New Delhi: The outgoing Vice President Hamid Ansari has said that Muslims in the country were experiencing "a feeling of unease".

"A sense of insecurity is creeping in" as a result of the dominant mood created by some and the resultant intolerance and vigilantism, he said in his last interview before demitting the office of India's vice-president.

Ansari also said he shared the view of many that intolerance was growing. 

In hard-hitting remarks during an interview to Rajya Sabha TV, he ascribed the spate of vigilante violence, mob lynchings, beef bans and "Ghar Wapsi" campaigns to a "breakdown of Indian values" and to the "breakdown of the ability of the authorities" to enforce the law. "...and overall, the very fact that (the) Indianness of any citizen (is) being questioned is a disturbing thought," Ansari said.

When asked why he thought Indian values were "suddenly" breaking down, Vice-President Hamid Ansari said, “Because we are a plural society that for centuries, not for 70 years, has lived in a certain ambience of acceptance."

He said this acceptance was "under threat". "This propensity to be able to assert your nationalism day in and day out is unnecessary. I am an Indian and that is it," he told Rajya Sabha TV.

Ansari demits an office that only S Radhakrishnan had occupied as long as 10 years today.