What Government Should Have Done Differently With Hamid Ansari

Sunday, June 21, saw the commemoration of the first International Yoga Day. This was an initiative promoted by the Narendra Modi government and showcasing the softer side of India's diplomatic influence. True, yoga has been around and has been popular for years. Yet, the worldwide identification of yoga with India and its Indian roots, and the mobilization of thousands for a rare people's festival - as opposed to military parade - in the heart of the Indian capital was clearly well worth the effort.

It is a commentary on our times that satisfactory accomplishments come accompanied by trivial controversies. In this case, it was about the participation or otherwise of Vice-President Hamid Ansari in the Yoga Day events. Why wasn't he there? Did he choose to stay away? How could he come if he wasn't invited in the first place? Did protocol allow the Vice-President to be invited to an event where the Prime Minister was the chief guest? The questions have been swirling.

The debate has been nasty and tiresome. It does nobody any good, least of all those who seek to criticize and bring into contention the office of the Vice-President. Irrespective of the incumbent, the office has a certain sanctity to it, and this must be respected.

Presidents and Vice-Presidents have had their differences with governments of the day. Rajendra Prasad and S Radhakrishnan disagreed with Jawaharlal Nehru, even though they were all part of the Congress stream. KR Narayanan had differences with the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government on judicial selections and on what he felt was a pro-American tilt in foreign policy. APJ Abdul Kalam and the Manmohan Singh government had their troubles as well.

As politics has got more fragmented, the dynamic between a President/Vice-President and a government has got that much more complex. When Hamid Ansari was sent to the Vice-Presidency by the UPA government in 2007, he was actually a nominee of the CPI(M). While he may have been close to individuals in the Congress, Ansari was politically proximate to the Left. His selection was seen as Manmohan Singh's attempt to buy peace with Prakash Karat.

Nevertheless differences did arise. Both before and after Ansari came to office, the UPA government voted at the International Atomic Energy Agency against Iran's nuclear programme. The BJP backed it, indicating a degree of national consensus. It was well-known in Delhi that Ansari was unhappy at India opposing Iran - rather than staying out of what he presumably felt was a United States-Iran affair. To be fair, Ansari and the government kept any major arguments behind closed doors.

Did Ansari feel the way he did on the Iran vote because he was a Muslim? That would be a cruel conclusion. It is much more likely that as an old West Asia hand, one schooled in the non-aligned postulates of foreign policy, he saw India breaking away from traditional positions. Some of his contemporaries in the Foreign Service and the strategic community - a majority of them non-Muslim - felt similarly.

What is the purpose of that background? It is to emphasise that analyzing the Ansari-Modi government equation - or, narrowly, Ansari's participation or otherwise on Yoga Day - purely in Hindu-Muslim or denominational terms is ridiculous and does the Vice-President a disservice. Those who claim to be Ansari's critics or adherents on this count choose to deliberately ignore that the transactionalism of governance in Delhi rarely runs on these lines. There is a difference between expostulating on Twitter or in an impassioned op-ed piece, and the nuanced, calibrated, pragmatic (even cynical) ways of statecraft.

Ideally, the Vice-President shouldn't have been brought into a controversy at all. If the Prime Minister was the chief guest at the main event, obviously the Vice-President couldn't be invited for a lesser role, and the matter could have rested there. Since International Yoga Day was a new, precedent-setting occasion for the Indian state, perhaps the government could have found separate roles - even token ones, before or after the main event, even at other locations - for the President and the Vice-President.

This was not mandatory but could have been used to anticipate and defuse any manufactured controversy. Whatever else he is, Hamid Ansari is a stickler for propriety and protocol. That is what his training in the Indian Foreign Service has taught him. If he had been given a role, he would have done his duty to a T.

The question may be asked as to how the government could have guessed a controversy would be manufactured. Frankly, it has happened repeatedly with Ansari over the past year, primarily because of some wild voices on Twitter and media critics of the Modi government who insist on trying to paint it as the embodiment of bigotry.

It is time for the government to pre-empt such situations with deft political management. This is not rocket science, and not something the government wouldn't want to do anyway. Tellingly, confidants of the Vice-President say that when the Prime Minister and senior ministers call on him, they actually show exemplary courtesy.

The Vice-President is also the chair of the Rajya Sabha. This gives his office a protocol as well as a crucial legislative role. In a House where it lacks a majority and on the eve of a Monsoon Session that threatens to be a complete washout, the government would want a Chair who is fair and sometimes even a little sympathetic to the legislative process, helping to nudge or cajole difficult opposition MPs. These attributes are not contradictory; they have happily coexisted in Parliament for decades.

The Chair takes subjective, often impromptu calls on calling a division or adjourning or not adjourning a house. There is not always a rulebook to follow, the Chair has to go by his gut sense. Just as it is not advisable for a cricketer to pick a fight with an umpire on the day before a test match, it is worth it for a government to keep up a civilised engagement with the Chair of the Upper House. This is not a bribe or an inducement, it is just an appeal to human nature - and to tact, the oldest instrument in politics.

(The author is senior fellow, Observer Research Foundation. He can be reached at malikashok@gmail.com)

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