The space crunch in the city has hit the city’s Muslims harder than most, it would appear. For over five decades, they have been fighting for land to bury their dead.
Although three plots have been reserved for the community in Vikhroli and Kanjurmarg, measuring 657 sq. m., 853 sq. m. and 275 sq. m. respectively, the land has not been allotted to them yet, and letter after letter has been sent to the authorities, to no avail.
“The government is not giving any more land to Muslims,” said Prof. Farrukh Waris, former principal of Burhani College. “It is a peculiar situation. People are buying land for their burial while they are alive.”
Lost in letters
The battle has been a long and complicated one.
In the 1970s, the community wrote to the then Chief Minister, Collector, District Mumbai (Suburban), and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) asking for a burial ground in ‘S’ ward.
In March 1988, the BMC’s Public Health Department addressed a letter to the secretary of the Muslim Jamaat stating that a plot of land under the development plan is reserved for a cemetery. It also said that if the ownership turns out to be private, “it will be acquired as per the rules”.
In July the same year, the vice-chairman of the Muslim Qabrastan Committee wrote to the chairman of Bombay Housing and Area Development Board (BHADB) saying anti-social elements of political parties have erected a flag and installed an idol in the middle of the Vikhroli plot.
The BHADB forwarded the letter to the then Housing Minister with a comment that one of the plots is reserved as a burial ground for Muslims and has been transferred to the municipal authorities; there was no other land reserved for a cemetery.
In November 1989, Gurudas Kamat, the then MP, wrote to the general secretary of Congress’s minority cell regarding the issue of allotment of a plot for a cemetery. The letter said though the plot has been sanctioned by the Minister for Housing and Slum Improvement, Maharashtra, the matter is held up for “technical reasons”.
The next year in January, the private secretary to the Minister of Slum Improvement, Repair and Reconstruction and Special Assistance requested further action in respect of allotting of the burial ground.
Things got a little more complex here on. In July, the Collector, Bombay Suburban District, wrote to the principal secretary, Revenue and Forest Department, saying the plot reserved for the burial ground at Vikhroli was claimed by the Salt Department.
Eight years on, in February 1998, the Muslim Jamaat in Tagore Nagar, Vikhroli, wrote to the then deputy chief minister Gopinath Munde requesting him to allot a plot for a qabrastan (burial ground).
More letters and meetings followed. On February 7, 2000, the then minister for Housing, Slum Development and House Repair and Redevelopment wrote to the BMC to take immediate action towards allotting a plot of land for the qabrastan and file a report. The then mayor, District Collector, Mumbai Suburban, and BMC commissioner held a meting on the issue.
In January 2006, another letter went out, this time from the trustees of the Muslim Qabrastan Trust, Ghatkopar, to the Ekta Committee, to arrange for a separate and independent qabrastan due to insufficient place for burial. There was no reply to this.
Bada Qabrastan at Marine Lines in South Mumbai.
Court battle
The inevitable then happened, and the matter reached court. In 2014, local residents Sayed Ahmed and Hisamuddin Jahangir filed a public interest litigation (PIL) before the Bombay High Court and asked for a direction to the authorities for land for a Muslim burial ground. The BMC contested this by saying the ownership of land was a subject matter of a civil suit.
On November 23, 2006, a Division Bench of the HC said, “It is agreed between the parties that Survey No. 853 has been identified as the burial ground which will be utilised by all sections of the Muslim community. The then Principal Secretary (Revenue) and Collector, Mumbai Suburban District, state that a decision has been taken to give this land for this purpose and the necessary formalities for handing over the plot in question will be worked out in due course.”
However, the State government soon moved an application before the HC stating the plot is salt pan land and belongs to the Union of India.
The government also said a meeting was held with the then principal secretary, Urban Development Department, and relevant officers to assess the feasibility of transferring the land to BMC, and it was decided to start the process for handing it over.
In February 2009, another Division Bench of the HC dismissed the State’s application. After a few months, the Minority Development Section wrote to a Member of Parliament supplying a copy of the resolution dated June 11, 2009 to allot the land to the community for the purpose of burial.
After 10 years, on November 29, 2019, the BMC told the HC that there is a land allotted for the burial of Muslims in Kanjurmarg, and that they would file an affidavit on the steps taken to acquire it in four weeks.
In an affidavit before a Division Bench of Justices S.C. Dharmadhikari and R.I. Chagla, the BMC said, “A proposal for exchange or interchangeability of reservations/designations on the Development Plan has been forwarded to the State Government by the Chief Engineer (Development Proposal) of the Brihanmumbai Mahanagar Palika on September 11, 2019.”
The additional government pleader sought time to take instructions on what steps needed to be taken to deal with the proposal. The next hearing is on January 3, 2020.
Acute shortage
Meanwhile, the residents continue to wait it out through the maze of letters, the multiple meetings and the tussle in court.
“It has now been 13 years since the HC passed an order directing the authorities to hand over a land to Muslims to be used as their burial ground. Nothing has happened,” said Shakeel Ahmed, one of the petitioners. “We only want land for burial”.
The nearest burial ground, for the Vikhroli residents, measuring slightly over half-an-acre, is at Ghatkopar. “We have to re-dig the land, sometimes within six months. The other one is in Bhandup, which is 11 km away and is private land,” said Mr. Ahmed.
Said Shahera Rizvi, a Vikhroli resident, “We are forced to re-use the same space in the burial ground, sometimes within three months. At times, the bodies do not decompose and we have to exhume them. Exhumation of any kind hurts the sentiments of the family members of the dead. It creates a situation of showing disrespect to the dead.”
Prof. Waris pointed to the acute shortage of land. In the past, every eight years or so, families of the deceased would take permission from families of those whose deceased’s grave they needed to dig. “Now they don’t even take permission. In rural areas, most of the land is agricultural, and families don’t get land for a qabarstan .”
In particular, the Shias have trouble with this, said Irfan Engineer, Director of Centre for Study of Society and Secularism. “It is because their faith says they should not recycle their graves, but should erect tombs on them.”
The situation is such, he said, that for any Shia Muslim who dies in Mumbai, the family sometimes has to go to Bhiwandi or Mumbra. Recently, a body had to be brought from Panvel to Mumbai and because there is no land here, the family had to look at the distant suburbs. “When you cross a district, there are additional problems. You need a gamut of permissions, such as from the police and so on.”
Until the authorities move, the community’s wait will only get longer.
Sunil Raut, MLA from Vikhroli, however, sounded optimistic. “I have done everything possible, and 99% of the Vikhroli land is ready. Only an order from the commissioner is pending, and that will come in eight to 10 days. It will then be ready for use.”
