‘India’s age-old values breaking down’

Outgoing Vice-President Hamid Ansari has said India’s age-old values are breaking down and the ambience of acceptance is now under threat.

“Breakdown of Indian values, breakdown of ability of 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 is being questioned is a disturbing thought,” he said in his parting interview to Rajya Sabha TV.

Talking to journalist Karan Thapar, Ansari said he had shared his apprehensions with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other cabinet ministers.

But he refused to divulge details of their interaction on the plank that “what passes between the Vice President and the Prime Minister in the nature of things must remain in the domain of privileged conversation”.

Although he ruled out the possibility of Indian Muslims getting influenced by ISI and other such elements, he mentioned that it would be a correct assessment to say the Muslim community was feeling insecure.

Ansari, the only two-term Vice-President after S Radhakrishnan, maintained that triple talaq was a social aberration and the reform had to come from within the community. “The religious requirement is crystal clear, emphatic; there are no two views about it but patriarchy, social customs has all crept into it to create a situation which is highly undesirable.”

Former Union minister Venkaiah Naidu has been elected as his successor and Ansari believes there is no reason why the Opposition will not get a fair deal under Naidu’s chairmanship.