Hamid Ansari is India's man of the hour

JYOTI MALHOTRA

New Delhi, July 20, 2007 : As the grainy images of Saddam Hussein, with the noose around his neck and a handful of Kurds taunting the former dictator were flashed around the world over new year’s eve, thousands of Indians were appalled with the brutal act of American revenge.

The Ministry of External Affairs, at the time visibly warming up to a nuclear deal with the US that would help India arrive on the high table, feebly announced that it was ``disappointed’’ with the US move.

But one former Indian diplomat, Hamid Ansari, who had earned his spurs in the same elite Foreign Service, was not afraid to speak up.

Pointing out that the hanging had taken place on Eid, a day of celebration for Muslims all over the world, Ansari said in an interview with rediff.com : ``Why has Saddam been executed today? This is not a measure of justice, this is a measure of revenge and celebration…The timing of Saddam’s hanging is vicious and cannot be accidental.’’

As chairman of the National Minorities Commission, you could argue it was none of Ansari’s business to speak out on such a major incident. After all, he was no longer only a private citizen.

That is the point, though. The mild-mannered Hamid Ansari may be soft-spoken, but when he wishes he can make himself heard very clearly.

Perhaps the fact that he was born in loquacious Calcutta in 1937 has something to do with it. Ansari’s father was an insurance man, so he traveled to Shimla to do his schooling, but returned to Calcutta in the Fifties to invest in his growing-up years at St. Xavier’s college. From here he went to the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), where he was to return four decades later as its Vice-Chancellor.

Ansari is, of course, best known as a scholar of West Asia. After he joined the IFS in 1961, he specialised in the Arab world, where he spent many years as ambassador on both sides of the Shia-Sunni divide, in Saudi Arabia (where he was posted thrice) and Iran, Afghanistan and the UAE. Ansari speaks both Arabic and Persian, but he can turn on the charm in Urdu, Hindi and English equally fluently.

Although the Left is being credited with picking Ansari as a Vice-Presidential candidate today, fact is, as Chief of Protocol (from 1980-85), he often rubbed shoulders with Indira Gandhi, who took such close and personal interest in foreign affairs. And so in 1983, when Mrs Gandhi organised what must still rank as one of India’s best conferences ever, the Non-Aligned Summit (when Fidel Castro gave Indira Gandhi a bear hug), Ansari was in minute-to-minute control of what was happening.

Former journalist Dilip Padgaonkar, now a co-member of the Minorities Commission says that when Ansari isn’t getting what he wants, he becomes even more amiable. So when the Commission report on the abysmal conditions of Muslims displaced by the Gujarat riots of 2002 was going nowhere, Ansari employed his persuasive skills to cut through the political-bureauratic slack of Delhi – at an iftaar party hosted by the PM last year – to ensure that the PM read the report.

The Home ministry is now implementing those recommendations.

And as for the criticism that Ansari has not been in active political life, friends argue that he has had enough experience with people – and nations – both as India’s permanent representative at the UN and as V-C of AMU. ``If you’ve served in the academic council of the AMU,’’ said a friend, ``handling the sound and fury of the Rajya Sabha is a piece of cake.’’

Padgaonkar recalls the time when he and Ansari, as representatives of the Minorities Commission, travelled to Nandigram a couple of months ago, trying to inquire why 14 people had died in police firing. Were they ``real’’ policemen, the two asked the question again and again, or were they CPM party cadres dressed up in police clothing?

When scores of villagers repeatedly answered that the massacre had indeed been conducted in cold blood by party cadres, Ansari asked how they were so sure?

Then one man replied : ``The uniform on real policemen are usually very tight because they have such fat stomachs. But most party cadres are thin, so the uniforms were hanging on them. Moreover, regular policemen wear leather shoes. Here, these men were wearing rubber chappals.’’

The Nandigram report, after conversations with Buddhadev Bhattacharjee and Gopal Gandhi, found that the killings may have been the result of colossal state failure, but they were not a communal incident.

ENDS