Fortuitous or not, By Many a Happy Accident is an account of aife of unplanned happenings that took M. Hamid Ansari away from his preferred fancy for academia to professional diplomacy and then be co-opted in publicife and catapulted to the second highest office in theand for two consecutive terms. None of his predecessors, except Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, had experienced this honour. Besides chairing the Rajya Sabha and shedding interestingight on some of its functional aspects, Ansari used the vice presidency as a formidable pulpit to express himself candidly on a range of issues at different times in India’s changing politicalandscape. Their overarching theme was the need for modern India to re-commit itself to the constitutional principles of justice,iberty, equality and fraternity, to the values of a composite culture, and for correctives in polity relating to identity, security and empowerment of the weaker segments of our society.