Left liberal worldview hasn't served India; Right liberal one should emerge

Right wing intellectuals, where and when they exist, should not be obsessed with the destruction of the Left.

National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, who doesn’t lean Left, has said that civil society (or NGOs, most of whom do lean Left) can be a problem if it’s vulnerable to foreign manipulation. He is spot on. We saw this during the Kudankulam agitation in 2012.

There are far too many instances of things like this happening for his view to be rejected as being “typical of the BJP”. It is not, and it is worth recalling in this context that the UPA, using its power not to renew permissions under the FCRA, had in effect banned hundreds of NGOs. 

Then, as now, the Left liberals had got very upset. But that’s only because they have always confused individual probity and good intentions with institutional vulnerabilities, if not actually mala fides. 

This vulnerability of NGOs is the result of two factors: money without which they can’t function; and individual gullibility, which takes the donors’ declarations of good faith at face value. 

The underlying principle is a vague undefined liberalism which expands or shrinks depending on who is defining it. The classic example is the constitutional clause on ‘reasonable’ restrictions on free speech. 

India’s Left ‘liberal’ mind can be very illiberal because of this flexible approach to liberalism. It predicates it’s judgement on nothing more concrete than woolly virtuosity, ignoring the fact that the real world is not built on good intentions alone. 

This sort of mind also claims a monopoly on virtue. The underlying principle is that my actions are virtuous because I think so. 

This approach has cost us dearly, not because of virtue but because it lies in the eyes of its current beholder, from Nehru down to Modi who is neither Right nor Left. 

Why Doval is right

So if you peel the 75-year old Indian onion, what remains is the very silly Left liberal worldview because of which we are what we are today: champion middle-of-the-roaders in everything. 

Contrast this with China which has a very strong ideology to which it adheres unwaveringly. That ideology includes a complete rejection of liberalism, Left, Right or Centre. 

Pakistan, on its grimy part, has a religious fixation from which it also will not be budged. This fixation also involves a complete rejection of all shades of liberal values. 

We, in contrast, have neither of these things. We don’t subscribe to any particular political philosophy, other than a deep commitment to electoral democracy. And, we have this very limited view of secularism, namely, the western view which focuses on religion as being a no-no for politics but not caste which is a 1,000 times more divisive. 

So as we near the 75th year of freedom, we need to choose between the amorphous Left liberal view that has a non-definite shape and the right liberal view that should have a concrete shape giving primacy to ideology. You may disagree with that ideology but it’s better than not having an ideology at all. 

But before that can happen the Right needs to move away from its victimhood beliefs--Muslim rule, British rule, Congress rule--and resultant statements. Now it needs to come up with a coherent worldview whose only distinguishing feature isn’t religion. That’s not what a political Right should comprise. 

Nor should it be obsessed with the destruction of the Left view. That is neither necessary nor sufficient. Nor is it desirable because all ideologies need counterpoints. 

But right wing intellectuals, where and when they exist, don’t seem to have grasped this fully. They are still fighting battles already won by both the BJP and the Congress. 

That is so silly.