Haryana CM ML Khattar has increased the salary of Imams by 50 per cent with immediate effect. 800 Imams and Maulvis across the state will draw salaries of rupees 14000 to 16000 every month following the hike. The step comes in the wake of the Khattar government promising an annual increment of 5 per cent.

A felicitation function was organized by the Haryana Waqf Board and Tanzeem Aima-e-Auqaf at Gurugram University for the CM for hiking the honorarium. Tanzeem Aima-e-Auqaf is an organization of Imams. The organization said the raise was unprecedented and the hike would benefit around 800 Imams working at various mosques in Haryana.

The Haryana Waqf Board gets grants from the state government. “Imams will be paid between Rs. 14,000 and Rs. 16,000 as honorarium per month. It was for the first time that someone was even thinking about the salary hike for the Imams. The provision of a 5% yearly hike in imams’ salary has never happened anywhere in India”, said Haryana Waqf Board’s administrator Zakir Hussain.

“Every possible effort is being made to increase brotherhood in Haryana. Considering the demands of Imam organisations, we have increased the honorarium of Maulanas and Imams. The demands were not taken into consideration for the past several years”, Khattar said speaking at the function.

“Imams can play a crucial road in improving education and health facilities in areas such as Mewat. We are also working on creating more infrastructure and development in this region. The imams have also played an important role in the success of the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao campaign in Mewat as well as the Swachh Bharat campaign”, Khattar said while addressing the media.

While the Muslim clerics have already been paid, the Khattar government said it is ‘working’ to ensure that organizations employing temple priests pay them minimum wages. “A board has been formed by the government to oversee this aspect and also for the welfare of this section”, he said.

Has Islamist terror in Mewat been tackled?

In 2020, A 3-member fact-finding team constituted by VHP had uncovered shocking details of Hindu persecution in the Muslim-majority region of Mewat (which encompasses the whole of Haryana’s Nuh district and some other parts of neighbouring states) which is also home to the fundamentalist Islamic proselytising organization Tablighi Jamaat. The team found that Hindus had been completely driven out of over 100 villages in the region. Cases of rape, sexual harassment, robbery, forced conversion and inability to practise Hindu religion were found to be rampant in the area.

A separate 4-member committee led by Justice Pawan Kumar formed by the Shri Valmiki Mahasabha of Haryana had also probed the persecution of Hindu SCs (Scheduled Castes) in Mewat and found that Mewat is becoming a graveyard of Hindus and there are many reports of women being abducted, raped and forcibly converted in the region.

At the time, CM Khattar had announced several steps to provide relief to persecuted Hindus –

1. Anti-conversion Law would be enacted to stop religious conversions and love jihad.
2. Gokashi (slaughter of cows & its progeny) cases would be heard in fast-track courts. Necessary amendments would be made in the current law, if needed, to punish cow killers severely.
3. A battalion of the IRB would be set up at Nuh (Mewat) to assist in re-establishing the rule of law in Mewat.
4. After removing illegal occupation on Hindu religious and public properties, a board would be set up for these real estates and institutions that would ensure their care and protection.

Harayana did pass an anti-conversion bill in March 2022, along the lines of similar laws brought by UP and some other states, to curb conversions via marriage and fraudulent means. But there has been no progress, or at least no update provided, on the other promises made in 2020.

Anyway, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as the saying goes – Mewat continues to be a hub of crime in general, and anti-Hindu activity in particular. Expecting decades of Islamist indoctrination to dissipate in a few years is foolish. Being the home of the hardline Deobandi missionary org Tablighi Jamaat (founded to ‘purify’ Indian Islam of Hindu influences), one can well imagine what Islamic teachings clerics in Mewat will be imparting to impressionable Muslim youth. Ironically, it is the imams that CM Khattar praised who are responsible for some of the worst misogynist and anti-Hindu attitudes prevalent in Indian Muslims.

The problem with the secular Indian Republic is that irrespective of the party, all governments indulge in appeasement of radical minority elements to some extent or the other. Haryana CM Khattar had shown signs of flip-flopping on such issues during the Gurugram protests against namaz in open. By hiking salaries of Muslim clerics using taxpayer money, he has just dealt another body blow to an already stressed Hindu society.

(Featured Image Source: Hindustan Times)