Insecurity of the Vice President

We live in a time when those who point out the crimes become criminals while those who perpetrate the crimes become heroes.  The digital assaults on vice president Hamid Ansari are recent examples.  Does the vice president deserve the assaults?

It was a long interview that vice president Ansari gave to Karan Thapar on Rajya Sabha TV.  Some so-called nationalists have focused their attention on a fraction of what the VP said: “… there is a feeling of unease, a sense of insecurity creeping in.”  He said that in answer to Karan Thapar’s question whether Indian Muslims are feeling insecure in the present India.

Credit: PTI

Why should such a large number of people take exception to Ansari’s answer?  Isn’t it plain truth that there are many communities of people, not just Muslims but also the Dalits and many others, who are feeling terribly insecure in present India?  Religious minorities have ample reasons to feel insecure as they are attacked in various devious ways by the Sangh Parivar affiliates.  The poor sections have reasons to feel insecure as subsidies and other welfare schemes are being eliminated one by one.  Prices of essential things keep rising making livelihood near impossible for large sections of Indians.  Unemployment rate is mounting sky-high.  Crimes are rising in numbers, varieties and degrees.  Those who were friends till yesterday turn away their faces when they see you today.  People are afraid of each other.  We don’t know who will stab you from the back the next moment. 

What was wrong when the vice president mentioned “insecurity feeling”?  How many Indians actually feel secure today? 

Apart from the air that is vitiated totally inside the country are the problems looming beyond the borders.  Both Pakistan and China are getting ready to declare war on the country because of 56-inch foreign policies. 

Yet certain citizens are accusing the vice president merely for pointing out the insecurity feeling of certain sections of people instead of looking at the problems that loom large in the horizons like formidable monsters.  We have become a strange country indeed!