How long can a wolf remain under the skin of a goat, even with a peaceful looking white goatee? Not too long. It appears when one’s term in the office nears the end, they try to return to their own roots. And that is what our Vice President Dr. Hamid Ansari did. He started searching for his roots that lie in the ever increasing competition to become the leader of Minorities. And the entry of Asaduddin Owaisi, almost in the style of a leader who can really provide some solutions has perturbed the conventional minority leaders, who sold unrealistic dreams to the Muslim masses and made fools out of them, since independence.
The seasoned diplomat he was, Hamid Ansari might have started priming for his possible future role as a Muslim leader, albeit within Congress. In the eagerness of winning the race to the future position, he in fact could not even frame a perfect speech. So, finally he delivered a sort of compilation from earlier texts and notes, stressing the need to save the minority from the onslaught of majoritarianism to the students of Jammu University, during the convocation.
The problem with such speeches is that lack convection is they are flawed to the core. The problem is in the nearby vicinity, India is the only country where the minority population had grown, post-independence. And here, we have an elected Vice-President, who forgot the illustriousness of his office and restricted himself to be the representative of – his religion and its population. If really he was a real Muslim and talks about the rights of minorities, why did he not act and guided the Islamic nations Afghanistan, UAE, Iran and the crown of the Islamic nations – Saudi Arabia, where he worked as an ambassador? Why he could not talk some sense into the heads of rulers of his own religion that occupies almost all of our immediate nations to the west about the pluralism and its benefits? As a true believer of the only god, Dr. Hamid Ansari should have guided them into the correct path he believed in. He did not. In fact, he could not, for fear of punishment. He can easily claim that as an ambassador, he had to restrict himself to the official functions.
Then, what stopped Dr. Hamid Ansari from guiding his own community from accepting the pluralism and restrict the religion as a personal affair? Why he chose to keep silent when the highest body of Islam in India represented in The Supreme Court that the Court has no jurisdiction over their personal laws? In fact, the honorable VP got all his facts wrong. Almost all Hindu temples in South India are controlled by the Government and a few in the North India. Will Muslims accept to let the Government control all Waqf properties? No.
And talking about the onslaught of majority, why Dr. Hamid Ansari chose to keep silent, when the minority appeasement was going on for decades, by the party into which he joined after leaving the government job? If there was no minority appeasement, there would never have been any majority reflection! Frankly, one could not find a group more diversified than the Hindus, who classified themselves into thousands of castes and sub-castes.
In fact the speech was smelling rotten bigotry. If Dr. Hamid Ansari really wanted a secular state, who stopped him and his government from being secular? When Rajiv Gandhi amended the constitution, overruling the verdict of the Supreme Court, why did he not return his ‘Padma Sri’? None of his ilk returned any awards then, including the notorious Nayantara Sahgal.
Dr. Hamid Ansari has forgotten, that it was Muslims that were opposing the common civil code. It was in the Muslim majority states, where the ‘onslaught of majoritarianism’ had occurred and nothing was done, including the so called ‘Indian Occupied Kashmir’. After expelling all the Pandits from valley, they claim India occupied Kashmir. Ansari Saab, there shall be a limit, even for hypocrisy.
If your feelings and concerns are genuine, you should do introspection and answer yourself, why only in places where the minorities are in considerable percentages, riots happen? If the Indian majority religion people are fundamentalists and bigots, they should have persecuted minorities, where they were in small numbers. But it is not so.
Talking about pluralism, it would help, if Dr. Hamid Ansari could find out reasons, why and how most of Muslims are moving towards being Muslims and in some states, even Wahabis! Earlier they used to be Indians, Tamils, Bengalis, and Gujaratis. Why suddenly they are considering themselves as Arabs? And mind you Ansari Saab, these days even the learned in Pakistan are distancing themselves from the Arab world conflict that was intrinsic to the Islam. And even after another thousand years, Arabs would consider the brown skin Indian and Pakistani Muslim as tolerable workmen – nothing more. Before talking about the upliftment of minorities, find out from where the money is coming to construct new mosques, but not schools and hospitals! One of the Movie halls was converted into a mosque, in South Mumbai, where real estate costs billions! It was donated by someone, and all they could think was converting it into a mosque. Tell your people to get their priorities right. Even at this age, if you do politics, do you really think people will follow you blindly? No Sir. People like you are the reason why Muslims are flocking behind Owaisi. Even the majority people may prefer Owaisi kind of leaders, who fight openly, unlike doing sublime broking.
And, the silent majority of India would like to have the plurality of the society. Help us to have it, by convincing the minorities.