A unified theory of democracy, culture wars, and populism

 

I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

 

 

Leonard Cohen, Democracy

 

 

***

 

Introduction

 

I have a theory on why culture wars and populism are ascendant in leading democracies. This perspective draws on the recent experience of US and India - respectively the oldest and the largest democracies with liberal constitutions.

 

At first glance, it's challenging to draw useful parallels. US is wealthy, powerful, and brash, India is none of those (yet). US has been engaged in a multi-decade global war, India has been (for most part) inwardly focused. US has been the leading light and both winner & loser from globalization, whereas India has (for most part) been an unqualified winner from this phenomenon.

 

But look through the surface differences and a remarkably similar dynamic presents itself. Both nations have absorbed socio-economic shocks that have remade their politics in very similar ways.

 

In this blog-post, I lay out what this remaking looks like, why it spells terrible news for liberalism in both nations, and what is to be done to reclaim the liberal space.

 

***

 

The Liberal Compact

 

 

India has long presented itself as a liberal and secular democracy. There is some truth to this, at least historically.

 

Before 1991, when India shed decades of post-Independence socialism to unchain its economy, India's relatively stagnant social order consisted of a tiny elite lording over a continent full of poverty. The Congress party, the establishment of the day, secured its repeated parliamentary majorities by serving up liberal, secular rhetoric to the elite and socialist, communal sops to the poor. This was its liberal compact.

 

Of course, there were social resentments of the kind we see today even then. Kashmir, Punjab, Mandal Commission, Shah Bano, and before all this Naxalbari are well known fault lines. But none of this really made any dent on Congress' political success.

 

Why is this? Simplistically put, the elite trusted Congress to safeguard their liberal cocoon while the poor could be bought off with socialism. It was hard to unmake this compelling equation.

 

1991 changed everything. This economic shock led to the emergence of a vocal, ambitious middle class who resented the (smug, corrupt, self-important) elite and rejected the (failed, false, facetious) socialism of the Congress.

 

This middle class sought an identity (and values) different from that of the elite and prosperity greater than that of its parents. Congress' vaunted liberal compact became a millstone that eventually sank it.

 

America had a different dynamic. It's liberal compact was built on the promise of the "American Dream" for its vast middle class and civil rights for its urban poor. As long as the middle class had stable jobs, disposable income, and fat pensions, it (except in war years) swallowed its resentments against the liberal elite. The urban poor saw some spillover prosperity too but it was civil rights that cemented them to the liberal rhetoric of the Democratic Party.

 

Victory in the cold war, globalization, 9/11, and the Great Recession changed all this.

 

America found itself, for the first time since the Great Depression, with recurrence of poverty. It's middle class was on the back foot with jobs going abroad, incomes stagnating, and pensions vanishing. It's urban poor wanted more than civil rights rhetoric and began resenting how The Democratic Party took their votes for granted.

 

Barack Obama promised hope and change which drew America to him (twice). But while he did offer fleeting hope, there was scant evidence of change in his record. The liberal compact fell apart.

 

Bottom line is that both India and America maintained their respective liberal compacts through promises that were exposed by shocks to their systems. The consequence was the structural fading of the Indian National Congress in India and the rise of Donald Trump in America.

 

 

***

 

The New World Order

 

 

Politics abhors a vacuum and something had to fill the space vacated by the liberal compact.

 

In India, Narendra Modi seized the moment of Congress' collapse by reshaping the winning political message. He discarded the liberal elite (who were too few in number to matter anyway), embraced the ambition of the middle class by promising good governance, and kept in place populist economic schemes largely inherited from the Congress. Crucially, he stoked culture wars in a bid to permanently discredit the secular, liberal, western worldview of the social elite.

 

In America, Donald Trump acted likewise. He discarded the liberal elite (calling them the swamp), embraced the ambition of the middle class by promising to make America great again, and talked up populist economic schemes targeted at the rural poor (mostly White) and asserted that the urban poor (mostly Black) had nothing to lose by abandoning The Democratic Party. Crucially, he stoked culture wars in a bid to permanently discredit the secular, liberal, globalist worldview of the social elite.

 

Narendra Modi has ambitious (if careful) rivals and Donald Trump could yet be impeached but what they have already done to break the liberal compact and reshape the politics of their respective nations is here for good. All the king's men and all the king's horses can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

 

In India, Congress party is a shadow of its past self, rudderless, confused, incoherent, irrelevant. In America, despite the daily social media revulsion at Donald Trump's words and actions, the (liberal) Democratic party has lost election after election at both the Federal and the State levels for years now. The Republican Party controls the Presidency, both houses of US congress, a majority of governorships and state legislatures, and is in a position to remake the Supreme Court.

 

This is not politics as usual. This is a new world order.

 

 

***

 

What is to be done?

 

 

As a liberal myself, I take no pleasure in describing the bleak future for the values I prefer. But we can't begin fighting back if we don't come to terms with our comprehensive defeat.

 

This defeat is not due to Russian interference in American elections or social media aggressiveness of the BJP in Indian politics. This is structural and, unless we come to terms with this, we are lost.

 

There are a few directions that we the liberals can explore.

 

1. Courts

 

American courts have stopped President Trump's most egregious executive orders. India's courts have also shown recent spine (for example on the landmark ruling making privacy a fundamental right, something opposed by the Modi Government).

 

Journalist and commentator Barkha Dutt exulted in a recent column that India's privacy ruling is a "manifesto of hope and freedom". She is right but with a caveat. If liberals have lost the politics and are left only with the courts to salvage their world, I fear this is unsustainable. Courts, in the long run, reflect the dominant political dynamic and, both in America and India, the shape of the courts will inevitably become the next political battle line. The culture wars and underlying resentments will move from the elite to the courts and nothing would have changed.

 

2. Patience

 

The pendulum of democracy swings when least expected (as Theresa May recently found out in UK) and maybe we will get lucky sometime soon.

 

While Narendra Modi's politics are structurally strong and the opposition stands depleted, his performance (especially on the economy) has not kept pace. Jobless growth and needless antics (e.g., demonetization) can yet leave him with a weaker majority in 2019 General Elections. He may even lose a state election or two.

 

Likewise, Donald Trump's crass personality may leave him with few allies even within his own party. He can also be hobbled or even impeached by the fast spiraling investigation into Russian meddling in his election as President.

 

Liberals may yet have a pulse but, let's face it, the underlying structural weakness will not go away. Besides, no one ever won a war by being passive.

 

3. Fighting back (smartly)

 

The third option, the only real one in my humble opinion, is to fight back in a smart way.

 

I don't mean doubling down on failed ideas (e.g., socialism and communal pandering in India) or adding fuel to cultural fires (e.g., Antifa violence in US and symbolic pulling down of statues in America).

 

I mean crafting a winning strategic positioning that will appeal to the new social balance. If the liberal message has failed, we need a new message instead of repeating ourselves hoarse in growing indignation.

 

Here's what I think the new liberal positioning ought to be:

 

Embracing markets-based (not subsidy-driven) empowerment of the poor by offering a hand up, not a hand out, accommodating cultural differences of the conservatives (a "we leave you alone if you leave us alone" compact), and demanding more social conscience from the elite. 

 

Populism targeted at the poor is like pandering targeted at minorities. It may work in the short-run but is long-term unsustainable. Empowerment is the key to changing lives. It's an optimistic, non-cynical, approach that works by removing every possible hurdle for the poor to bootstrap themselves out of poverty.

 

Fighting culture wars is pointless, mainly because they are unwinnable except over generations. We don't have that much time. Better idea is to enter into a détente where we replace the rhetoric of mutual insult with one of grudging accommodation. This should preserve sufficient liberal space for us to breathe while diffusing resentments that come from imposition of liberal values on unwilling minds.

 

Finally, as the fortunate and privileged elite, we have to be seen as caring for those left behind. Our attitudes of social interaction have to reflect this. We can't wall ourselves off in our liberal, cappuccino cocoons behind great big walls and armored gates. If we want the new world order to make space for us, we have to make space for it.

 

These positions can help calm the waters and reset the politics. And buy us breathing room to wait for the next turn in the story of democracy when liberalism can be ascendant again. There are times when survival to fight another day is victory in itself. Let's get smart and survive instead of walking into the buzz saw of certain and permanent oblivion.



Freedom

Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me

Nelson Mandela

***

When I came to America, I found others like me here. Children of poor or middle class Indian families, we had found our way into high education and higher occupations by dint of ability, hard work, and ambition.

The Indian CEOs of global corporations we now take pride in came from this background.

Middle class Indians were unlike Pakistanis and most other foreign students at elite universities. These others came from among their local political and business elite. They had means, we had none. Yet, we found ourselves in the same classrooms and boardrooms.

How did this happen?

If prosperity is the foundation necessary to advance in life, we should not have advanced at all. We did because we felt free to chase our dreams. Freedom gave us the edge, not our means.

***

There is a notion now with considerable currency in India that we must place primacy on prosperity. If only India were prosperous, all other ills of conscience would somehow fade away.

How is India to become prosperous? Through markets freer than they have been, through industry and commerce, entrepreneurship, and individual empowerment.

I believe in all this. These, after all, are also the ideas that made America where I now live.

Where I struggle is on the notion that freedom of commerce is somehow more important than freedom of conscience.

I'm told I'm old fashioned. The only thing I'm told that matters is the weight of one's wallet, not the wake of one's ways.

***

Is it possible for a unfree people to participate in a free market?

A free market, after all, is not merely a place where the supply side means of production are free, but also where the demand side is energized by the freedom of choice.

In other words, it can't be a free market if the buyer can't choose freely where to spend and where not to.

Freedom to choose matters. Choice is a manifestation of conscience. A free people have the freedom of conscience.

If one isn't free to think and dream freely, associate with and love who one wants, worship or deny the existence of God, read, write, & speak as one chooses, and - yes - choose what to buy and what to dismiss in the marketplace of ideas and things, can one really be free?

A coerced choice is no choice at all. An intimidated man ain't free.

***

Freedom is ebbing away in India, yet we talk boldly of free markets.

I'm afraid, we have it exactly the wrong way around. Freedom of conscience must precede freedom of commerce. Absurd to argue otherwise.

***

Let me close with words from the introduction to the 1958 classic "The Beat Generation and The Angry Young Men". They were written about the nothingness of modern man living under the mushroom cloud. Their context is different but they are eerily resonant in our present condition where prosperity is being sought at the gunpoint of social coercion.

On the surface of life, it seldom protrudes: the cop blows his whistle, the street crowds move, business goes on from nine to five in a hundred thousand offices. But, the facade of this present seeming normalcy shows signs of weathering; every day the mortar crumbles a little more. Man, behind the masks with which he plays his daily roles, can not be totally blind to the continuing collapse; the consequence is an increasing self-division.

Dear India, Your Windows Are Broken

New York City in the early 90s was rife with crime.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Bill Bratton, his police commissioner, famously used the "Broken Window" theory of criminology to make the city safe. Today, New York is the safest large city in America.

There is much to learn for India from the Broken Window idea.

***

The idea is simple. Small crimes beget big crimes.

Broken windows in a neighborhood show a couple things. There is likely vandalism going on and that neither the residents nor the police care very much.

These windows are an invitation to other criminals. More homes are vandalized and more windows are broken. Drug dealers and gangs move in. Abandoned buildings become their den.

Violence follows. People walk around fearful. Boys are bullied in the street and girls assaulted in hallways. Stores are routinely robbed and visitors viciously mugged.

Murders happen.

The neighborhood becomes disreputable. No one wants to buy homes here or set up businesses. Restaurants flee, grocers arm themselves, taxis no longer want to take anyone here.

This is how neighborhoods die. Blight and chaos is what a solitary broken window leads to.

***

You want to keep neighborhoods safe? You must fix every broken window.

This was the small idea with big consequences.

Crime was tracked and statistically analyzed, neighborhood by neighborhood. No crime was too small to be tracked. Every broken window was taken seriously.

Community policing began. Forgive the mixed metaphor but police officers from the community knew exactly how to nip the broken window in the bud. They were no longer chasing headline crimes - they were rewarded for cleaning out the smallest crime in their neighborhood.

Safe and clean neighborhoods became attractive to young families and small businesses. The flight to the suburbs reversed. The local economy strengthened from small business investments.

Criminals were no longer welcome. They had no place to hide.

Murders fell. Sexual assaults fell. Robberies fell. Muggings fell.

The city became safe and remains so to this day.

***

Why am I saying all this?

There is a lot to learn from this experience for Indian Police. But that's a discussion for another day.

I want to draw a parallel to bigotry.

When a society condones small acts of racism or communal hate or gender bias, it sows the seeds for lynchings and riots and rapes.

When a minister mistreats an immigrant, or an MP questions patriotism of an athlete, or when a girl is snubbed in small ways within her family, the broken window cycle begins.

Too many of us dismiss these incidents as small embarrassments not worthy of our attention.

If experience is any guide, this is precisely the wrong response.

When a bigot can get away with small hatred, he is not content with it. Next time he will try to see what more he can get away with. Others of like-minded perspective are encouraged by the non-response to the first instance of brazen bigotry. Before you know it, you have more and more bigots pushing their luck farther and farther. Words become sharper, more hurtful, then - eventually - they stop being just words. Blood ends up getting spilled.

The only way to keep a society from becoming a chauvinistic, identity-riven, churn of hatred is to call out the small transgressions and make examples of them all. This not only discourages the original perp, it deters others from trying the same or worse, and - crucially - it creates a societal norm of not tolerating bigotry.

This is the lesson of the broken window theory.

In a time where bigoted incidents are fast becoming an epidemic, nothing can be more important.

***

Rudy Giuliani went on to lead his great city through the horror of 9/11.

It is a matter of singular pride that the city did not erupt into frenzied violence targeting Arabs, Muslims, brown-skinned people, immigrants, anyone. The mayor told his city to stand together and support each other. And the city did exactly that.

This was probably because we liked what our city had become and did not want to lose it. We also had a leader who did not want either criminal violence or bigotry tormenting his people.

That's civic pride and applies to neighborhood safety as much as to comfort with diversity. And that's leadership.

Something  I think India - whose windows are sadly very broken - has a lot to learn from.  

Enough

Enough

Of screaming babies in the parliament, Of perspiration
In air cooled auto rickshaws glued to unmoving highways,
Of pleading eyes of the man about to be lynched, Of tea
That still smells of the garden of mostly evil, Of Patribal
And Kalahandi and places like Kokrajhar that only exist
In newspapers between stories of starlets and paid blah blah,
Of caterwauling 99 percentiles in boards who still missed the cutoff,
Of grand narratives and great games when the future stands
On the crossroads panhandling at tinted windows and your
Proud heartbeat doesn't skip even once, Of art trapped in sterile
Airports where entry requires a passport obtained through high crimes,
Of being a refugee wrapped in a flag that has long since stopped caring,
Of being only our surnames and the flatness of our noses
And which superstition we will call out to when dying.

Of small men and scared women.

Of the beautiful everything that stayed up all night, every night,
For a decade to earn a green card and run away.

Of sinning so much that the suffering began before we were in hell.

Of words.

Enough

(I am up very very early and I am already tired)

India's Holiday From History

Just at the moment when American political debate had reached a nadir of frivolousness ... the nation's decade-long holiday from history came to a shattering end | George Will, September 12 2001

***

I love India but no longer like much of what I see, I lamented in October 2011.

The 80s and the 00s can't be any more different in Indian consciousness.

80s was when fate switched off the light. We were riven by identity, suffocated by air, vulnerable to theft. Bluestar, Bhopal, Bofors. And most of us were poor.

00s was when fate shone on us. The earth became flat, India became young, the world accepted our bomb. Davos, Demography, (nuclear) Deal. And some of us became prosperous.

On the surface, this is a great narrative. And, yet, something seems amiss.

***

 

80s, as I wrote, was when fate switched off the light. It was our decade of despair.

 

Then the Berlin Wall fell. India may have had to pawn her gold but fate had rolled in her favor. America's heady holiday from history swept over Indian shores as well. We thought, at least for a while when the money was easy, that we had overcome those Oh So Twentieth Century divisions on caste and faith and language and race and economic status. We were all getting rich so none of this mattered.

 

Yes, Babri Masjid, Mumbai, Kargil, Kandahar, Sabarmati Express, Gulbarg Society, Akshardham, Mumbai again, Kokrajhar, and Muzaffarnagar all happened. But the overarching story was more about BRICS, Bangalore, Chandrayan, Commonwealth Games, and GDP than the tales of murder that we wanted to move beyond. Everything became about the vibrant economy that would soon make us a superpower.

 

To understand the depth of our delusion, just look at the current political discourse. One party is defending its economic record, another is running this down while boasting about its own record, and a third is fretting that some (corrupt) people became too rich while everyone was becoming rich.

 

We get it. It's the economy, stupid.

***

But it's never so easy, is it?

 

Recall that I wrote my lament at a time Indian economy was still growing strongly. In every visit, I found a country bubbling with endless optimism and limitless energy. There were no takers for my growing unease with what I was seeing. I myself didn't fully understand it.

 

As India has slowed, the nascent unease has crystallized into full blown despair.

 

Just because we were busy chasing riches doesn't mean we had advanced into modernity.

 

Caste politics still dominates the Hindi heartland. Regional divisions are tearing apart Andhra Pradesh. Liberalism is in all out retreat. Religious bigotry passes for political debate. Racism - to our own people as well as towards foreign guests - is routine. Gay people may not practice love. Gated communities proliferate while children panhandle for change. Khaps are defended by all political parties and rape is blamed on victims by supposed advocates for women's rights. Even justice is accused of lust and the army is sought to be divided by faith. Soni Sori is tortured by an officer who India then decorates and Irom Sharmila still starves.

All this ugliness has been here all along. Dazzled by wealth and blinded by hubris, we willfully denied what was right in front of our eyes.

Well, India's holiday from history is over and the time has come to deal with the ghosts we thought we had left behind.

 

***

 

Some will say that all will be well if only we could return India to economic growth.

 

I am not so sure. Economic growth, as the past two decades showed, is too small a band-aid over a vicious oozing wound. It can't hold back the bleeding any longer.

 

For all the conversation about governance and growth and fight against corruption, the real political issue at hand is discovering who we are as a people. My wager is that we will spend the next decade sorting this out. Indian energies will be spent more on settling identity issues than creating the infrastructure of modernity.

 

Breakneck growth will likely have to wait.

 

***

 

This is not all bad. India has to settle these matters at some point. This is as good a time as any.

 

For India's teeming millennials, who have mostly seen good times, this back to the future sojourn into the our incomplete 80s will be jarring. Maybe, just maybe, this will teach them some humility.

The Great Undeceiving

Had they deceived us,
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?

T.S. Eliot | Burnt Norton

***

I am one who doubted AAP all the way to its crowning. Still, I couldn't help smiling when it won.

There is nothing about Mr Kejriwal's populism that appeals to me. I believe in the conservatism of doubt. When I hear the phrase "this time it's different", I usually head for the hills.

But, I must confess, this time does feel different.

***

By merely winning, Mr Kejriwal has arguably achieved more than his larger political rivals would have were they to complete entire terms in office.

He has shown a path to power that is not laced with the usual cynicism. Middle class India can see for the first time that it can participate in politics in a real way - not as acolytes of a strong man or by complicity in India's patronage system, not by division or corruption, but by activism.

If, as a consequence, good people consider politics as a career choice, that's a huge win right there.

In a country where as much as a third of the national parliament has been criminally charged, what could be more important than this?

***

Sometimes we are too cynical. We dismiss idealism as inexperience. We parse ideology as though its an astral chart. Let me raise my own hand as being guilty on this.

How does one talk of ideology, though, in a country that's been systematically impoverished by corruption, divided by politics of caste, faith, & superstition, and routinely terrorized by the State?

If ideology were to be the shibboleth, few Indian politicians would pass muster. Their only ideology is rent-seeking patronage. Their only difference is who they extract these rents from and who they patronize.

So what if Mr Kejriwal's economic ideas are absurd? One of our leading parties stands with quacks who peddle superstition. Another bans literature for fear of offending those who will never read it. Yet another watches young children freeze to death because apparently "no one dies of cold". And everybody snoops on everybody else.

Is Mr Kejriwal's populism any worse than their superstition or narrow mindedness or callousness? And their all-corrosive cynicism?

***

Mr Kejriwal is likely to fail in delivering his populist promises. Most of these are not affordable or practical. His opponents are gleefully waiting for him to fail.

This is where this time it's different. Many in the middle class are desperately rooting for him to succeed.

They are unlikely to blame him for his failure. He will point to cynical opponents and obstructionist bureaucrats as the villains preventing him from doing what he intends. My bet is that he will succeed in this and voters will stand by him.

The more his cynical opponents fight him, the more heroic he will appear.

***

I believe in the conservatism of doubt. Doubt illuminates understanding. The conservative wants to understand.

When doubt is finally dispelled, however, and a new narrative becomes necessary through the force of moral truth, historical inevitability, or social acceptance, the conservative adopts it with dignity.

Indians have long been deceived into thinking they exercise political choice. In reality, they merely choose a different variant of the same toxicity each time. Perhaps there are good people in this maelstrom but they too have deceived themselves about the merit of unquestioning obeisance to the powers that be.

Deception cannot be the sustainable state of being. A new narrative is necessary through the force of moral truth and historical inevitability.

What happened in Delhi shows this narrative is breaking through into social acceptance.

The great undeceiving has finally begun.

The Conservatism of Doubt

Conservatism to me means questioning the old, doubting the new, yet comfort with necessary change.

***

There is a common arc to all our competing histories. An idyllic universe disturbed by barbarians, vain-glorious battles to right all wrongs, an Elysian future once light has vanquished darkness. The inherited old - our tradition - is thus more theater than theology. To accept such hand-me-down tradition on blind faith, without reasoning through its validity or merit, would be herding together as unquestioning sheep. This is anathema to conservatives.

Naipaul thus is insightful for he questions our airbrushed history. Rushdie matters for he re-imagines his foundational past. Ramanujan is important for his mythology is in plural voices. Lelyveld is interesting for straying from our narrow hagiography of the Mahatma. Hussain is beautiful for liberating the Goddess from the imprisoning confines of the temple.

For conservatives, such discourse is welcome for it disturbs our kitschy sense of inherited self-delight. Without such questioning, history becomes a predetermined flow of time and tradition becomes dogma. Determinism and dogma are the antithesis of free choice and expression. That is the territory of the Marxist.

Doubt illuminates understanding. The conservative wants to understand.      

***

Just because a conservative questions the old, however, does not mean he embraces the new easily.

The new is seldom new. When conservatives hear the phrase "this time it is different", they head for the hills.

It may be easy to market the sizzle of revolution but, if one questioned history one would know, "revolution" is the old game of Three-Card Monte that distracts attention while shedding blood and stealing power. What revolution has not been followed by killing fields and new, even more cruel, emperors?

To conservatives, the status quo - with all its warts - is usually a better place than the untested unknown. Gradual reform is welcome, instant revolution is not. Not for us the caprice of constantly shifting public preference, we are the custodians of stability. Not for us social change imposed by unelected do-gooders in courts, we'd rather wait for society to mature enough to change itself through democratic legislation.

This is what William F. Buckley meant when he famously proclaimed a conservative as one who stands athwart history yelling stop. And, if I may reference it, this is also the core message of The Dark Knight Rises - where a conservative Batman defends his broken city from the shadow of Bane's anarchic revolution.  
     

***

When doubt is finally dispelled, however, and a new narrative becomes necessary through the force of moral truth, historical inevitability, or social acceptance, the conservative adopts it with dignity.

There is this great story about the end of the American Civil War. In Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, there fell a pall of gloom and confusion. At a Sunday service in a prominent church, where the defeated elite had come to God's house, the priest called on the worshipers to come forth and take communion. A dignified black man walked up to the pew and kneeled down, much to the consternation of the shocked audience.

Then, an equally dignified bearded white man rose and walked up next to the kneeling black man and joined him for the communion. He was the defeated General Robert E Lee leading his people into a new post-slavery age.

Perhaps the story is apocryphal, and there are variations on the theme out there, but it is a great story about societal redemption that captures the essence of conservatism.

Another great story is that about John Profumo, the disgraced conservative British defense minister from the 60s whose dalliance with Christine Keeler cost him his job. His fall from the top of the heap was epic. He retreated into the shadows and toiled for forty years in a home for the poor in London's East End, washing dishes and cleaning toilets among other acts of service. He asked for nothing in return and when queried what he had learned from the experience, he simply said: humility.

This was "remorse of conscience" as epic as his Icarus like fall. Let me quote from (Reagan speechwriter and conservative) Peggy Noonan's essay to describe what happened next:

Nothing quite said what needed saying like what happened at Margaret Thatcher's 70th birthday party, in 1995. To show their countrymen what he'd done—and what they thought of what he'd done—they invited him, walked him through, and put him in a particular place. They seated him next to the queen. People wonder about the purpose of establishments. That is the purpose of establishments.      

This possibility of human remorse and societal redemption is also a conservative virtue. A Marxist would have thrown his distinguished life into the dustbin of history and made a forever example of his decadent bourgeoisie fall. Only the conservative establishment could have lent him a hand up all the way to a place next to the Queen in applause for his astonishing humility.

***

Indian conservatives, in my humble view, are full of too much certainty  and too little doubt. Furthermore, they champion idealized illusions of the past, display a (revolutionary) anti-establishment zeal, and have no will for remorse or reach for redemption. Someday, one hopes, this will change for India does need a vital conservative movement.