India doesn't have a right wing
Open a newspaper anywhere in the world and if there’s some reportage on India, the BJP will usually be described as fascist, right-wing, nationalist1, identitarian, far-right, xenophobic, anti-democratic, divisive, exclusionary or majoritarian2. Analyses adopt a Western perspective, quietly carrying its political baggage along. The left-right spectrum is familiar to everyone. Superimposing this distinction on Indian politics creates an illusion of understanding3.
The 'Indian right wing' is a mirage—an illusion conjured by forcing a foreign framework onto a civilization. Can a civilization with no history of liberalism or conservatism have a ‘right wing’?
What does right wing mean?
In the 18th century French Revolution, members supporting the monarchy while maintaining existing power structures sat to the right of the assembly president. The concept has evolved to embody traditionalism, institutional fidelity, property rights, and skepticism of abrupt societal shifts.
Right wing thought reached its apogee during World War II with Nazism and Fascism. Both Mussolini and Hitler described their ideologies as right wing — specifically railing against socialism, communism and Bolshevism.
In present day usage, the Right spans from free market advocates to hardline ethno-nationalists. Across the Western world, Christianity is strongly correlated with right-wing thought. In the US, the vast majority of evangelical Protestants and Mormons lean strongly Republican. Christians in the UK consistently vote conservatively too. Because Muslims to the Western world are often immigrants, they tend to vote for left-wing parties.
Across the Western world, right wing parties — AfD and CDU in Germany, Conservative Party of Canada, National Rally of France, Brothers of Italy, Netherlands’ Party for Freedom, the Republican Party in the US— vary in their degrees of ethno-nationalism, racism, and anti-immigration stances. As Muslim immigration rises in Europe, these parties increasingly position themselves against multiculturalism and, by extension, immigration itself4.
Right-Wing Economics
Economics is the other dimension of political thought. Free market proponents are considered right wing5. Deregulation, the kind that DOGE is now doing, is firmly within the space of right wing politics6. Both of these are right wing coded, but they really shouldn’t be. Deregulation and free markets should be ideologically neutral.
In my view, there are two core pillars of right-wing economics: fiscal conservatism and low taxes. Fiscal conservatism necessarily implies an opposition to the welfare state. If fiscal deficit needs to be kept in control, welfare checks are the first to go. Similarly, lower taxes are often favoured by high earners. That brings them directly in conflict with the Left’s preference for the worker class.
What does it mean to be left-wing?
Everyone conflates leftism and liberalism. In modern day parlance, left wing has come to signify Statism, welfare state, economic redistribution, high taxes7, and identity politics. At least in the US, it seems that the Democrats have been increasingly captured by extreme left wing progressives. Classical liberalism8 on the other hand is increasingly becoming right-wing coded.
Identity politics is the breeding ground where left-wing politics thrives, and without it, their entire ideology would crumble. As envisioned by Karl Marx, the edifice of left wing politics is the class revolution of proletariat against the bourgeois. The current version of leftism applies the same oppressor-oppressed lens to all problems in society. Patriarchy is the oppression of women by men. Capitalism is the oppression of the working class by the elite. Religion is the opium of the masses used by the elite as a method of control. I can go on — you get the gist!
Further, across the world, Critical Race Theory (CRT) is gaining steam. It is left wing ideas applying hierarchies and the same oppressor-oppressed lens to different social structures across the world.
Economically, left wing means significant state control. The bedrock of communism-socialism is a planned economy. The state is supposedly an omnipresent and omniscient actor that can efficiently allocate resources in an economy. In practice, it devolves into corruption quite fast9. The USSR wasn’t able to match the US’s production during the Cold War and that led to its split.
India has a left wing…
The global left is united in viewing the world through the same lens irrespective of time and space. They’ll probably view prehistoric social structures through class hierarchies. They’ll also use it to view societies as disparate as China, India and the West.
India has a thriving left wing ecosystem. It has multiple Communist Parties, one of which has been banned. Their economic ideas are of the usual socialist variety: antithetical to corporations, big welfare state10, and the iconic “tax the rich”11. Just as leftists in the US protest against racism, Communists protest against casteism. They apply a modified version of CRT to Indian society called the Critical Caste Theory (CCT). Essentially, any success anyone has in Indian society is due to their being upper caste12 and nothing else13.
Rahul Gandhi often employs standard left wing tropes, that includes questioning merit itself. CRT’s core premise—simplified here—argues that White-designed systems are so structurally racist that they inherently obstruct Black success. They consider racism to be inherent because they’re designed by Whites. Rahul Gandhi applies the exact concept to Indian politics. He argues that because the upper castes have designed the system, it is inherently antagonistic to SCs and STs.
Going through the Congress manifesto for the 2024 general elections, one commenter aptly put it as “Rahul Gandhi having entered Sitaram Yechury’s mindspace”. The Congress manifesto had so much spending that adding it all up exceeded India’s annual budget by one order of magnitude14.
… but doesn’t have a right wing
Interestingly, there’s no oppositional right wing thought in India to counter the Left’s politics.
Within a democracy, how is left wing ideology countered? Usually, there will be a party that espouses free markets and limited welfare on the economic side. Right wing parties will also generally counter the left’s social agenda by emphasizing traditional values, practices and institutions. Often as a response, right wing parties will overemphasize native populations and become less open to change. They’ll also be against immigration and multiculturalism15.
India has no party that fits this definition.
The claim that the BJP is India’s right-wing party holds no weight—unless we reduce ‘right-wing’ to merely opposing the Left.
What makes BJP Non-Left rather than Right?
Going through the BJP’s manifesto for the general election, there’s a lot of welfare going around. That’s targeted welfare, rather than the Congress’s spray and pray strategy. It increased the social safety net for seniors, subsidizing medical care for almost all of them. There’s generous subsidies for farmers, labourers and citizens battling the poverty line.
The BJP is fiscally responsible, a trait usually associated with right-wing thought16. It maintains a low fiscal deficit, in spite of Covid straining budgetary finances. Yet, it fails to reign in public spending on Public Sector Units (PSUs). It infused billions of rupees into failing PSUs like BSNL. After privatizing Air India, it completely gave up its disinvestment agenda. Modi came to power saying that the “government has no business being in business”, and yet PSUs continue to get state patronage. There’s not even a political argument that can be made here. There need not be mass layoffs and the government doesn’t even need to sell its entire stake. It just needs to sell enough to get its stake below 51%. Selling at market value will also prevent accusations of impropriety.
Leftists support affirmative action. India has implemented the mother of all affirmative action policies: Reservations. Whereas most Western countries implement affirmative action as a soft preference for disadvantaged groups, India implements hard quotas for disadvantaged groups. This is identity politics on steroids. Quotas diffuse into almost every political discussion. Anytime a group feels disadvantages? Demand for quotas. Feeling poor? Demand quotas. It ends polluting most discussions.
The BJP staunchly supports affirmative action, having expanded quotas to include a 10% reservation for economically weaker sections. In states like Maharashtra, it even entertains demands from the Marathas—the largest demographic group—for additional quotas in state institutions. Indeed, any other action would be political suicide for any party in India.
Left wing thought eschews tradition because it perpetuates existing class hierarchies. It often gets into loggerheads with religions over existing social practices. A good example here is abortion with most Christians being against it and leftist activists being firmly in the pro-choice camp. The BJP on the other hand is freely reformist. It celebrates all icons, including those that significantly reformed Indian society. Icons like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Lokmanya Tilak, Savitribai Phule and Dr. Ambedkar are celebrated and given a place of pride in the polity.17 In fact, it is the sole party that is in favour of a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) that will bring civil practices of all religions into the modern age. This reformation instinct is usually associated with liberal, rather than conservative, ideologies.
The Indian populace is multicultural. Depending on the definition of religion, there are hundreds of different faith systems practiced in the subcontinent18. There are hundreds of languages — 22 official ones — and thousands of dialects. There are multiple ethnicities as well. Calling the Indian polity as ethno-nationalist is indefensible. The current Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) grants citizenship to persecuted minorities of all its neighbors freely19. That is the entire ethos of liberalism. There are some ethno-linguistic movements in Bangalore and Mumbai, but they’re very limited and will fizzle out in time with economic progress.
Even with regards to tax, the Congress was heckling the BJP for not reducing Goods and Sales Tax (GST) which affected the poorest. The BJP on the other hand, is increasingly focused on increasing the tax base and tax revenues — although it did deliver a major tax cut this year. This completely switches the ordinary left-right binary.
The biggest charge against the BJP is that it is trying to build a Hindu nation through its Hindutva ideology. Again, European ideologies of a nation are superimposed onto Indian society. Put concisely, Hindutva defines anyone having loyalty to the civilization state of India as Hindu. They may be a practising Muslim, Christian, Jew, Tantrik, Hindu, Buddhist or any other animist religion. As long as they hold loyalty to the nation, they’re Hindu. This is the broadest definition for a nation that I have come across. With this definition, even Margaret Noble20 was considered Hindu, although she was born Christian. In fact, it is extremely complementary to Leftists’ globalist thought. While debating this, the origins of the ideology in pre-independent India must be considered.
Meaning of Non-Left
The space for the Left is small. The Congress’s voter base reduces with every passing year. It only attracts minorities and anti-BJP voters. It doesn’t have anything to offer. Additionally, the extreme left policies of the Congress often turn off centrist voters. As a result, the BJP has become the big tent where even ideologically voters combine. I’ll briefly list the various factions of the BJP. These categories overlap, and priorities vary within each group.
Traditionalists (Trads): Emphasize cultural heritage, opposing Westernization.
Nationalists: Prioritize national identity, security, and global cultural influence.
Economic Liberals: Advocate free markets, deregulation, and privatization.
Cultural Conservatives: Uphold traditional norms on family, gender, and religion.
Hindutva Ideologues: Seek to establish India as a Hindu nation (but not as a Hindu state, a crucial distinction).
Pragmatists: Focus on governance, economic growth, and national security over ideology.
I have created a graph here, where the X-axis goes from a Planned Economy to a Free Market and the Y-Axis goes from Progressive to Traditional. I put in some European parties in the graph where I understood them to be. As you can see, the BJP and the INC are firmly in the lower left quadrant according to their economic and social policies. I can’t call BJP free market without abusing the term.
For a detailed rundown, check out the introduction to the non-Left by OpIndia.
So what’s in a name?
Labels are useful for humans, because they reduce entire concepts to a single word. Instead of explaining my entire philosophy, I could just use liberal or conservative. With that I communicate multiple books’ worth of philosophy. Isn’t that amazing?
Because labels contain such power, using the wrong labels, conveys incorrect information about the labeled object. The world over, right wingers are associated with xenophobia, free markets, ethno-nationalism and other negative adjectives. I don’t want to get into the merits of the labels. What I want to emphasize is that these traditional labels don’t apply to India because of the depth of its polity and the vastness of its history. Because Europe and the US were colonized by Christianity, their approach to religion and politics is completely different from India’s approach to religion and politics. I like to call this ‘Abrahamic Privilege’. The labels were developed from European experiences with political development.
Applying these labels on to a vast civilizational culture like India is tantamount to erasure. Indians need to understand this too because comprehending internal politics through external labels leads to mental colonization. It is akin to Inception.
This isn’t a compliment in any way. Western progressives have grown to detest nationalism so much that there are budding postnational movements in almost all Western democracies. Justin Trudeau said that Canada is a post-national state proudly and now the Khalistani issue is laid bare for everyone to see.
I didn’t have to search very long for news articles containing these adjectives. I have linked the first result after searching “<adjective> BJP”. These searches yield plenty more articles.
Unfortunately, this way of looking at politics is common even among Indians. The urban elite is often more informed about global politics. Projecting Western ideologies on to Indian politics is natural.
There is also a rebound in White Supremacist groups across Europe and in the US. A lot of the chatter is limited to X (formerly Twitter) and other online spaces. It doesn’t take long for online chatter to spill into the real world, though.
I have no idea why free market enthusiasts are often termed fiscal conservatives/right-wing. If liberalism is considered a left wing principle, applying it to economics gives you free markets. Why then are free market proponents considered right wing?
Deregulation is a much more nuanced topic. On the whole deregulation benefits incumbents in any field. Incumbents have much greater market and financial power to deal with cumbersome regulations. Incumbents often lobby for regulation which often helps in stifling competition. Deregulation shouldn’t really be seen as right wing.
There is a sliding scale here rather than a binary. In general, state intervention must be carefully thought out and minimal. As Milton Friedman said, “There’s nothing as permanent as a temporary government program”.
The one that emphasizes free markets, laissez-faire economics and civil liberties under rule of law.
There doesn’t exist any successful socialist economy. Some will counteract this by saying that “True socialism has never been tried”. I’ll just point to the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Even though India isn’t rich enough to afford welfare.
But don’t forget to take donations from them!
This includes everyone except SCs/STs.
Ironically, communists were in charge of West Bengal for about 35 years. In that time, West Bengal and Kolkata went from being India’s economic and intellectual hub to being one of India’s poorest governed states.
For those willing to do the calculations, India’s budget for 2025-2026 is Rs 50,00,000 crore. Adding up the promised redistributions ends up being a much much higher number.
As can be seen in Europe.
Because socialism involves high welfare, it is difficult to be fiscally responsible. Just see how much trouble France is having in reducing its pensions that have ballooned to unsustainable proportions.
I’d argue that part of it is due to Indic thought being open to reform rather than closed like Abrahamic thought.
Hinduism was just a label for faith practices to the east of Indus. In my book, it doesn’t denote a single religion.
Yes, yes, I know that Muslims were excluded. The topic is complex, and will require a separate post on its own. For now, it will suffice to say that no discussion of this topic will be complete without invoking the Two Nation Theory and Partition.
Sister Nivedita, who became a disciple of Swami Vivekananda.
Right-wing in general means maintaining a traditional social order, nationalism and acceptence of social hierarchies. This definately fits the description of BJP policies, whether we talk about social policy, education policy, foriegn policy… Of course, this right is different from that of America (Which focuses a lot on libertarianism) or that of Europe (Which focueses a lot on a single ethnicity). Nevertheless, as long as we use the definition above, it fits. That said, I think we are really using the terms right/left way too much when we talk about politics. Doing so we basically reduces the dimensionality of our politics to a stupid binary variable, which I think contributes a great deal to identity-based, biased and shallow view of politics and polarization. In my opinion, people who are educated in the subject matter should use these terms as infrequently as possible.
Engaging read. While I agree with many things you said, I firmly believe these terms are outdated and we need new nomenclature. The left is weirdly hard-right when it comes to subscribing to these established frameworks of looking at the world that is in many ways different from the world of the early 1900’s. The left toys with the definition of leftism by taking pride in it’s world view even if it’s to their detriment, much like a jingoistic nationalist who takes pride in and thinks of his race/culture/religion as great and beyond change. I’m quite tired of the majority/minority narrative.