NEW DELHI, INDIA, December 23, 2003: Indian Muslims are divided over the continuance of a subsidy that the government has been providing to 72,000 Haj pilgrims every year to undertake the holy trip. The differences have come into the open with the government introducing regulations for their availing of the subsidy in the airfare under which air tickets are provided for the pilgrims at less than half the normal rate.”The subsidy is a recent innovation. For 500 years Indian Muslims have undertaken the pilgrimage without it. I am against it. I have been saying ‘no subsidy’ for many years,” said Syed Shahabuddin, former MP and diplomat. Shahabuddin recalled that he had moved a resolution in the standing committee of parliament in the mid-nineties, calling for the gradual reduction and eventual abolition of the subsidy. “But after that no government had the political will to withdraw it,” he told IANS. India, with a Muslim population of 140 million, the second highest in the world after Indonesia, is perhaps the only country that provides a Haj subsidy. There has been demand from political parties and even Muslim leaders to do away with the subsidy that they say goes against the tenets of Islam. The Indian government also provides subsidies to Muslim religious schools.
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