For centuries, Indian Muslims have managed tens of thousands of holy sites across India, stewarding properties such as mosques, madrasas, orphanages, and graveyards – endowments made by Indian Muslims over generations for the benefit of the community. These properties, known as waqf, are now under attack from India’s Hindu nationalist government.

Waqf properties are foundational to Muslim life in India, providing an institutional foundation for alleviating poverty and improving literacy.

These properties are now under attack, with India’s Hindu nationalist ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and its Prime Minister Narendra Modi, proposing a set of amendments which could be utilized to undercut the state-level waqf boards that govern waqf properties, transferring transfer power into the hands of leaders hostile to Muslim Indians.

The scale of the threat is hard to overstate. There are 32 state waqf boards throughout India, which collectively run more than 2,000 educational institutions and hundreds of health clinics, primarily for the poor. According to the Indian government, there are at least 872,351 waqf properties across India with an estimated cumulative value of 1.2 trillion rupees ($14.22 billion).