Project For A Secular-Right India

Amit is concerned that -- given BJP's structural inability to shed the bigotry at its core -- the future for secular-right politics in India may be less than rosy.

Not surprisingly, this is a topic we've given much thought to. We'd like to make three points.

1. Amit's implied assumption, that secular-right politics can emerge only from the right and not from among the secular, is questionable. We are personally aware of senior Congressmen who are sufficiently secular-right even by our uncompromising standards. The main issue with such leaders is their untested political savvy to influence their party rightwards. Nevertheless, they should not be written off.

2. Lenin wrote about a small vanguard elite that leads ideological revolutions. In America, we have the recent example of a handful of friends -- of diverse political and professional affiliation -- coming together to lead the neo-conservative revolution. The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) has up-ended decades of stilted foreign policy thought in the U.S. We only need to ask Mr. Saddam Hussain how this has played out! If this can happen in America, there is no reason to believe it cannot in India.

We need clarity of objectives. If our objective is to re-orient India in a secular-right way, that is undoubtedly achievable without the burden of running political parties. If our objective is to capture power through the electoral process, then we should immediately abandon ideology and sign-up at the cult of whatever's-working-now. These are entirely different games.

Political parties should be viewed only as highly effective machines to raise and deploy campaign funds for elections. They are not designed to be the petridish where political ideas are innovated. To the extent they talk of ideas, it's only for the purpose of raising campaign funds. These are commercial juggernauts that are in the business of leasing their formidable & essential electoral capability to power-seeking individuals -- the price of the lease is, frequently, the dilution of ideology. This is a business dynamic where scale -- built-up over decades -- matters. Clearly, there are huge barriers to entry, overcoming which from scratch for reasons of ideology is surely a futile endeavor.

In contrast, ideological campaigns (like PNAC) operate across parties and social affiliations; they end up creating unexpectedly refreshing alliances. They are led by a small group of people devoted to their ideas, not to claiming power. As it turns out, if they succeed in converting millions to their way of thinking, they become powerful by proxy. This is a far quicker and less expensive route than the traditional political party approach. The contrast to political parties is stark: this is like comparing swift, flexible, and stealthy special forces to the slow-moving, rigid, and gigantic armies. Each is a different approach for a different objective.

3. Given this, the real tactical question before secular-right Indians is whether we can identify and network a 100 or so like-minded -- and relatively young (mid 30s, early 40s) -- people who are also independently influential in their lives and professions. These people can then leverage their personal and professional credibility -- and intellectual strength -- to make passionate and convincing political arguments that few in the party system dare make. This is likely the way to a secular-right Indian revolution, not the empty promise of a secular-right political party magically showing up one day.

Let's prepare the ground first; we'll worry about what germinates there later.