Haj hijacked

The onset of Ramzan is visible in all Muslim localities: large attendance at mosques, restaurants open at early mornings and then again at dusk.  The aroma of the food, the taste of savouries, the sound of the melodious azans and colourful clothes are inescapable to all five senses.

The sacred month will be followed by a break of eight weeks followed by Haj in Mecca. As usual the upcoming Haj season will allow bigoted politicians and ignorant media to repeat the charges of Muslim appeasement.

The Haj in India has been hijacked by those who want to perpetuate state monopoly over air travel and related politics. The Central government is involved in two Haj matters: Haj travel subsidy and Haj Goodwill Delegation. What exactly is the Haj subsidy? When and why was it initiated? Who is the net beneficiary? The individual haji or the airline carrier? Is it appropriate for a secular state to fund religious travel? Where is the impediment for its termination?

Haj — the fifth pillar of Islam — is obligatory on male and female Muslims only if they are financially capable and physically fit to travel to Mecca. Individual Muslims alone can determine if they can afford the pilgrimage. There is no such thing as a “subsidised” Haj. If performed as such, it is null and void.

India sends a high number of hajis — in the the top 10 country list. Until early 1960s when Bombay was connected to Jeddah by air, most pilgrims went by boat, run by the Mogul Line Ltd, a British-controlled company. In 1975, Shipping Corporation of India, a government undertaking, took over the Mogul Line. The oil crisis of the early 1970s made the cost of sea fare higher than airfare, so ships were abandoned in 1975, the Government of India gave Air India the monopoly over Haj travel. 

The oil crisis further escalated the cost of airfare forcing the government to introduce “Haj subsidy” to Air India and not individual pious pilgrims. Who exactly pays the Haj subsidy to Air India, the ministry of external affairs or the ministry of civil aviation? What is the exact amount? Does it change annually?

These are matters of detail but irrelevant to the principle that the state should not subsidise religious pilgrimage of any kind to any place, irrespective of religion. The canard that state is paying Muslims to perform Haj has done immense damage to an already demonised community.

Senior Muslim leader Syed Shahabuddin and the young Lok Sabha member from Hyderabad Asaduddin Owaisi have both expressed the will of the community to terminate the subsidy. The impediment to the abolition lies squarely in Air India, a state corporation. Just as we have rightly abolished privy purses of maharajas, why was the Air India maharaja made an exception?

The Central Haj Committee should invite bids from various Indian airlines for Haj group travel and designate the lowest bidder as the official carrier. This will end Air India’s monopoly and end the lie that the state subsidises Haj.

The second matter in which the government is involved in Muslim pilgrimage is the Haj Goodwill Delegation, which originated in the aftermath of 1965 war with Pakistan.  Pakistani diplomats and officials used this international gathering of Muslims to present their perspective on the conflict in Kashmir.

The ministry of external affairs decided to counter the Pakistani version by sending a Haj Goodwill Delegation to Mecca, obviously at state expense. Since its inception in 1966, it is led by a Union minister who meets his Saudi counterpart and others. In its early years, it consisted of five members. Now its numbers have shot to 70, including spouses. What do these delegates do while in the Islamic Holy Land?

Even before the month of  Ramzan began, the corridors of power, chambers of ministers and houses of MPs in New Delhi were filled with aspirants, mostly self-seeking politicians, unemployed and unemployable maulanas and maulvis looking for a free ride at the tax-payers’ expense. The Union government has budgeted as much as Rs6 crore this year for the delegation’s travel, accommodation and incidental expenses.

The qualifications for membership are informal: a wink from a minister, a nod from a powerful politician, the goodwill of a high official. The delegation strains the resources of the Indian consulate in Jeddah, whose primary duty during the Haj is the wellbeing of pilgrims. Instead, they are compelled to tend to the whims of politicians masquerading as Muslim leaders. It does not behoove a secular state to use a religious occasion to parade official Muslims who are busy partying in Jeddah while their begums are on a shopping spree in the malls of Arabia.

It is time to abolish the Haj goodwill delegation. There must be more imaginative ways of accomplishing the original purpose — countering Pakistani versions of the Kashmir conflict. The goodwill delegations are not earning the goodwill of Indian Muslims.