Right-of-Center, Please

Seething in the furnace of the French revolution, the great court of the bourbons gave the political world two everlasting terms - left and right. The nomenclature was incidental as the liberals representing the revolutionary masses sat on the left side of the king whereas the courtiers and nobles representing conservative values sat on the right. Ever since that day political parties round the world tend to fall in one of these two categories.

Left and right are terms that are very broad and can present various options ranging from far left to the far right. However parties that stuck to either extremes of the spectrum have never achieved mass appeal proved by the failure of extreme left politics as in the former USSR and extreme right politics as in Nazi Germany. Therefore most successful parties on either side have tended to come to the center leading to the proliferation of center right and center left parties.

However, in India's case owing to the diversity such classifications become very difficult to make. If anything the Congress can be described as a left-of-center party leaning more towards people centric policies. But the absence of a corresponding right-of-center party has been one of its biggest tragedies. This was an ideological space tailor made for the nationalist BJP but due to their bad company which provided it with irrelevant ideological gibberish and its own incompetence lost its way and showed up as a hard line right-wing party. Hence it ended up practicing anti-minoritism and neo-fascism and the sensible people of India rejected them outright not once but twice. The BJP now stands at the cross roads seeking directions. For the good of the nation the BJP must now realise the aspects of a strong right-of-center parthy and align itself with it.

Generally, a strong right-of-center party displays three important characteristics. One, they support a socially conservative order in society by supporting age old institutions like family, marriage etc. and shy away from 'modern' tendencies. Second, they stand for a muscular state which aggressively guards national interests internationally and takes a hard line against enemy countries. Third, they favour the market oriented approach to the economy as opposed to the pro-people policies by supporting big business which they hope will indirectly help the people.

Also the BJP can look at modern successful right-of-center parties in the west to gain inspiration and relevance. The modern right-of-center parties the world around tend to follow three prime examples. Either the Christian democrats of the various European countries or the Conservative party of UK (tories) or the Republican party in USA.

Personally i think the BJP would be better off going the way of the Christian Democrats of Europe. For just like India, 19th century Europe was deeply steeped in religion and cultural nationalism and this over time fostered a slew of extreme right parties which became overtly aggressive. Eventually, this ended up in the rise of various fascist parties around Europe - most notably in Germany and Italy - and this lead to not one but two world wars in the 20th century.

Post-World War II the right-wing parties of Europe found themselves in the same position as today's BJP - defeated and confused. This is when enlightenment dawned upon them and they morphed themselves as right-of-center parties - with strong religious and nationalistic views but tempered by past events and plain old practicality of inclusiveness and moderation. The Christian Democrats have steered Europe away from both Socialism and extreme religious bigotry and have engendered a sense of shared history and religion throughout Europe and thus have helped forge a united Europe. They are a perfect right-of-center model worth emulating the world around.

As i write this the BJP is in a huddle to discuss reasons for their defeat and chart the future course. For India's sake let's hope sanity prevails and the light of enlightenment radiates on them and we get a strong right-of-center party we deserve, the BJP we deserve.