A CENTURY OF THE POLITICS OF LEFT AND RIGHT

As RSS & CPI celebrate their centenaries, left & right categories in India have become confused amid centrist messaging. Today, the most colourful in politics is ideologically colourless

- SHIV VISVANATHAN

A century is a long time for an institution to survive. Such longevity gives it respectability and a sense of history. It provides a genealogy and history. But the past can become an embarrassment as we move to the future. The politics of ideology, marginality and economy can be fraught with misunderstanding.

In any ordinary sense, the political right and left should be easy to differentiate in India. But as we move from the clarity of the 1940s to the ambiguity of the 2020s, this analysis becomes difficult. This article is an attempt to understand why the politics of left and right is failing in India. And why it makes a travesty of Indian history in the process.

Two institutions radically different from each other celebrate their 100th anniversaries this year. The first is the Communist Party of India, which today is almost a shadow-like figure. The second is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which is moving like a juggernaut. How does one think about the 100-year legacy of two such organisations?

One of the biggest threats to the storyteller is the confusion of categories. The characters remain the same, but the grammar of the narrative alters. Memory has a way of challenging such narratives. The battle between the left and the right has always been seen as zero-sum struggle. But today, the two ends of the spectrum seem to be part of a wider ecology of adjustment. One sees this manifest in different ways.

Let's begin with the stereotypes. Both the organisations are markedly ideological. Usually, the left speaks the language of political economy and human rights; the right speaks the language of market and conservatism. But these are categories from the 19th century. The politics of the 21st century, while democratic, has been increasingly confusing—left and right have become a mish-mash.