Liberalism is facing challenges by both the left and the right not just in India but across the world, said Congress MP Shashi Tharoor here on Thursday.
He was delivering the first Jyoti Komireddy memorial lecture on ‘Radical Centrism: My vision for India’. For the left, liberalism meant an elitist creed, a doctrine preferring markets over morality, a theory according more importance to individual over community and a system that alienated the marginalised sections.
For the right, the emphasis of liberalism on individual freedom was seen as corrosive to tradition and cultural identity. They dismissed it foreign and western import and lacks roots in Indian soil. This had resulted in a dangerous narrowing of the intellectual space, with the freedom itself becoming a suspect. Even moderation is being viewed as unfashionable.
In this backdrop, reclaiming and reimagining Indian liberalism to give it new life and purpose as a radical centrist ideology for the benefit of the country. “The task before us is to make liberalism more vigorous and inclusive … and to root it in India’s social realities by withholding its universal ideals,” he said.
The MP said that in recent years Indian political landscape resembled a political tug of war between two extreme ideologies. On one side was a new left championed by thinkers like Yogendra Yadav who argued for politics rooted in the grievances of the underprivileged castes classes. On the other was cultural nationalism of the right articulated by voices of RSS like Ram Madhav who prefer to anchor India’s identity in Hindutva values and civilisation pride.
