately obtained a stay order from the Supreme Court to
prevent their removal. Their petition cited that they were
``mid-way'' in their preparation for Haj '99. It claimed that
there was ``every possibility of all sorts of confusion as the new
committee is yet to be constituted when the preparation for the
Haj is midway.''
At this stage the Ministry of External Affairs had no choice but
to send a background paper on the CHC to the Prime Minister's
Office (PMO). The paper stated that the ``stench of corruption''
pervades Indian Haj management and that the Haj Committee was
planning to blackmail the BJP Government, by using communally
divisive politics. The paper outlined incidents which provided
hard evidence of gross misconduct. The misconduct listed in the
MEA's background paper, sent on October 12 included:
Incidents of CHC members making regular trips to Saudi Arabia and
not submitting accounts for the same. The CHC members were taking
a daily allowance of $240 with additional Riyal allowance worth Rs
6,600 without any submitted accounts! At 19 members, this is by no
means a tiny amount!
Members of CHC took as many as 15 family members each for "Umhrah"
free of charge by illegally utilizing Air-India charter tickets.
Members of the CHC took the opportunity of The Haj conference to
wrongfully defame the Ministry of External Affairs. The Haj
Committee consistently harassed at least four serving officers
from Jeddah (including an Ambassador) and even made personal
attacks against three serving MEA officials based in Riyadh and
New Delhi, because these alert officers were questioning their
activities.
The Haj Committee submitted wrongful and misleading information to
the Intelligence Bureau about "possible problems of Haj
'99". This misleading information led the Information Bureau
to mistakenly warn the Government that more funds were required
for the "security" of CHC members.
Over and above these incidents of criminal diversion of public
funds, it was established from Haj Committee Chairman Mr.
Salamatullah's public announcements that the Haj subsidy for 1998
amounted to only Rs. 5,000 for each pilgrim, a purported cut of
over 20% from previous years. Reams of newspaper headlines were
devoted to Muslim groups expressing their outrage at the
"deliberate plan by the Sangh Parivar" to
"deprive" the Muslims of their rightful funds! But going
by the figures for the total subsidy claimed by the Haj Committee
from the Government of India for the Haj 1998 i.e., Rs. 123 Crore,
it became quite evident that the amount had in fact increased by
leaps and bounds to a whopping Rs. 18,777 per Muslim pilgrim. The
misleading import of the malicious announcement and the demand for
an even further increase in the subsidy were far too obvious to be
ignored.
These incidents made it obvious to the government that the present
CHC was not only misappropriating funds and devising means to
blame the government for the gap in actual distribution, but also
that the CHC members were trying to ``perpetuate'' and extend
their rule to far exceed the rules. Since they had outlived its
three-year term by two years, it was apparent that their only
motivation was to lengthen their reign of greed and corruption On
January 4th, 1999, the Supreme Court also vacated the stay order
on reconstitution, thus finally allowing the government to
reconstitute the CHC. Predictably enough, during the process of
selection for the new CHC members, the Congress raised a big stink
about the fact that no member of the Congress party found a place
in the Government's list of nominees. This in spite of the fact
that the Haj Committee had been stuffed with Congress members
since 1959! The impassioned protests by Congress clearly indicated
their panic and fury at having lost control over the funds which
their puppets had misappropriated for so long under the guise of
the Central Haj Committee.
The inequities bred by the Haj subsidies are not restricted to
monetary issues alone. Every year during Haj season, Non-Muslim
Indians have to cope with the inconvenience of booked flights and
increased travel times because of the special "Haj"
arrangements. Many times passengers with confirmed reservations
are bumped off to accommodate the surplus flux of Haj Pilgrims. In
addition, as Air-India does not have the requisite number of
planes to transport such a vast multitude at one time and cannot
divert aircraft from regular routes to ferry the Haj pilgrims, it
has been a common practice to lease aircraft at the expense of
Indian Government so that Muslims can go to Haj in ease and
luxury. In 1999 alone, six wide-bodied aircraft were acquired
through a wetlease from an American group called 'Mido Aviation'.
But even these extensive arrangements have proved to be
unsatisfactory according to Muslim groups! They have demanded that
Government sponsor a brand new fleet of planes for the sake of
Muslims going to Haj in the year 2000! The ostensible reason
quoted to support this unbearable burden on the exchequer is that
the aircraft offered by the lessees are old and not technically
airworthy and therefore new planes would be essential to guarantee
the safety of the Indian Muslims!
Besides these demands, it is not quite clear why the Central Haj
Committee has cited the airfare between Jeddah and various
destinations within India to be an exorbitant Rs. 30,000. This is
a grossly inflated amount by any reasonable standard, given the
fact that different airlines and tour operators provide the air
travel on this route for Rs. 22,000. It is especially suspicious
considering that the flights are chartered on a group basis, which
usually translates into substantially discounted fares. That these
chartered reservations are always allocated to Muslim travel
agencies is also a fact not above suspicion. One has to wonder
whether there is an underlying movement to overquote the airfare
so that additional increases in the subsidy amounts can be
justified, year after year!
Yet another undesirable effect of the Haj flights is the
inevitable possibility that anti national activities may be
overlooked under the special circumstances. Given the steady
increase in terror attacks by the Islamic Mafia and terrorist
groups, it is quite natural to expect special security measures.
Therefore the security arrangements which need to be made during
each Haj period, put an additional burden on the Government's
finances. Airport authorities have to be especially alert to the
rise in incidences involving narcotic, weapon and ammunition
smuggling during this period. Faced with these prospects, last
year it was only natural that canine detection units, meaning
teams of sniffer dogs were deployed by the Central government to
expedite and enhance security measures at airports. But instead of
complying with these measures for their own protection, the
Muslims professed "immense outrage and anger" at the
deployment of the sniffer dogs. According to them this was a
deliberate ploy by the Central government for embarking upon a new
strategy to denigrate the Muslims! Newspapers were flooded by
infuriated Muslims demanding that the Center apologize to the
Muslims for this "mischievous and heinous act" . The
primary motivation behind the overt animosity expressed by the
Muslims, was the superstition that dogs are regarded as
"unclean" by Islam and therefore their presence at the
airports had rendered the Muslim pilgrims "unclean" for
their "holy mission"! What was a completely innocuous
precautionary measure by the Indian Government had been
misconstrued and distorted into a "deliberate instance of
harassment of minorities", by the Indian Muslims.
This rationale is utterly amazing considering that the money that
Muslims receive as Haj subsidy itself should be considered
illegitimate according to Islamic strictures! Islamic scriptures
are clear on the account that the Haj pilgrimage is an Islamic
obligation only for those who can afford the costs involved in its
performance. The Haj subsidy itself is violative of the spirit of
Haj as it is dispensed by a "secular non-Islamic" form
of government. In fact Islamic guides explicitly stipulate that it
would be morally inaccurate for Muslims to demand subsidies for
Haj even under an Islamic governance.
The plethora of utterly unjust and inequitable grants for Indian
Muslims has emboldened some of their leaders to make some truly
outrageous demands. Jammu and Kashmir Government State Minister
for Haj and Auqaf, Mr. Peerzada Ghulam Ahmad Shah has demanded
that a grand "Haj House" be built in Srinagar. The
"Haj House" which would be used to house only Muslims
for their yearly pilgrimage, would cost the Indian taxpayer yet
another Rs 5 Crore! 20 kanals of precious land in Kashmir have
already been earmarked for the purpose. In addition the Kashmir
State Government has also demanded that Air India add more direct
flights to transport the Muslim pilgrims from Srinagar to Jeddah .
This would put an astronomical strain on the taxpayer's pocket.
The real icing on the cake however is the incredible demand for
construction of a totally separate Arrival/Departure lounge meant
ONLY for Muslim Haj Pilgrims at Srinagar Airport. Apart from being
outrageously expensive, this demand exposes the mindset of such
Muslim leaders who now want SEGREGATION during their Haj
journeys!!!
Look at the audacity and arrogance of this Muslim led State
Government which thinks that such outlandish demands are
justified, but cannot find a penny in its coffers to rehabilitate
or assist the thousands upon thousands of displaced Hindu Kashmiri
Pandits who are rotting in makeshift camps scattered all over the
world!
So let's look back at why Congress (I) member K. Rahman Khan's
remark on "overcharging of plane fares to Haj pilgrims"
on December 7th, 1999, in the Rajya Sabha, was nothing less than
an obscene travesty of justice. Mr. Khan went so far as to suggest
that the government constitute a Haj Air Corporation with a
capital of Rs. 500 Crore!!. No prizes for guessing where this
"capital" would come from. If you guessed the Indian
taxpayer's pocket, you would be dead right.
How much longer can we allow such insufferable injustice to exist
in a democratic nation which claims to be "secular". By
definition democracy means equal opportunity, equal aid and equal
rights for ALL Indians. Scan the entire Constitution of India and
nowhere will you find a reference which states that Muslims have
more rights on the nation's resources, than people of any other
faith in India. Yet year after year, day after day, this is
exactly what is happening with the implementation of the utterly
unjustifiable Haj subsidies.
For the sake of the unity and security of our country, it is
imperative that the government recognize the growing resentment
and frustration that such unequal policies create. As long as the
insufferable Haj Act exists, India cannot be called a secular
nation.
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