For lone Muslim keeping azaan alive in Bihar’s Sarbahdi village mosque, Waqf law is another reason to stay put

Born in 1980, Zahid Ansari is the village muezzin, just like his father Abdul Samad Ansari. A humanities graduate, he also provides tuition for students up to Class 10 in a vacant space next to the mosque.

Until 1981, the Ansaris were among the 90 Muslim families that lived in Sarbahdi, now a village of 350 – largely Hindu – households, he says. The 1981 riots in Bihar Sharif – the district headquarters of Nalanda – was a pivotal moment in the state’s history. Still considered one of the worst communal riots to hit the state, second only to the one in Bhagalpur eight years later, the Bihar Sharif violence left 45 people dead.

Although Sarbahdi was never directly affected by the violence, the incident spooked many in the area, leading to an exodus of Muslims to areas such as Bihar Sharif town and even West Bengal.

“Many of the Muslims were landed, with 5-20 bighas of land,” Zahid says. “The area where the mosque stands had a thriving Muslim population with landholdings of about 300 bighas. But by the mid-1980s, distress sales started, and by 2005, all except my father and I had left.”

Some Muslim families would come back once to check on their land, but eventually, even that stopped, he says.

Sitting next to Zahid, fellow village resident Dilip Mahto echoes this: “I have witnessed instances of distress land sale by some Muslim families. Some simply abandoned their homes and land, and some sold it to their neighbours for peanuts.”

With his father’s death in 2013, Zahid became the only Muslim in the village. But the azaan calls continued diligently.

There’s another reason Zahid cites for wanting to remain in the village: the Waqf (Amendment) Act of 2025. Passed by Parliament earlier this year, the new law sparked protests because of the amendment to the concept of “Waqf by user” — while the earlier provision stated that Waqf properties will remain Waqf even if the user does not exist, the amendment removes the concept, prompting fears of how it would affect properties without valid documents.

“The Waqf (Amendment) Bill has given me all the more reasons to stay put at the village to monitor Waqf by user property, including the mosque,” he says.

Sitting inside the mosque, Zahid takes a slip of paper out of his pocket to read out the village’s “Waqf by user” land: apart from the mosque, there are two cemeteries of a total of 120 decimal, one mazaar measuring 79 decimal and an Imam Bara of 10 decimal.

“I had heard about the Waqf (Amendment) Bill and thought there was a need to keep a record of the village’s Waqf by user land,” he says. “Of the two cemeteries, one is being used as a cowshed and the other as an open field used to store hay.”

After the Waqf law was passed, he was asked to account for the Waqf by user properties in the area, he says. “But I’m the lone Muslim here. I can’t ask people to vacate the cemeteries or clear them of encroachment. Reclaiming it would do nothing. I want to live here peacefully and am happy with the status quo,” he says.

Mokhtar Ul Haque, the person in charge of the Woghra Waqf Estate, echoes this. “It’s true that cemeteries come under Waqf by user property, but where are the users? We could request the state government to reclaim the cemeteries, but who would take care of them in the village?”

As Zahid steps out of the mosque to head to his three-room brick house in one corner of the village, an elderly woman stops him and advises him to get married “soon”. He smiles and nods at the woman, but once she leaves, Zahid says that between his mosque duties and teaching students, he’s left quite satisfied.

“I prefer to live alone,” he says. “What I want is for the mosque to be whitewashed. I also need to have a makeshift structure built on mosque land so I can teach my students there.”