Muslims Are Not Safe in India - HAMID ANSARI

How PM Modi gave a left-handed compliment to outgoing Vice-President Hamid Ansari

While bidding Ansari farewell in the Rajya Sabha, PM Modi said the former remained a prisoner of his thought for a major part of his life.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a left-handed compliment to outgoing Vice-President Hamid Ansari. He returned in the same coin the Rajya Sabha Chairperson's assertion that there was a feeling of unease and a sense of insecurity among Muslims in the country.

Asked in an interview to Karan Thapar on Rajya Sabha TV whether he shared his concerns with the prime minister, Ansari replied in the affirmative. “Yes…yes. But what passes between the Vice President and the Prime Minister in the nature of things must remain in the domain of privileged conversation,” the ex officio chairman of Rajya Sabha said.

NEW DELHI: Some BJP leaders have taken exception to outgoing vice-president Hamid Ansari's comment that "a feeling of unease, a sense of insecurity is creeping in" among the country's Muslims.

"(There is) no better country than India for Muslims and no better friend than Hindus," said BJP leader Shahnawaz Hussain.


Hussain was reacting to comments Ansari made during an interview with Rajya Sabha TV. Ansari was asked if the recent spate of lynching and violence by cow vigilantes was making the country's Muslim community apprehensive.

Referring to the incidents of lynching and ‘ghar wapsi’ and killings of rationalists as a “breakdown of Indian values”, Ansari said, “breakdown of the ability of the authorities at different levels in different places to be able to enforce what should be normal law enforcing work and over all the very fact that Indianness of any citizen being questioned is a disturbing thought.”