There may be the odd Muslim bureaucrat or judge who will reach the top of the ladder in his profession as the result of a routine promotion. But when it comes to choosing a person for the posts in the higher echelons of the state and the government, only a Hindu will be preferred, including Dalits who are considered by the saffron brotherhood to be a part of the broad Hindu samaj or society even if they are untouchables.

But a Muslim or a Christian will be unacceptable to the present-day rulers in accordance with V.D. Savarkar’s categorization of the two communities as “aliens” since their holy lands (punyabhu) are abroad in Mecca or Rome.

The selection of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam as the president was a one-time exception, which took place when the moderate Atal Behari Vajpayee was the prime minister and when dissenters were not told to leave the country by the rulers at the first sign of a view which was not to their liking.

It is a safe bet, therefore, that the choice of someone like Kalam, who was a nationalist in spite of being a Muslim, as Union culture minister Mahesh Sharma explained, will not be repeated in the foreseeable future.

Ansari, on the other hand, has already acquired the taint of being an anti-national who is better off, therefore, in some other country as an RSS apparatchik has said. For the Hindutva camp, Ansari’s lack of patriotism is evident from his observation before leaving office that the Muslims are feeling insecure in India.

Why they should feel apprehensive when several of them have been killed on the suspicion of eating beef or for trading in cattle is a matter of debate. But what the ruling dispensation is objecting to is that doubts about their security are being raised when all is supposed to be going well in Modi’s new India.

It is another matter that similar misgivings about the existing state of affairs have been voiced by groups of retired bureaucrats and army veterans while a section of scientists have taken to the streets to protest against the spread of obscurantism.

Not long ago, a number of writers, historians, film makers and others in the intelligentsia had returned their awards to express their disquiet about what they saw as the prevailing atmosphere of intolerance.

To the saffronites, however, all these protests are no more than political propaganda, as the new vice-president, Venkaiah Naidu, has said, forgetting that he is no longer a BJP man, as he himself said.

As for Ansari, it would appear that his diplomatic and academic career prior to his appointment as the vice-president by the perennially Muslim-appeasing Congress has landed him in his present predicament when his loyalties are suspect.

As the prime minister took care to point out while bidding farewell to Ansari, the latter’s postings as a diplomat were in the predominantly Muslim West Asia – how inconvenient it would have been if he had had a stint in Israel – and that he had been associated with the minority commission and Aligarh Muslim University.

If only Ansari had the foresight to choose his assignments with care. Indeed, his present discomfiture is a lesson to the few Muslims who are in the foreign or any other administrative service that they must avoid postings in Islamic countries and not be too closely associated with organizations linked to their community in any way.

Otherwise, the danger is that their thought processes may be affected – brain-washed ? – as the prime minister has said. Moreover, it is only after relinquishing office that they can give expression to their “core beliefs”. The sage advice from the prime minister is that Ansari should have waited for a few days before saying what he did.

It is difficult to say what Pranab Mukherjee, who was called a father figure by Modi, will make of the controversy surrounding Ansari. After all, the former president was not in favour of blind conformism, for he recently told the students of the Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata, that being argumentative was better than being intolerant.

The BJP, however, has been exhibiting signs of intolerance ever since the so-called “award wapsi” episode in 2015 which finance minister Arun Jaitley called “manufactured revolt” and agitating students in JNU and other universities last year were called seditious.

Ansari was the last remnant of the Congress raj. With his departure, some kind of a shuddhikaran or purification can be said to have taken place in the corridors of power in Lutyens Delhi and a step forward has been taken towards the fulfillment of the BJP’s dream of a Congress-mukt India. (IPA Service)