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!

Comments

Randeep the melody

Many people in this pic have made their presence in this A2Z series A phone call came from an unknown number the other day. “Is it okay to talk to you now, Sir?” The caller asked. The typical start of a conversation by an influencer. “What’s it about?” My usual response looking forward to something like: “I am so-and-so from such-and-such business firm…” And I would cut the call. But there was a surprise this time. “I am Randeep…” I recognised him instantly. His voice rang like a gentle music in my heart. Randeep was a student from the last class 12 batch of Sawan. One of my favourites. He is unforgettable. Both Maggie and I taught him at Sawan where he was a student from class 4 to 12. Nine years in a residential school create deep bonds between people, even between staff and students. Randeep was an ideal student. Good at everything yet very humble and spontaneous. He was a top sportsman and a prefect with eminent leadership. He had certain peculiar problems with academics. Ans

Queen of Religion

She looked like Queen Victoria in the latter’s youth but with a snow-white head. She was slim, fair and graceful. She always smiled but the smile had no life. Someone on the campus described it as a “plastic smile.” She was charming by physical appearance. Soon all of us on the Sawan school campus would realise how deceptive appearances were. Queen took over the administration of Sawan school on behalf of her religious cult RSSB [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]. A lot was said about RSSB in the previous post. Its godman Gurinder Singh Dhillon is now 70 years old. I don’t know whether age has mellowed his lust for land and wealth. Even at the age of 64, he was embroiled in a financial scam that led to the fall of two colossal business enterprises, Fortis Healthcare and Religare finance. That was just a couple of years after he had succeeded in making Sawan school vanish without a trace from Delhi which he did for the sake of adding the school’s twenty-odd acres of land to his existing hun

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below. Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts

Sanjay and other loyalists

AI-generated illustration Some people, especially those in politics, behave as if they are too great to have any contact with the ordinary folk. And they can get on with whoever comes to power on top irrespective of their ideologies and principles. Sanjay was one such person. He occupied some high places in Sawan school [see previous posts, especially P and Q ] merely because he knew how to play his cards more dexterously than ordinary politicians. Whoever came as principal, Sanjay would be there in the elite circle. He seemed to hold most people in contempt. His respect was reserved for the gentry. I belonged to the margins of Sawan society, in Sanjay’s assessment. So we hardly talked to each other. Looking back, I find it quite ludicrous to realise that Sanjay and I lived on the same campus 24x7 for a decade and a half without ever talking to each other except for official purposes. Towards the end of our coexistence, Sawan had become a veritable hell. Power supply to the

Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Search This Blog