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Ex-VP Hamid Ansari’s ‘Challenges to a liberal polity’ book review: The politics of being Indian

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Kolkata, WEST BENGAL / NEW DELHI :

A collection of speeches and articles by former vice-president Hamid Ansari, offering engaging insights into our democracy.

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Challenges to a Liberal Polity: Human Rights, Citizenship & Identity / by M Hamid Ansari / Publisher Penguin / Pages 277 /Price 799 INR

For the past decade, public discourse in India has remained sharply focused on challenges to the liberal polity and the threats that have grown to human rights. Issues of citizenship and identity are entwined inextricably in this. It is in this context that Challenges to a Liberal Polity: Human Rights, Citizenship & Identity assumes not only topicality but also a significance that can be overlooked only at the readers’ own peril.

Hamid Ansari is a distinguished diplomat, academic, statesman and also, the often misused word, a public intellectual. He has, in his long career, worn many hats. He has served as the Indian ambassador to Afghanistan, Vice-Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Chairman of the Minorities Commission and the Vice President of India. Throughout his life, Ansari has never shied away from speaking his mind—bluntly if need be.

The author has, at times, been exposed to unfair criticism and deliberately humiliated by persons in high office who should have known better. When bidding him farewell, PM Narendra Modi was unnecessarily sarcastic—some thought gracelessly—by mentioning that Ansari had spent most of his diplomatic career in Islamic countries and perhaps he would be more comfortable now that he was relieved of the burden of the constitutional position to freely voice criticism of whatever he didn’t agree with. The PM conveniently forgot that the former vice-president served with distinction as India’s permanent representative in the United Nations and as Chief of Protocol when Indira Gandhi was the prime minister in an era of dynamic Indian diplomacy. But, let us not digress.

This volume is a collection of speeches, forewords and articles contributed by the author on subjects that overlap and cover a vast time span from the turn of the century to the present day. The introduction is stimulating and thought-provoking. It presents a distilled essence of state-of-the-art research in political science and Indian society. This prepares the readers for what is to follow.

The book is divided into three sections. The first section deals with human rights and group rights. The subsections or mini-chapters can be read profitably as independent essays. Of particular interest are the ones titled––‘India and the Contemporary International Norms on Group Rights’, ‘Minorities and the Modern State’ and ‘Majorities and Minorities in Secular India: Sensitivity and Responsibility’.

The second section is titled ‘Indian Polity, Identity, Diversity and Citizenship’. This is more substantial than the preceding segment and covers a range of topics that should engage readers with different interests and ideological orientations. Examples include ‘Identity and Citizenship: An Indian Perspective’, ‘Religion, Religiosity and World Order’, ‘Two Obligatory -isms: Why Pluralism and Secularism is Essential to our Democracy’. There are shorter pieces like ‘The Ethics of Gandhi’ and ‘The Dead Weight of State Craft’, ‘India’s Plural Diversity is Under Threat: Some Thoughts on Contemporary Challenges in the Realm of Culture’. How one wishes that these themes had been explored in greater detail.

To some it may appear that this is nitpicking, but this is the hazard of compiling a collection of comments and observations made on commemorative occasions such as inaugurating or concluding a seminar, a workshop or writing a short preface. Ansari is primarily a scholar, who is deeply distraught by the happenings around him and is restless to share his constructive thoughts and not just the distress and despair. The tone is always cautiously optimistic.

The concluding section deals with ‘Indian-Muslim Perception and Indian Contribution to Culture of Islam’. The essays on ‘Militant Islam’, ‘Islam and Democratic Principle’ and ‘India and Islamic Civilisation: Contributions and Challenges’ deserve to be read by all Indians, particularly the young. One may disagree with the author, but it is impossible to imagine that any meaningful dialogue can take place between the majorities and minorities in India without an understanding of how the ‘other’ thinks and perceives the world.

His convocation addresses delivered at Jamia Millia Islamia (where he taught) and the AMU (his alma mater) have a different flavour. The tone is personal and evokes shared nostalgia. The final essay is a review of India and muslim world.

The book has substantial end-notes that provide useful bibliographical information. One can flip through these pages to pursue the themes dealt in the book according to one’s own inclination and at leisure.


This book is for all. The general reader, who has no scholarly pretensions, too can turn the pages of this book with great pleasure. Many a time, the author peppers the prose with Urdu couplets that hook the reader to his line of arguments. One such piece is his Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed Memorial lecture. Most people remember this vice-president as the supine individual who signed on the dotted line with dimmer when Indira Gandhi declared Emergency at midnight. Ansari, however,  has used the book brilliantly to make some hard- hitting comments that are im- possible not to take on the chin.

The chapter begins with: Yaad-e-maazi azaab hai yaa rab/ Chheen le mujhse hafiza mera (The memory of the past is torturous, O God/Take away my memory from me), and concludes with: “Can the amnesia, the compromises and the misconceptions of recent and not-so-recent past be overcome?” Yes, only if meaningful alternative is offered. We do stand at the crossroads.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Lifestyle> Books / by Pushpesh Pant / Express News Service / November 06th, 2022

‘By Many a Happy Accident: Recollections of a Life’ review: Reflections of a nationalist

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Kolkata, WEST BENGAL :

In his autobiography, Hamid Ansari, Vice-President for two terms, brings to the fore the predicament of Indian Muslims, who still live in the shadow of Partition

The Indian republic has had 13 vice-presidents since 1952 and only two, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan and Hamid Ansari, got two terms in office. Therefore, it would be natural and tempting to focus on Ansari’s vice-presidential years, but it needs to be kept in mind that the post of Vice-President is essentially an inconsequential office in terms of power and authority; to the extent, the Vice-President also doubles up as the chairman of the Rajya Sabha does allow the incumbent some wiggle room, but that too can be misleading. Of the 13 men, only one, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, had some political heft but he too was to discover that parliamentary conventions and politicians’ conveniences ensure that a party man gets cordoned off from the power vortex.

Civility and grace

The other hat Ansari wore for many years was that of an Indian diplomat. He was a competent, loyal foot-soldier and at his joyful best when crossing swords with Pakistani counterparts at global forums. It would perhaps be most rewarding to read the book as the reflections of a nationalist Indian Muslim.

Ansari acquaints readers with a different generation that valued civility, grace, erudition, and took pride in its love for scholarship, language and poetry.

He anchors himself firmly in the nationalist milieu; early in the book we are informed that his father spurned Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s invitation, on the eve of August 14, 1947, to all senior Muslim officers to proceed to Pakistan. The senior Ansari expressed his inability “to change my country.” The Ansari family was only one of the two at the senior level to stay back in India. A choice was made: India was home.

Modernist at heart

This confidence in the new, free India was justified when Ansari made it to the elite Indian Foreign Service. A meritocracy was at work. The new arrangements were fair, in letter and spirit, and being a Muslim attracted no discrimination nor endowed any advantage.

He locates himself unapologetically in the modernist milieu. He fell for — then married — a young “cigarette-smoking and sherry-sipping” woman. He did not defer to traditionalists and conservatives. There is not an obscurantist bone in this doubly cosmopolitan man, who is just as much at ease in any western environs as he is well-versed in the civilisational richness of the global Islamic world.

Consequently, he never allowed himself to get inveigled in the intrigues and pettiness that soon came to define the Muslim political crowd, especially when Muslim leaders and the masses got entangled with the exigencies of electoral politics. Nor was he unobservant of the unhealthy tendencies creeping upon Muslim society and its institutions.

For precisely this reason his reflections on the state of the Indian Muslims command our attention and respect.

Ansari acknowledges that from the very beginning the Indian Muslims have lived under “a shadow of physical and psychological insecurity” because they were made “to carry, unfairly, the burden of political events and compromises that resulted from the Partition.” And, as the Sachar Committee Report would record, they remain on “the margins of structures of political, economic and social relevance.”

Islam and nationalism

Given our own constitutional commitments, Ansari wants to underline “the imperative to recognise pluralism and secularism as the normative principles of politics” along with “an unflinching adherence to principles of equality and equal treatment.”

He is not reticent about reflecting on the unresolved and unsettled equation between Islam and nationalism. A ‘successful synthesis of Islam and nationalism’ is very much feasible, because, as he argues, invoking Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, “…nationality is not synonymous with religious community since the two are in the shape of concentric circles that do not collide…”

Nor, for him, is there any fundamental incompatibility between Islam and democracy in the Asian Muslim world.

Yet, as he puts it, there is global dimension to the followers of Islam. The Muslim communities all over, including India, do subscribe “to an emotional bond of ‘Muslim-ness.’ The sentiment is amorphous as well as real; it is usually taken for granted but gets evoked at times of stress when protection physical or emotional, is perceived to be required.”

Ansari also tackles the ticklish issue of the majority-minorities syndrome in a democratic society. He argues for a need to move beyond ‘assimilation’ and ‘tolerance’. Both are inadequate from the minority perspective. While ‘tolerance’ does prohibit discrimination, it does not endorse diversity, and, therefore, leaves room for the problematic ‘other.’ And, of course, ‘assimilation’ simply boils down to absorption of the minority personality in the larger, majority crowd.

He comes across as a rare breed in these vulgar times. Instead of stridency, Ansari contextualises the many ‘accidents’ of his life with subtlety and sensitivity. With enormous reasonableness he enjoins us to ponder on the matrix of ‘accommodation’ and ‘acceptance’ intersecting with temptations of majoritarian politics. Perhaps it is this very gentleness in reminding us of our obligations to the social contract inherent in the Constitution that Prime Minister Narendra Modi mocked on the occasion of Hamid Ansari’s last day as Chairman of the Rajya Sabha. Neither leopard is willing to change his spots.

By Many a Happy Accident: Recollections of a Life; M. Hamid Ansari, Rupa, ₹595.

The reviewer is a senior journalist based in Delhi.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Books> Reviews / by Harish Khare / March 13th, 2021