Ansari refers to Modi's 'departure'

New Delhi: Former Vice-President Hamid Ansari has said many felt Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks at his farewell programme last year was a departure from accepted practices on such occasions.

"The Prime Minister participated in this (the farewell programme) and while being fulsome in his compliments also hinted at what he perceived to be a certain inclination in my approach on account of my having spent, as he put it, both a good part of my professional tenure as a diplomat in Muslim lands and in post-retirement period on minority-related questions," Ansari said.

"The context, presumably, was my reference in the Bangalore speech to what I perceived as 'enhanced apprehension of insecurity' and in the TV interview to 'a sense of unease creeping in' among Muslims and some other religious minorities," he added.

Ansari's farewell had been held on August 10, 2017, on the last day of his second term as Vice-President and Chairman of the Rajya Sabha.

In his speech, Modi had said: "Much of your stint as a career diplomat was spent in West Asia, where you lived within those limits, in that environment, in that thought, in the very same debate among that kind of people.... Post-retirement also, your work has been the same; be it in the Minorities Commission or the Aligarh Muslim University."

In his last interview before he demitted office, Ansari had pointed out that Muslims in the country were experiencing a "feeling of unease".

"The subsequent furore by the 'faithful' on social media tended to lend credence to this. On the other hand, editorial comments and a good many serious writings considered the PM's remarks to be a departure from accepted practice on such occasions," Ansari has said now.

Ansari felt that the widely accepted pluralist view of nationalism and Indianness was now being challenged by a viewpoint depicting "purifying exclusivism" through the idea of "cultural nationalism".

The idea of "cultural nationalism" is premised principally on a shared culture narrowly defined, he said.

Ansari has addressed these issues in his new book Dare I Question? Reflections on Contemporary Challenges, a collection of his speeches and writings, made mostly in his last year in office and some in recent months.

According to Ansari, the debate on nationalism has wider ramifications for Indian democracy.

"In the typology of democracy; ours is a liberal one based on universal suffrage, tolerance, respect for diversity, a comprehensive charter of rights and rule of law that brings together the notions of rights, development, governance and justice.

"Their attainment is premised on equality and fraternity. Any dilution of this principle will take it in the direction of an ethnic democracy, implicitly or otherwise, and would bring forth an illiberal structure," Ansari said.

According to Ansari, two sets of challenges are confronting the country - the first pertains to principles and values of public life and the second to institutional structures of the Indian polity.

"...Both seem to be under stress for a variety of reasons. Some of these are easily identified by reading the section on Fundamental Duties and assessing the extent to which these are observed individually and collectively," Ansari has written in the book's preface.