BJP ACCUSED OF DOUBLE STANDARDS AS INDIA ENDS SUBSIDY FOR HAJJ PILGRIMS
▶ Senior Muslim official says Hindu events will continue to receive aid
India has scrapped subsidies for Hajj pilgrims travelling to Saudi Arabia four years early, promising to direct the funds towards educating Muslim girls and women.
Announcing the move on Tuesday, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, the minister of minority affairs, said the decision was “part of our policy to empower minorities with dignity and without appeasement”.
The end of the subsidies has been on the cards since 2012, when the supreme court directed the government to phase them out.
One of the two justices pointed out at the time that, according to the Quran, the Hajj is only required of those pilgrims who can afford to make the journey.
The reduction and eventual end of the subsidies were scheduled to take place over 10 years. But prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party government has ended them six years after the ruling.
The BJP has often used the Hajj subsidy as an example of the “vote-bank politics” used by its rival Congress party, insisting that it was merely a way to secure Muslims’ electoral support.
The roots of the scheme lie in a British-era law that funded Hajj committees in Bombay and Calcutta, port cities where pilgrims tended to sail to Saudi Arabia.
In 1954, seven years after independence, the Indian government introduced a law that provided subsidised air travel between Bombay and Jeddah. Other flights on Air India, the state-owned carrier, were added over time.
The Hajj Committee of India, run by Mr Naqvi’s ministry, screened applicants for subsidised flights and arranged their travel dates. It also helped pilgrims to find affordable accommodation, meals and medical care in Saudi Arabia during the pilgrimage.
But no extra subsidies were extended for these expenses, and Mr Naqvi has not yet specified the future role of the committee or whether it will continue to provide logistical help to pilgrims.
In 2011, the year before the supreme court verdict, the Indian government spent 6.85 billion rupees (Dh393.7 million) on the programme, with 125,000 people receiving 54,800 rupees each.
That was a vast increase from 1994, when only 21,035 pilgrims were granted the 5,000 rupees payment.
Since 2012, the expenditure has dwindled. Last year, the programme’s cost fell to 2bn rupees. But the number of Indians performing Hajj has continued to increase to about 175,000, Mr Naqvi said.
The Congress party welcomed Tuesday’s announcement, saying that the subsidies were not as much help to pilgrims as they used to be.
“The normal fare from any part of India to Jeddah is 30,000 to 40,000 rupees,” Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said yesterday.
But Mr Azad said Air India charged much higher fares during Hajj season: “They were raking in profits.”
Asaduddin Owaisi, a Muslim member of parliament from Hyderabad and the president of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen party, said he was happy the programme was finished.
“I’ve been saying since 2006 that this Hajj subsidy money should be used for the education of Muslim children, especially girls,” Mr Owaisi said, insisting Muslims would not be badly affected.
But he also accused the BJP of double standards. The state, he said, continued to fund or subsidise several events for Hindu pilgrims.
In Uttar Pradesh, ruled by the BJP, the government recently approved 8 billion rupees to build infrastructure for pilgrims travelling to the temple towns of Ayodhya, Varanasi and Mathura.
The government of the state of Karnataka provides a subsidy of 20,000 rupees each for Hindus embarking on yatras, or pilgrimages, to the shrines of Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Yamunotri in northern India.
Federal and state governments spend billions of rupees to organise Kumbh Melas, the giant Hindu festivals that occur in rotation at four sites in India.
“If the Hajj subsidy was appeasement for minorities, then are the funds spent on festivals and yatras also appeasement for the majority?” Mr Owaisi asked.