Is liberalism then a lost quality in Indian politics and society? The core values of liberalism hardly need to be restated: plurality, openness, dissent, individual liberties, balance and fairness. The term “liberal right” is rarely used. The widely held belief is that liberalism is the preserve of the left. It obviously isn’t. The liberal right welcomes foreign direct investment (FDI). In contrast, the liberal left has dog-eared ideas on economic reforms. It opposes FDI, privatisation and agricultural reforms. How then to construct a liberal right manifesto which is open, meritocratic, inclusive and tolerant?
The Economist marked its 175th anniversary in 2018 with an eight-page essay spelling out a “manifesto for renewing liberalism for the 21st century”. The Economist began publishing in 1843 as a small pamphlet. In an approximately 10,000-word essay in 2018, the magazine declared: “We were created 175 years ago to campaign for liberalism—not the leftish ‘progressivism’ of American university campuses or the rightish ‘ultraliberalism’ conjured up by the French commentariat, but a universal commitment to individual dignity, open markets, limited government and a faith in human progress brought about by debate and reform.”
The Economist claimed in its essay that it was against colonialism (a distinctly non-liberal idea). It wrote: “The Economist was sceptical of imperialism, arguing in 1862 that colonies ‘would be just as valuable to us…if they were independent’.”
In the same breath, the magazine contradicted itself by republishing, in 2018, an excerpt of what its editors wrote in 1862: “But ‘uncivilised races’ were owed ‘guidance, guardianship and teaching’.”
Note the words: “uncivilised races”. Intellectual dishonesty survived in The Economist’s editorial room between 1862, when its editors wrote that passage, and 2018, when its editors exhumed it.
But weren’t the standards of 1862 different from the standards of 2018? Wasn’t racism the “old normal”, though oddly co-existing with the soaring ideals of 19th century Western liberalism?
Consider the era of the mid-1800s. The United States was in the throes of a civil war over, essentially, the continuation of black slavery. The shipping capitals of the transatlantic African slave trade to North America had for a century been Liverpool, Southampton and Bristol. The cities’ businessmen and slave traders accounted for 55 per cent of the slave traffic shipped from Africa to North America.
During the same era, Britain committed several extra-territorial colonial atrocities but the centuries-long African slave trade was the most brutal. It was accompanied by colonial invasions in Asia and Africa and the genocide of Aborigines in Australia and indigenous Indians in North America. Apartheid in South Africa was a latter-day British-Dutch joint venture that lasted till 1990.
None of these “liberal” episodes find a mention in The Economist’s manifesto to “renew traditional” British values of liberalism. The magazine did though make one domestic mea culpa: “Liberals were white men who considered themselves superior to the run of humanity. Though Bagehot (a former Economist editor), supported votes for women, for most of its early years The Economist did not. Bagehot feared that extending the franchise to all (British) men regardless of property would lead to ‘the tyranny of the majority’.”
Throughout the second half of the 20th century, liberal Western societies continued to engage in anti-liberal practices. Slavery was gone. Colonialism was over. Aborigines and ‘Red’ Indians had been exterminated or marginalised. Apartheid was on its last legs. And yet, the West found new ways to continue its liberal double standards. Institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) kept a tight leash on global finance. By mandate, its heads were always, respectively, American and European. What gunships could no longer achieve, the dollar did.
The Economist wrote in its liberal manifesto without a trace of embarrassment: “21st-century liberals must remember two lessons from the 20th. The failure of the League of Nations between the (two) world wars showed that liberal ideals are worthless unless backed by the military power of determined nation states.”
The period between the two world wars—the 1920s and 1930s—were in fact among the most illiberal in recent history: the rise of Hitler, the continuing British colonial occupation of India, and legally mandated racial segregation of African- Americans in the US.
The Economist ended its liberal manifesto with a waffle rather than a clear-cut doctrine:
This essay has argued that liberalism needs an equally ambitious reinvention today. The social contract and geopolitical norms that underpin liberal democracies and the world order that sustains them were not built for this century.
Geography and technology have produced new concentrations of economic power to tackle. The developed and the developing world alike need fresh ideas for the design of better welfare states and tax systems. The right of people to move from one country to another need to be redefined. American apathy and China’s rise require a rethinking of the world order—not least because the huge gains that free trade has provided must be preserved.
So what is true liberalism in today’s new world order? Freedom, equality, choice, dissent, tolerance, diversity and openness. Respect merit but provide equal opportunities to all. Enforce the rule of law firmly and fairly without which no liberal society can flourish.
India is a starkly unequal society. But within its diversity lie the molecular building blocks of liberalism. As India lurches, in its own chaotic civilisational way, towards a more equitable future, those building blocks can in time create a society based on fairness and tolerance—the markers of true liberalism.
This excerpt from Minhaz Merchant’s ‘Modi: The Challenge of 2024’, has been published with permission from Amaryllis, an imprint of Manjul Publishing House.