Let’s start a pork farm here…that should drive away the Waqf Board – someone declared to loud cheers as protesters disbursed for the day. They had been sitting on a relay hunger strike at the precincts of Our Lady of Velankanni church in Kerala’s Munambam.
The comment demonstrates how much of a communal wedge the Munambam land dispute has driven between Christians and Muslims in Kerala. And the matter isn’t even close to being resolved.
The Munambam issue is a land dispute between the Latin Christian fisherfolk living on a parcel of land near Kochi, and the Kerala Waqf Board.
The land, endowed to Farook College in 1950, was purchased by its original inhabitants through 280 title deeds between 1989 and 1993. In 2008, in response to complaints about illegal takeovers of Waqf land, the VS Achuthanandan government appointed a commission to investigate the matter. By 2009, the commission found that 600 acres of Waqf land, including Munambam, had been encroached upon.
Identifying Munambam as the “most affected” of all areas, it accused Farook College of approving the sale without the Waqf Board’s consent, and recommended that appropriate steps be taken for recovery. Then, in 2019, the board declared Munambam as waqf property under Sections 40 and 41 of the 1995 Waqf Act.
Now, the Pinarayi Vijayan government has constituted another judicial commission to untie the knots. The politicians and their proxies have since left the scene of the agitation, but this may just be the calm before another storm.
History of Munambam dispute
Munambam is located at the northern tip of the Vypin island, connected to mainland Kochi through a series of bridges. A piece of land originally measuring 404 acres and 76 cents was leased by Abdul Sathar Moosa Sait – a Kutchi Memon trader who had settled in Mattancherry – from the Travancore kingdom in 1902. His son-in-law and successor Mohammed Siddeeq Sait got the land registered in his name in 1948, and decided to hand over the property to Farook College, established that year in Kozhikode.
On 1 November 1950, a deed was registered at the Edappally sub-registrar’s office, wherein Sait transferred the property to Farook College’s president. This deed had the word ‘Waqf’ inserted into it. When Sait handed over the property to Farook College in 1950, the land area had already shrunk after the great floods of 1924 and the persistent phenomenon of sea erosion. It also already had several inhabitants with occupancy certificates predating the handover.
Issues between the original residents and Farook College over property rights reached the sub-court of Paravur, and subsequently the Kerala High Court. Both ruled in favour of the College in 1971 and 1975 respectively. The confusion might have arisen in the first place because the Paravur sub-court classified the title deed as a “Waqf”, whereas the subsequent high court order changed that to “gift deed”.
The inhabitants of the land formed a lay group to fight the case, till an out-of-court settlement was finally reached when Farook College sold the land to them at a premium – now measuring 114 acres after the erection of a seawall in 1984 – and the issue seemed to end there. The college, located some 150 km away from Munambam in Kozhikode, bought another parcel of land from the proceeds of the sale (Rs 33 lakh) and established a Teachers Training College there. It was named ‘Munambam Estate’ (later called Seethi Sahib College).
The matter became more complicated after the Kerala Waqf Board entered the scene in 2007 following a court complaint by Nassir Manayil and TM Abdul Salam, secretary and president of the Kerala Waqf Protection Forum alleging encroachment of Waqf property in Munambam. It was after this, in 2008, that the Achuthanandan government appointed a commission led by retired district judge MA Nissar to look into the matter.
Instead of conducting an independent inquiry to determine the issue of jurisdiction as specifically directed by the court, the Nissar Commission erroneously relied on an order by the CEO of the state Waqf Board, which simply declared the property to be the Waqf’s. The recommendations of this commission formed the very basis of subsequent proceedings – and the present crisis.
Also read: Hamas is synonymous with Palestine in Kerala. CPI(M), IUML have boxed Congress into a corner
The present timeline
As of today, over 600 families reportedly reside in the disputed land in Munambam. According to protesters and Velankanni Church authorities who spoke to me, 442 of them are Latin Christians. The rest are made up of Ezhavas, Dheevaras and Kudumbis from the Hindu OBC community, and most of them are engaged in fishing and allied activities.
In 2022, the Kochi Tehsildar issued an order to collect land tax from residents of Munambam, following a letter from Waqf Board CEO BM Jamal, which asserted that the land was Waqf property. Residents’ rights were restored later that year after a local MLA and Waqf minister intervened – only to be challenged and revoked earlier this year.
Against the backdrop of the Centre introducing the Waqf (Amendment) Bill on 8 August and, consequent to it being forwarded to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (after opposition protests), the Munambam issue began to heat up once again.
Thrissur Major Archbishop Andrews Thazhath, in his capacity as the Syro-Malabar Public Affairs Commission and president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI), shot off a letter to the joint secretary of the Lok Sabha secretariat a couple of days later, which was prominently displayed by minority affairs minister Kiren Rijiju on X on 28 September.
It wasn’t until the Kerala Assembly was set to pass a unanimous resolution against the Centre’s Waqf (Amendment) Bill on 14 October that the residents of the disputed land in Munambam came together in the precincts of the church to kick off their relay hunger strike on 13 October.
The protests seemed to reach a crescendo in the run-up to the by-elections in Palakkad, Chelakkara, and Wayanad.
C Krishnakumar, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from Palakkad, visited the protest site. And it became a political issue when the Archbishop of Syro-Malabar Church Raphael Thattil declared that the lay people have no compulsion to vote for the usual political parties this time around. With Christians having a nominal presence in Palakkad, the impact of such calls may have gone unregistered.
Muslim politicians and community leaders swearing allegiance to the Left too waded in later.
Immediately after the by-elections, the state government appointed the CN Ramachandran Nair judicial commission to find a “permanent solution” to the dispute within three months. The Centre’s decision to not introduce the Waqf (Amendment) Bill was announced the same week, thereby setting the stage for a thaw.
Munambam and community pride
It didn’t take long for the issue to flare up again. A peace mission undertaken by Congress’ Leader of Opposition VD Satheesan to Munambam only ended up betraying conflicting positions on the issue within the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF).
Speaking to the protesters, Satheesan emphasised how the disputed land wasn’t Waqf property, and how it wasn’t linked to the Centre’s Waqf (Amendment) Bill. Satheesan’s idea was to try and win back the trust of the Christian community, a section of whom seemed to veer toward the BJP’s stance on the Waqf issue. His position earned him plaudits in general, although it was now the turn of ally Indian Union Muslim League (IUML)’s state secretary KM Shaji to publicly refute the LoP.
Shaji went on to declare that the Munambam land was indeed Waqf property, and found backing from the likes of Malappuram MP ET Mohammed Basheer. The IUML resorted to damage control when its state president Panakkad Sadiq Ali Thangal issued a gag order on party workers. But the damage was already done.
The IUML has historically acted as a safety valve against communalism in Kerala by keeping the Islamists at bay while also striving to advance the cause of the Muslim community. Its position on Munambam has electoral repercussions, and indeed on communal harmony in the state.
The Munambam issue has also marked a division between the moderates and hardliners within the larger Muslim community, with some attaching community pride to the issue and even likening it to the Babri Masjid case.
The IUML understands how any statement by it claiming that the disputed land in Munambam is Waqf property would only serve to increase the polarisation between Christian and Muslim communities. A prominent IUML leader told me how taking a soft stand on Munambam could earn Muslims the goodwill of the Christian community (and vice versa) when it came to the Centre’s Waqf (Amendment) Bill.
Congress veteran and former minister KC Joseph – who hails from the Christian belt of Kottayam – concurred with that view. Even the Christian clergy has been broadly taking the view that their position on the Centre’s bill will be dictated by the developments on Munambam.
Also read: Keep doing Hindu-Muslim if you want to come down to 6 seats from 182—Ram Vilas Paswan
Political calculations
The ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) calculation is that any polarisation between the two communities will eventually help it win an unprecedented third term for Pinarayi Vijayan.
The Vijayan government, too, is in no hurry to fix the issue anytime soon – it’ll try and reap benefits in the local body polls and the assembly election to follow. The judicial commission has already indicated that three months is not sufficient to examine all documents and provide a conclusive report.
Political implications aside, the Munambam issue has already exacerbated the underlying tensions between the Muslim and Christian minorities in Kerala. If left unchecked, this friction would go on to forever damage the state’s reputation as a haven of communal amity and harmony.
Anand Kochukudy is a Kerala-based journalist and political commentator. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)
The Christians have realised that they are being exploited by the Muslims in Kerala. Muslim politicians in Kerala are rabidly communal and openly exhort Muslim youth to join the cause of Jihad in Syria and other places. As a result, Muslim society has rapidly radicalised in Kerala and many Malayalee Muslims are queueing up to join ISIS and other Jihadi outfits. The film Kerala Story was not a piece of propaganda. It was based on facts, no doubt a bit exaggerated but facts nonetheless.
A natural corollary of this fanaticism has been that they no longer treat Christians and Hindus as fellow Malayalee brothers and sisters. Religious hatred has led them to target every other religious community and exploit them.
The latin church unlike syrian catholics belong to the lower economic class and traditionally leans towards the left as they had been subjected to subjugation from the land owned rich syrian christians. They have been keeping away from the communal,right wing and BJP friendly stand from syrians. BJP straterically has been pandering to this right wing tendecy of syrian christians as their political and bargaing power of syrian christians were limited due to the passing of kerala congress(m) leader and his son jose k mani’s entry to LDF. Now all right wing sympatisers find it a golden opportunity to cement syrian suppot and add latins to the fold. BJP through minority morcha support and train an extremist christian organisation called CASA to further propagate anti muslim propaganda and christian revivalism. Munambam as the writer narrated, should be solved immediately and the unpopular pinarayi govermmet is trying to use it for coming back to power. The dark side of the god’s own country will be further reveled it this continues.
The Waqf Board must be dissolved and all it’s properties brought under the respective state governments. The state governments should decide on how to use this land for the general welfare of the population.
Muslim are creating problems everywhere