Proponent’s rebuttal
Arghya’s recognises that I divided my argument into two halves, the normative and the descriptive, and he does well to recognise them as such. Having said that, though, he fails to understand them or appreciate them for what they are. So let me reiterate.
I started off with a broad consideration of whether the term “centre-right ideology” (noteideology – I will come to this emphasis in a moment) was fitting and apt to describe an Indian party, or inappropriate. I was well within my grounds as the proponent to do so. When Arghya accuses me of shifting the terms of the debate, he must first concede that as the proponent, these terms were for me to define in the first place. It was my job to set up the debate and outline the grounds I would contest it on. He may not like them, but there they are. But that is a technical issue competitive debaters love to engage with – it draws attention away from substantive shortcomings.
So, why did I do that? Why did I question the very notion that a political party in India could be described as having a centre-right ideology? Well, quite simply because if it is impossible to use the very term in the Indian context, it must follow that India cannot have a party with a centre-right ideology. If the debate fails on normative terms, well, then – it fails.
My opponent’s defence in using such a term in the context of India is – ‘but other countries do’. This ignores the basis of my argument – we are unlike any other country. Our democracy, our polity, our people are unlike any other country. We defy their categorisations. To use their categorisations is to oversimplify us. What fits others doesn’t necessarily fit us.
If, for the sake of argument, we concede for a moment and say that the term “centre-right ideology” can be used in the Indian context. The opposition still cannot win – because they fail to grasp the difference beween ideology and policy. In truth, the only faction in Indian politics that can be said to be based on an ideology off left/right/centre categorisation is the Left. Note what I say – a party based on an ideology framed within left/right/centre terms, not a party pushing policies that might be classified or construed as such. Therefore, whilst the BJP might have policies that can be construed as centre-right, and some excellent policies at that, the ideology of the party cannot be described in the same terms. I am not making value judgements in doing so. I am simply going back to my first point, simply because such a term is inadequate and inappropriate in this context.
The opposition’s arguments seem based on an India that does not exist. In this non-existent India, the opposition would like parties to be based on ideologies that come packaged with neat labels. In the real India, this is not the case, and they admit as much: Arghya writes that “in India today, such arguments seem fanciful given the utter dearth of basic necessities in people’s lives”. The truth is that Indian politics is won or lost not on the basis of “sensitive issues of state policy”. This is why, as Arghya himself writes, every candidate has to raise the rhetoric of “roti, kapda aur makaan”. The Indian voter wants to know what will be done about the villages without water. The Indian voter wants to know what will be done about the young people without jobs. The Indian voter wants to know what will be done about the farmers committing suicide.
This is not undesirable. It means that the Indian polity is evolving in a way which forces parties to take cognisance of, and engage with local issues even if for the sake of a vote bank. Hence the rise of coalition politics and regional parties.
My opponent writes that the BJP is guided by the principles of “integral humanism” laid down by Deen Dayal Upadhyay, calling for a society based on universal brotherhood and the romanticised Gandhian belief of India as a Ram rajya. Nothing in that definition screams “centre-right”. Unlike, say, the Conservative party or UKIP in the UK, which immediately sounds the bell of “lower taxation”, or “euro-scepticism”, for example.
Don’t get me wrong – I am not therefore de facto saying that the BJP is therefore a far-right party, and Arghya is misguided in launching into a defensive. I am saying that no Indian party can be seen to be based on a centre-right ideology. We may identify elements of centre-right policy (and indeed individuals who support such policies like Mr Advani) in the policies that parties may subscribe to, but then, that can hardly be said to constitute the driving ideology.
What drives ideology? And is there need to define it? Arghya suggests that the BJP’s ideology is based on “foreign policy hawkishness, market-centric economics, a hard stance on illegal immigrants and a separation of religion and state”. True, these are the policies we expect from the BJP stable. But is anyone in this election fighting on those grounds? Pushing those agendas? Is the election not, ultimately, personality based? Which is why the Gandhi-vad on the one-side, and the highlighting of Mr Vajpayee’s legacy and achievements on the other. Because ultimately, the policies of more jobs, less poverty, better defence, can be ascribed across the political spectrum. No party, except the Left bloc, defines itself in terms of a left/right ideology. And is this not because of the unique nature of Indian politics?
The fact that we have to work so hard to isolate such examples shows that we’re using the wrong means of measurement. We’re trying to measure humidity in degrees C. In the opposition’s own words, “instances don’t dictate ideology”.
The proponent: Krishna Omkar is reading for a DPhil in Sociology at Merton College, where he gained an MPhil. He is a former convenor of the Oxford Intervarsity Debate and a member of the British Debate Squad
Date: April 2, 2009
Oxford Indian Society - Debates 
April 5, 2009 at 12:22 pm
If the UKIP can be described as “centre-right” based on its euroscepticism, then wouldn’t the same logic also apply to parties like the Shiv Sena, Akali Dal and Asom Gana Parishad, all of which have at the core of their existence notions of ethnic/linguistic/religious nationalism? Incidentally, all of these parties are currently in the NDA, and in fact are the only significant allies the BJP has left, with the exception of Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) in Bihar. So perhaps it is not inappropriate to describe the NDA as a “centre-right” coalition, even more so now than when it was in power and represented a more diverse range of ideologies.
Also, I think we should be careful not to get too enamoured of the notion of Indian exceptionalism. We are all proud of our rich and varied heritage and culture, and justifiably so. At the same time, the forces which shape democratic politics are essentially the same in India as elsewhere: human needs and aspirations, the constant battle between different facets of human nature, such as brotherhood, loyalty, generosity, greed, suspicion, hatred. Clearly terms like “left” and “right” are always massive oversimplifications in the context of political ideologies, since they seek to classify along a single dimension entities which are much more complex and may even have infinitely many dimensions. However, to the extent that these terms do help us to at least obtain a vague, high-level understanding of political streams of thought, I think they are as applicable to parties in India as to those in the west.