Mohammad Hamid Ansari was born in Calcutta (now renamed Kolkata) on April 1, 1937, though his family hailed from Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh. The grand nephew of former Congress President Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari, a leader of the Indian independence movement, Ansari studied at Shimla's St. Edwards High School and St. Xavier's College of the University of Calcutta.
A two-doctorate degree holder, he joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1961. He was Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia, and High Commissioner to Australia. He also served as New Delhi’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations based in New York.
Ansari has been a distinguished academic and was Vice-Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University and was a Visiting Professor at the Centre for West Asian and African Studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University and at the Academy for Third World Studies in Jamia Millia Islamia.
Ansari has written extensively on West Asia and is also known for airing his views on Iraq and Iran. These views were often contrarian to India's official stance on those issues. In the most famous of them, which was published by the Outlook newsweekly in its October 10, 2005, issue, he questioned India's vote in the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran's nuclear programme. He said that New Delhi's claims to have acted on "its own judgment" was not borne out by facts.
Hamid Ansari was awarded the Padma Shree in 1984. He also took a leading role in pushing for a complete re-look into the relief and rehabilitation for riot victims since 1984 after he became the chairman of the National Commission for Minorities in 2006.
Ansari has authored "Travelling Through Conflict: Essays on the Politics of West Asia" and edited a seminal work on Iran titled "Iran Today: Twenty–five Years after the Islamic Revolution."
On 20 July 2007, Ansari was named by the UPA-Left combine as its candidate for the post of Vice-President. Ansari won the election by a margin of 233 votes against his nearest rival Najma Heptullah of NDA.
In 2012, Hamid Ansari was pitted against NDA's nominee Jaswant Singh. He was re-elected as Vice-President for the second term. He won by a margin of 252 votes on 7 August 2012.
Comments
0 comment