In July 1945, the Privy Council dismissed an appeal filed by Ali Mohammad Adamalli, a Bohra merchant from Mumbai. Adamalli had been fined Rs 1,000 by the Bombay High Court for contempt as he had failed to follow repeated directions of a lower court to file details of the waqf property he was managing.
A waqf is an endowment made by a Muslim for charitable or religious purposes.
Under provisions of the Mussulman Waqf Act, 1923, every mutawalli of a waqf was supposed to furnish details of income and expenditure. Aggrieved by the high court order, Adamalli had approached the Privy Council, which was the highest court in colonial India.
Members of the Bohra community did not share details of the waqf under their control, saying that their community charities were all under the management and guidance of the Syedna, and whose spiritual position was such that he could not be expected to file details in any court of law.
The other line of reasoning adopted by several Bohra mutawallis was that the property in question was not waqf as per the definition of the 1923 Act. Suits were filed in high courts for a declaration that several charitable and religious properties under the control of the Bohra community were not waqf and hence there was no need to furnish details of the assets owned and expenditure incurred.
Adamalli’s contention, too, was that the property was not waqf, but it had been donated by his forefathers as a gift to the Syedna, in whom it was now vested. The positioning was simple. Accounts were required to be given if the property in question was waqf. If it was not waqf, provisions of the Mussalman Waqf Act 1923 did not apply.
British support
The reluctance of the members of the Dawoodi Bohra community to render accounts had received support from the British administration, which had facilitated the exemption of the Dawoodi Bohra community from the Mussulman Waqf Act 1923.
The Act came into force in the Bombay Presidency in 1925, but it was eventually applied to the Dawoodi Bohra community only in October 1931. In the ensuing six years, a small reformist section within the community had opposed the exemption of Dawoodi Bohras from the Act, and so had the wider Muslim community.
It is remarkable that a tiny sect like the Dawoodi Bohra took to paying fines and facing contempt of court even when other sects and even the Muslim League were in favour of the Mussulman Waqf Act to be enforced without any exceptions.
The chief justice of the Bombay High Court who heard Adamalli’s case observed that “the Dawoodi Bohra community are very reluctant to accept this Act, and mutawallis of wakfs created by that community are reluctant to render accounts”.
Adamalli’s case exemplified the resolve of the Bohra community to not share details of community charities in colonial India. The waqf in question was a property on Mumbai’s Falkland Road.
Seeking exemptions
A century after the enactment of the Mussulman Wakf Act, 1923, comes the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025. But unlike the 1923 Act, the legislation from 2025 has given consideration to the wishes of the Bohra community. Representatives of the Bohra and Khoja communities who met the parliamentary panel on waqf had sought exemption from the jurisdiction of any Waqf Board and asked to be kept out of the purview of the Act.
So impressed was the Ministry of Minority Affairs that on the submission of the Dawoodi Bohra community seeking exemption they proposed to not have the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, apply to any “auqaf/trust established and managed” by them.
The ministry reasoned that “this exemption would respect their unique religious governance, which centralizes authority in the al-Dai al-Mutlaq, ensuring that their faith and practices remain intact without interference from regulatory frameworks that conflict with their beliefs”.
However, the parliamentary committee stopped short of providing an explicit exemption to the Bohras. Instead, taking into consideration that Bohras seem to prefer trust and not waqf, the amendment in Section 2 of the Act says that the Act shall not apply to a trust established by a Muslim. The Act states that it will not apply to a “trust established…by a Muslim for purpose similar to a waqf under any law for the time being in force”.
This proviso places Muslim trusts and the Ajmer Dargah, which is managed by a separate Act of Parliament, outside the ambit of the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025. The Ajmer Dargah is regulated by the Durgah Khwaja Saheb Act, 1955.
The motive in waqf is always religious, whereas in a trust it is generally temporal. A waqf is not terminable, but a trust is. No ready data is available to establish how many trusts and waqfs the Bohra and Khoja communities have, but it will be safe to assume that the two communities have far more trusts than waqfs.
Former Solicitor General of India Harish Salve was part of the delegation that represented the Bohra community when they met the parliamentary committee members on November 5, 2024, to seek an exemption from the legislation.
The new Act has stipulated the creation of separate waqf boards for Khojas and Bohras. Thus, state governments can establish “Agakhani” and “Bohra” boards that would regulate the waqfs belonging to these communities. This was opposed by some state Waqf Boards such as the Andhra Pradesh State Waqf Board, which stated that “Aghakhani, Bohra Waqfs have no reference to Islam”. But some, such as the Delhi Waqf Board, appreciated the provision of spaces for Agakhani and Bohra communities. Surprisingly, while acknowledging the minority position of these two sects within the Muslim community, the Act gives sanction to a colloquial terminology (Agakhani) to describe the Khojas.
The response of the Bohras with respect to these two crucial waqf legislation spread across a century offers a window to the changing dynamics between the administration and the community. The Mussulman Waqf Act, 1923, came about because of realisation within the Muslim community that mutawallis were not taking proper care of assets and waqf properties across the country were being widely misused.
It must be noted that no equivalent legislation at the central level was passed to regulate Hindu charitable endowments.
The Mussulman Waqf Act, 1923, came out of the resolve of the Muslim community to fix accountability of mutawallis. This was resisted by the Bohra community, which saw the 1923 Act as an assault on their religious and cultural norms. Besides, just as many other merchant communities involved in large scale trade and industry, the Bohras did not want details of the intermingling of piety and profit to be made public.
These arguments weighed heavily on the British administration. With the help of Bohra and some non-Bohra legislators in the Bombay Assembly, the community managed to get an exemption from the 1923 Act.
This time they have again managed to be successful. So while a large section of Muslim groups has registered their objection against the new Act, the Bohras and the Khojas have been silent.
These two communities seem to have followed the route of the Parsis in making use of trusts and not waqfs for charity. This can also be seen as a reflection that Muslim capitalist aspirations in India, as represented by Shia, Gujarati-speaking communities, can be best expressed through the secular vehicle of trust and not Islamic-denominated waqfs.
Though waqfs owned by Khojas and Bohras will attract the provisions of the 2025 Act, the provision for them to have their own waqf boards makes possible a certain degree of independence and non-interference by majority Sunni groups.
An important takeaway is that the current administration prefers the nomenclature of trust to that of waqf: the new Act excludes trusts that may serve “purpose similar to a waqf”.
This is connected to the representations made by the Bohras and Khojas, but it is likely that several other Muslim denominational institutes like graveyards, mosques, orphanages that are registered as trusts will not come under the ambit of the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025.
Danish Khan has a PhD from University of Oxford and is working on a book on Muslim capitalism.
