Participating in a discussion on his book “By Many a Happy Accident: Recollections of a Life”, he said his Muslim-ness did not matter and his professional competence did. Am I a citizen or not? If I am a citizen, I have the right to be a beneficiary of all things that flow out of citizenship,” he said. “A plural society was an existential reality in India for centuries,” he noted.
Former Union minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, who was also part of the discussion, said he and Ansari are both pained as the developments of the last several years are “threatening those who are Muslims”.
“Muslim identity is being deliberately targeted in India and the current dispensation is targeting them viciously,” Chidambaram alleged.
Ansari said the debate on Muslim identity is “somewhat superfluous” as each one has multiple identities.
“I carry several identities all at the same time. Why should one identity be picked out simply to be ridiculed. A citizen is a citizen, he said. When I was in the UN at a difficult time my Muslim-ness did not matter. My professional competence mattered, he added. I worked as professional diplomat that time too my Muslim-ness didn’t mattered,” he said.
Another Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said politics in recent years has narrowed the space for a person like Ansari in Indian public life. He said people like Ansari in public life are a pride for every India.
The prime minister and his people make no effort to conceal their disdain for many aspects of Islam, Muslim culture and are quite belligerent about it, Tharoor alleged, noting that there is definitely going to be a challenge for Indian Muslims because of this.
In “By Many a Happy Accident”, published by Rupa Publications, Ansari talks about his days in academia, diplomacy and then in the country’s second highest office for two consecutive terms (2007-2017)