My grandmother had a saying: “The land beneath your feet is your spine — lose it, and you’re spineless." She’d knead the dough with hands weathered by that earth, her words sinking in only now, watching the Waqf Board strip that spine from women like my friend Sameera, a Muslim widow battling its greed. The Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, muscled through by the Modi government last week, isn’t just a law — it’s a reckoning. For Muslim women like us, silenced for decades by male-dominated boards and hollow “secular" promises, it’s a chance to stand tall.

The Waqf Board’s a giant — 870,000 properties, 940,000 acres worth over a lakh crore rupees, third only to the Indian Railways and Indian Armed Forces. It’s supposed to fund mosques, schools, and hospitals — noble stuff. But dig into it: 70 per cent of that land is lost to encroachments, lawsuits, or sheer opacity. Entire villages — like Tamil Nadu’s Thiruchenthurai, with its 1,500-year-old temple — get claimed overnight, leaving families gutted. Women like Sameera bear the brunt. Her husband died in 2019, leaving her a Meerut house — her anchor. Then the Waqf Board swooped in, waving a vague “historical claim." No proof, no talk — just a notice. Three years later, she’s still in court, bangles sold to pay lawyers, raising two kids on grit. “They don’t see us," she told me over lukewarm chai. Why........

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