I have always maintained that Swapan Dasgupta represents one of the teen murtis of intellectual India’s right wing revolt – the other two being Ashok Malik and Arun Shourie. In my view, it is these three gentlemen, in their role as public intellectuals that provide the most coherent voice to the concerns of conservative middle India.
Clearly, Mr Dasgupta occupies a charmed position in India’s political discourse. He has established himself as the leading interpreter of the Indian Right for the country’s English-speaking middle classes in a professional environment which teems with those of the left-liberal persuasion – no small feat. Recently, a more youthful, fashionable libertarian set has sprung up but they shall form the basis of a future post. Swapan compliments his aforementioned role with that of a political activist often appearing in public gatherings to speak in support of the BJP. This has earned him the sobriquet of “neo-ideologue” – not an unfair characterisation if his work on the BJP’s 2004 Vision Document and (presumably) other party matters is taken into account.
Dasgupta’s success in combining intellectual non-conformity with political activism is sometimes sneered at by those who sit on the high-horse of objective reportage and question his credentials as a journalist.
What is more interesting however, is the nature of Mr Dasgupta’s political views. We know that he is a self-described friend of the BJP and a confirmed political conservative. But, what is the nature of this conservatism?
Reading through Dasgupta’s vast output of essays and op-eds one gets the general impression that he has drunk deeply at the fountain of British conservatism. His work is full of references to major events in British history and he frequently utilises British conservative metaphors to make his point. I suppose this is a condition that ails all post-colonial intellectuals. A young Jawaharlal, fired by the emancipatory potential of Fabian thought, returned to the “dustbowls of Hindustan” to put into practice those convictions. Strictly speaking, Nehru was not post-colonial but I trust the reader grasps my point. This then, was the beginning of the famous Nehruvian consensus that has influenced more than two generations of independent India’s intellectual establishment and continues to form the orthodoxy of intelligent conversation in the country.
I am unsure as to what extent Swapan Dasgupta holds the experience of British conservatism to be applicable to the Indian context. As I’m sure he would agree, all conservatisms are contextual and claim no universality. However, there is little doubt that he holds British conservatism and Britain’s Conservative Party as the benchmark to which other conservative movements should aspire to.
It is here that we differ. I find the British Conservative impulse to be remarkably dull and staid – committed to the preservation of existing institutions and social norms as values in themselves, no matter their utility. It does well to live up to the caricature of conservatism as a particularly unimaginative, status-quoist and a downright barren mode of thought. Michael Oakeshott, a significant conservative thinker of the last century who also happened to be British argued that to be conservative is to esteem the present above all else. I find this sentiment especially problematic to sustain in an Indian context, a country crying out for a new kind of commitment and authenticity in politics.
As I’ve pointed out in a previous post, India’s political culture is a paradox – in the sense that it is apolitical. Indians find themselves in a context where their Prime Minister and the leader of the ruling national party are both apolitical. In fact, the Prime Minister’s disinterest in the political is marketed as a virtue to a public that has long suffered at the hands of professional politicians. Thus the kind of politics that India needs to embrace in order to ensure public good is a redemptive brand of politics. A conservative movement in India must present an alternative vision for the country and combine this with a vigorous opposition to the comfortable consensus in the political class. The cynicism of the average Indian however and his chalta hai manner may preclude that state of affairs from ever coming to pass.
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