VHP shouldn't expect Ansari to be rubber stamp, the V-P has a mind of his own

The radical right is bound to have a problem with the current Indian Vice-President. He does not play the Veena publicly, quote freely from Hindu scriptures, his candidature was not endorsed by the NDA and he answers to the name of Mohammad Hamid Ansari.

In the past, Ansari’s patriotism has been questioned — wrongly, of course — for “not saluting the Tricolor.” His credentials have been doubted for “not attending” Yoga Day celebrations — wrongly again — when he was not even invited to the event due to government protocol. Often, the lunatic fringe has cooked up facile arguments and fictitious grievances on social media to run him down. As The Indian Express pointed out in an editorial aptly titled, ‘Sorry, Mr Ansari,’ you can’t escape the feeling this has got something to do with his religion.

In a vitriolic atmosphere where post-modern analysis of historic figures is done on medieval notions of creed and community, debates are structured on the unfortunate Us vs Them binary, history is seen through communal prisms and those willing to oppose the biases of the majority are branded traitors, Hamid Ansari is an easy target. You can rest assured that Akbar Road won’t be renamed after the current VP.

So, there is nothing egregiously surprising about the vitriolic response to the VP’s appeal for “affirmative action” for the saath and vikaas of Muslims. You can count on the VHP and members of its ideological parivar to ignore the message and shoot the messenger every time somebody talks about the grievances of the minorities.

There is, however, another worrying aspect of the far right’s attempts to silence the Indian VP, to ask him to refrain from speaking his mind and remind him of the “dignity of his office” and, of course, his religion. What about the VP’s right to freedom of expression? Have our democratic values hit such a low that we now have no qualms in depriving those at top constitutional positions the basic rights enshrined in, ironically, the Constitution?

If Sakshi Maharaj and Sadhvi Prachi can speak their mind with impunity in this country, the far right sounds hypocritical in its refusal to extend Voltaire’s principle of the right to say even that is disagreeable to the VP of India. If Rajasthan governor Kalyan Singh can initiate a debate on the greatness of Hindu kings and the lack of it in Mughal emperors, the Parivar appears churlish when it has a problem with the VP drawing attention to the plight of Muslims.

The Indian VP is not just the ex-officio chairperson of the Rajya Sabha. His importance in the Constitution is that he can act as the Indian President whenever any vacancy occurs in the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Attempts to deny the potential head of the state the very rights he is empowered to protect is a disturbing indictment of the undemocratic debate on the VP’s statement. Ideally, the VP’s argument that Muslims are deprived of employment opportunities, education and that their poverty levels are much below the national average should have triggered a healthy debate. In the past, Ansari has served as a diplomat, an academic, vice-chancellor, chairperson of National Commission for Minorities; he has headed committees that advocated the rights of Kashmiri Pandits to return to their homeland.

Summarily, dismissing the VP’s plea for intervention as “communal politics” is tantamount to insulting not only his erudition and constitutional position, but also ceding that space to more radical voices. As Shehzad Poonawala argues , will we listen only when a Hardik Patel or Hamid Pathan becomes the prominent voice against social injustice?

It is ironic that we choose the best of our politicians — academicians, intellectuals, diplomats — for constitutional offices and then expect them to spend the rest of their lives as rubber stamps in the gilded cages. Instead of benefitting from their experience, erudition and credentials, we expect them to remain silent in the name of propriety and dignity of office. To taunt them with advice for quitting office and joining active politics if they have something to say, is the very antithesis of the process that puts them in positions where they can act as custodians of our constitutional rights.

(Incidentally, quitting the office and going back to politics isn’t such a big deal. C Rajagopalachari, the first Indian governor general of India, had floated a political party after demitting office to take on the Congress. Years later, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat had toyed with the idea of contesting Lok Sabha elections after completing his term as VP).

Thankfully, the VP has been clear about the role of people in constitutional positions. “No citizen is apolitical; as a citizen, by definition, has to take interest in public affairs,” the VP had said soon after being elected in 2007. In 2013, he had argued, “There is no shame in acknowledging the faults and lacunae that exist in the policies and institutions pertaining to human rights.”

It is a pity the far right does not understand.