Unease among minorities: Hamid Ansari

Smita Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 11

Depicting Indian nationalism in terms of faith of religious majority has serious negative political implications for sections, is in violation of principles of Constitution and has led to politically relevant social violence, said Hamid Ansari on Saturday. 

Delivering the 23rd Prem Bhatia Memorial Lecture Award in Delhi on Religion, Religiosity and the World Order, the former Vice-President said there is unease among minorities in India as he traced the impact of religious zeal or religiosity on political mobilisation and militancy worldwide.

"These manifestations of Hindutva combined with no infrequent ineptitude in governance and departures from the Rule of Law norms have led to expressions of unease among minorities," said Ansari.

"Some of them have resorted to sporadic, and others to organised violence bringing in its wake harsh responses from the state machinery," he added. 

Quoting RSS sarsanghchalak Golwalkar's views on expressed authoritarian centralism and advocacy of 'One Country, One State, One Legislature, One Executive', Ansari asked, "The ideological formulation, however, does not seem to gel with the more recent political pronouncements on cooperative federalism; does this signal a change of objective, or a deferred agenda?"

Elaborating on Islamic revivalism, reformism and radicalism, Ansari cited neighbouring Pakistan as an example of religious motivation being used for political violence. "A good example of excessive religious zeal to promote an engineered narrative of history and aspiration is Pakistan where the promotion of violent extremism has made Jihad 'a pliable instrument in the hands of a few who are more politically motivated than ethically grounded'. It has resulted in making the state and society dysfunctional in good measure," said Ansari.

The Prem Bhatia Award for 2018 was given today to syndicate columnist Aakar Patel and independent journalist Sibi Arasu for Excellence in Political Reporting and Analysis and Environment and Development Categories, respectively. Constituted in honour of the eminent journalist and former Editor-In-Chief of The Tribune, Ansari recalled his only conversation in 1983 with Prem Bhatia in Kenya. A minute's silence was also observed to remember the late noted Journalist and Editor S Nihal Singh at the event.