The Importance of Hamid Ansari to India

The outgoing Vice President of India for two terms, Mr Hamid Ansari’s farewell speech in Parliament was an eyeopener to many. Mincing no words, he spoke about the growing insecurity among Muslims and other minorities in the country in the wake of majoritarian politics.

In his interview with Rajya Sabha TV, Ansari said Muslims in the country were experiencing “a feeling of unease. “A sense of insecurity is creeping in,” he noted. Speaking to his interviewer, Karan Thapar,the outgoinng Vice President Ansari ascribed the spate of vigilante violence, mob lynchings, beef bans and “ghar wapsi” campaigns to a “breakdown of Indian values” and more significantly to the breakdown of the ability of the authorities to enforce the law.

“Indianness of any citizen being questioned is a disturbing thought.”

Asked for his comments on recent court judgments like singing of national anthem in cinema halls, obligatory chanting of ‘Vande Matram’ in educational institutions, government and private offices, Ansari observed: “The propensity to be able to assert your nationalism day in and day out is unnecessary. I am an Indian and that is it. The very fact of Indianness of any citizen being questioned is a disturbing thought.”

He is the person who spoke in public about the need to enforce justice after Mohammed Akhlaq was lynched in Dadri while the Prime Minister of our country took a full ten days to condemn the lynching. Now that the number of lynchings are mounting, the last public voice to talk about justice seems to have left the government.