An old and completely pointless debate and allegations regarding Right and Left has gained in intensity after the BJP won the last three Assembly elections. But this debate is nonsensical in the Indian context.

Soon after Rajiv Gandhi presented his first Budget in February 1985, a debate started whether India was turning ‘Right’ merely because taxes had been cut a little bit. Much ink flowed, literally over a few tax rates.

Those days Right and Left were terms reserved for economic policy. But after the Congress made the economic Right respectable in 1985, they have been applied only to social policy.

Thus overall, regardless of how Left a government’s economic policy — distribution oriented, that is — Right is now what the Left says it is. And that too mainly in the attitude — not policy, mind — with respect to Muslims. Nothing else matters.

So reforming Hindu social practices was progressive in the 1950s but reforming Muslim social practices now is regressive. Indeed, the moment you say Muslims, instead of minorities, you get labelled Right.

The ‘liberal’ Left is thus making the Muslims invisible. You can’t talk about them or their problems even though there are 200 million of them. Half of them vote.

Bane of labels

To this Left habit of labelling people and then binning them have now been added the terms fascist and democratic.

The Right is fascist by definition and the Left is democratic by assumption.

Fascism has three major characteristics: group over individual; nationalism; and strong government.

If you applied this test to, say, the governments between 1952 and 1964 they were all fascist. Indeed it applies to all countries.

But Jawaharlal Nehru was not at all a fascist. He was merely woolly headed and often acted in very contradictory ways.

But this was inevitable because, the world over, governments have to put group interests over individual interests.

And that’s the paradox of democracy: individuals choose governments that oppress them by ignoring them.

Meanwhile, for the liberals, a practice is automatically democratic if the Left does it and automatically fascist if the Right does it, regardless of the fact that this is actually the opposite of what’s true.

If you look closely, all regional parties, the Congress and the CPM are actually all quite fascist.

The Congress therefore prefers family rule.

The regional parties therefore prefer caste based groups as well as family rule. And the CPM prefers collectivism where the individual can go and, well, you know what he can do to himself.

Irrelevant labels

In short, the Left-Right labels are totally irrelevant in India. They have become mere terms of abuse. And it’s the Left that is solely responsible for this because it has used labels to mask its intellectual bankruptcy.

In all this labelling, a good but old fashioned term has been lost sight of: appropriate. Thanks to the Left, no one any longer asks if a policy is appropriate. It’s either fascist or undemocratic.

But you know what? These Left-Right terms mean nothing to Indian voters. This is what successive elections in India since 1952 have proved.

There’s a reason for this. These terms are European, or to be absolutely precise, French.

Left and Right were the terms used in the French National Assembly in the period leading up to the French Revolution in 1789.

Those wanting reform sat on the left of the Speaker and those with the monarchy sat on the right. In India, it’s the Left that doesn’t want reform. That’s another Indian paradox.

What sort of oppression?

That said, the fear of oppression is justified. But it’s important to look at what the politicians won’t tell you.

This is that in India oppression is not ideological.

A Hindu India will not be any different from British India or Congress India because we have retained the colonial system of governance, which was based on brute force.

The colonial system, at its core, was based on two principles. One, repression and two, the extraordinary empowerment of the lowest rungs of government. This wasn’t the case in Britain.

Think of the police constable or the tax inspector in India. Their powers are inversely proportional to their rank as is their freedom to act against the citizens on mere suspicion.

All political parties use this system to their own political advantage. This is also why so many people want to work in the government. It’s for the power to oppress.

But I don’t see anyone from the Left asking to change this. Instead, they bang on about democracy, secularism, freedom and so on. They forget that you can have all this and yet, if you have the colonial structure, it’s all just hot air.

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