Watching the Indian election news at BBC, I was struck by BBC's description of BJP as "Hindu nationalist party". I always had this thought ingrained in the mind probably by the Indian media that BJP is the party on the right while communists are on the left with the INC at the centre moving from left to right during its long history. So I get to research what does "right" and "left" means in terms of political divide.
In United States the republican party which are rightist have the small government as their major agenda while the democrats supposed to be party of the left favos presence of a larger benficial government . Similar divisions exist between Labor and Tory parties in England though the New Labor by Tony Blair deviated from the extreme left to much more centre left by reducing taxes on the rich though continuing large public spending. A more elaborate research is required to understand the historical legacy of these terms but lets take these two countries as example and see where the Indian political parties sit on the spectrum.
The communist parties are definitely leftmost of the spectrum with their agenda of large government with anti privatization and dis-investment policies. The Congress has been traditionally supporter of socialist governance, moved to 1991 towards market reforms but never espoused the agenda of free markets and smaller governments in its long history. In the last 5 years, it has moved more to the left and is certainly currently left of the centre in the political spectrum. So where does that leave BJP. BJP has actively supported self-dependence as its economic policies against the economic reforms of 1991. During the Vajpayee times, though it pressed on some of the market reforms, divested some of the PSUs. While fighting for the last elections, I also didnt hear any support of market during the speeches though I have to admit that I didnt went through their mainfesto. This puts BJP also in the left to the centre spectrum.
So what we have finally is that all Indian political parties exist on the left of the centre and there is none on the right. The reasons can be found out in the socialist past of India's history. There seems to be very people supporting Friedman, Anglo/Saxon economics.
Another thing we shall discuss here is that the "right" is also related to conservative movement. In most cases, we see the intermingling of the conservatives and the right. Conservativism means maintaining the status quo. So in economics, this in cases is interpreted as maintaining the status quo of earlier century where individualism entreprenurial spirit was given a higher priority than government in economic growth. The concept of welfare state is a very modern one in the history of civilizations. So here a conservative movement co-opts the right in the economic matters. But this conservative movement also extends its political policies in matters of faith. Here it means keeping the tradition which means more adherence to religious orthodoxy and issues like opposition to gay rights, abortions etc comes into play while the liberals wants accomodation of views of all so that no-one is persecuted due to their views.
Under this definition, BJP can be categorized as conservative movement but this also requires a re-visiting of history. If India as an entity is supposed to be under foreign rule under the Mughals, then the status quo will mean that all Muslims are foreigners and by that logic the Indian state shall favor Hindu customs and traditions and discriminate against othe religions if their beliefs come in opposition against Hindu beliefs. So it finally comes to reading of history for your own convenience and that is the case for any political party. Also BJP or its sister outfits has opposed western customs in cases and also their opposition against painters/artists who dont support their view of India set them in the conservative mould. But I have seen similar protests from the Congress in some cases for electoral gains. But if we compare these two, BJP will certainly win hands down in being the flagbearer of the conservative idealogy. The conclusion is that BJP can be described as occupying a Hindu nationalist conservative position.
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