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This article was downloaded by: [37.201.171.96]On: 26 December 2014, At: 07:11Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
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Global Discourse: An Interdisciplinary
Journal of Current Affairs and Applied
Contemporary ThoughtPublication details, including instructions for authors and
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The unconscious Indianization of
‘Western’ conservatism – is Indian
conservatism a universal model?Björn Goldstein
a
a Institute of Political Science, WWU Münster, Münster, Germany
Published online: 01 Oct 2014.
To cite this article: Björn Goldstein (2015) The unconscious Indianization of ‘Western’conservatism – is Indian conservatism a universal model?, Global Discourse: An Interdisciplinary
Journal of Current Affairs and Applied Contemporary Thought, 5:1, 44-65, DOI:
10.1080/23269995.2014.946315
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
The unconscious Indianization of ‘Western’ conservatism – is Indianconservatism a universal model?
Björn Goldstein*
Institute of Political Science, WWU Münster, Münster, Germany
According to Max Horkheimer, the core dilemma of capitalist ideology is that it promotes egoism and contempt for egoism at the same time. This basic contradictiontranslates into belief in an organically structured society consisting of needs satisfyingindividuals and groups. This can be made out as a principle that prevails across allconservative schools and psychological differences. Conservative parties in the ‘West ’have started to adopt an unprecedented openness to the diversity of contemporary
pluralistic societies. In doing so, they do what conservatives always did – they conformto actual social conditions. Conservatism is far from being anti-diversity, as long as thecore belief remains untouched. The transformation of ‘Western’ conservatism wewitness today is moulding conservatism into a form that has since long been estab-lished in India, where plurality and multiculturality have never been absent. This newdevelopment brings to the fore the key elements of a universal conservatism indepen-dent of cultural contexts.
Keywords: ambiguity; BJP; conservatism; critical theory; diversity; Horkheimer;
India; IUML; psychology; Tamil Nadu; tolerance
instead of deploring our lack of homogeneity we should glory in it. Instead of regarding Indiaas a failed or deformed nation-state we should see it as a new political form, perhaps even asa forerunner of the future. We are in some ways where Europe wants to be.
Dharma Kumar
Universal conservatism
Conservatism is usually taken to refer to values from traditions that are bound to certainhistories of localities. It is embedded in different settings and therefore differs from
locality to locality, but still conservatives share assumptions that are not mutually exclu-
sive despite their basis in different cultural roots. Social harmony is a core tenet of
conservative thought all around the world and always implies the acceptance of human
inequality in this world. In conservative thinking, difference is the condition for harmony,
because from a conservative point of view harmony of equals is neither easily imaginable
nor affective in a systemic sense, just like the differentiated functions in an organism. In
the conservative idyll differences of humans as economic units and as individual con-
temporaries make mutual gains possible and interesting. Equality is only accepted in a
metaphysical sense, as it is with universal love, for instance, but it is nothing to be
expected in this world. In this respect, contemporary conservatism is a peculiar
*Email: [email protected]
Global Discourse, 2015
Vol. 5, No. 1, 44 – 65, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23269995.2014.946315
© 2014 Taylor & Francis
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ideological expression of the coexistence of egoism and anti-egoism as the core dilemma
of bourgeois ideology described by Max Horkheimer (1988). In this article, I will argue
that this feature is central to conservatism in general and explains the prevalence of
conservatism today within parties that for many observers have lost their ‘conservative’
qualities. The history of conservatism shows that it is highly flexible and adaptable to
changing situations and from a psychological perspective not at all opposed to plurality
and diversity.
Conservatism in India is well adapted to the pluralist Indian context, and it has
features that are applicable to many countries in the world where a complex social
diversification is a comparatively recent phenomenon. The non-traditionalist attempt t o
incorporate diversity and pluralism into conservative party programmes in the ‘West ’1
indicates that unknowingly Indian-style conservatism has become universal conservatism.
The basic feature of what conservatism across community boundaries is comes to the fore
when references to any kind of homogeneity disappear.
In the following sections, I will outline the peculiarities of Indian conservatism. After
that, I will give a description of conservatism inspired by Max Horkheimer ’s analysis of the ideological core contradiction of capitalism. The following sections illustrate through
historical analysis of the American and the German examples the flexibility of conserva-
tism to adapt to new situations. In the next step, findings concerning conservatism from
political psychology will be outlined to highlight the absence of any general hindrance to
a conservative acceptance of diversity. Finally, generalizing conclusions for the possibility
of a universal conservatism will be drawn.
Conservatism in India
In the early 1970s, Roland Girtler (1973) located conservatism in India only within atraditionalist wing of the Indian National Congress (INC). This wing was represented by
the Gandhian opposition to the British rule that was backed by a consciousness derived
from the nineteenth-century Hindu revival. According to Girtler, even the slogan ‘socialist
pattern of society’ of the INC party convention from 1954 was a conservative strategy
within the Congress to undermine the influence of communists and socialists (106). When
Girtler analysed Indian conservatism, right-wing parties and organizations actually did not
play a role in national elections. A couple of years later, India was ruled by the Janata
coalition, which consisted also of Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), the then-political arm of
the extreme right-wing Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS – National
Volunteers Organisation). Still, also in this time, when a government coalition held power
that contained politicians who more obviously could be labelled ‘conservative’, Erdman
(1978) highlighted Gandhism as the major representative of Indian conservatism. At the
latest, since the 1990s victories of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over Congress in
national and regional elections and accordingly the steep rise in political importance of
other Sangh Parivar 2 organizations in India, conservatism also has to be located within
sections of this large right-wing movement. BJP stands for a ‘cultural nationalism’ that
highlights the exceptionality of Indian culture, and its leadership comes from the para-
military RSS. Similarly, organizations from political Islam that represent the religious
minority side of the right-wing element in Indian society are to different degrees open to
views ranging from centre-right conservatism to extremist political positions. The major
difference of the Muslim political organizations compared to the Hindutva organizationsis their numerical inferiority in mem bers and lack of an organization that could consoli-
date the diversity of ‘ideological’3 tendencies. The concept of conservatism used by
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Erdman and Girtler resembles strongly the common-sense equation of (social) conserva-
tism with an attitude that gives (political) priority to cultural traditions. This kind of
conservatism in India is both very easy to find on a surface level and very hard to grasp
theoretically.
It is especially difficult to put the concept of conservatism on a solid historical and
reasonable base when referring it to any concept of Hinduism. On the one hand, Gandhian
conservatism is strongly influenced by Gandhi’s ‘Western’ reading of Hinduism, namely
his theosophical influence (Bevir 2003). On the other hand, the advocates of Hindutva
strongly refer to a homogenized version of Hinduism arising from the Hindu revival
movement of the nineteenth century. This movement obviously adopted the British and
Christian understandings of religion in order to be more forceful in its nationalist struggle.
Both these Hindu traditionalist conservatisms in India refer to a Hindu tradition that is
hard to describe, because the tradition is (1) very often a ‘Western’ reading of Hinduism
and (2) not a ‘Hindu tradition’, but basically a Brahmin tradition. Hinduism as an entity
on its own has been a construct of British census authorities, and the various traditions
summarized within this concept are not represented equally. It has been argued that thedominance of the Brahmin tradition in conceptualizing Hinduism is the result of European
Indologists who simply took the texts given to them by Brahmins as basic foundations of
a Hindu religion, neglecting all other religious practices (Zachariah 2008). Thus, Hindu
conservatives cannot be sure that they really conserve Hindu traditions. More likely, they
reproduce a version of Hinduism that is non-traditional and mediated by European
academic inferences.
It may be true for all (religious and political) traditions around the world that the past a
tradition is referring to is always not the ‘real’ historical past, but a (useful) construct of
the past by its modern advocates. But this problem is even weightier for any sort of a
Hindu tradition because of a lack of a major narrative. (3) The term Hindutva (Hinduness)was coined by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883 – 1966) who was an agnostic and
rationalist, strongly influenced by ‘Western’ philosophers. He rejected Hindu mysticism
as a hindrance to political action and only made strategic use of religion (Wolf 2010). For
him, Hinduism contrary to Hindutva meant disunity hampering his purely nationalist
mission. What was holy for him was the Indian nation (Savarkar 1932). Therefore, today’s
Hindu religious right of India refers in large part to a non-religious and mixed cultural
tradition. In order to avoid some of the problems for a Hindu-Indian identity construction
deriving from that, advocates of Indian cultural and religious peculiarity like the con-
servative Indian-American researcher Rajiv Malhotra (2013) refer to a Dharmic tradition
that includes Hindus, Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists – in short, all religions originated on
Indian territory. This has been the common Hindu Rashtra assumption since it was
formulated by the first Hindu nationalist party Hindu Mahasabha at the beginning of
the last century. Followers of this right-wing tradition still consider as un-Indian those
religious traditions that did not originate on Indian territory like – in historical order of
appearance on the subcontinent – Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Islam and the
‘secular religion’ communism. On the side of Islamic conservatives, it is more adequate to
understand it as a desire to conserve certain Islamic traditions. But for all these religious
political currents in India, it is important to be aware that its contemporary expressions,
teachings and developments cannot be understood independent of external, basically
European influences.
Thomas Bauer (2011) has argued that Islam and its scholars have been far moretolerant of ambiguity before the influence of European scientific rigidity introduced the
need for clear definitions of ‘right ’ and ‘wrong’. A similar study on European influence on
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ambiguity in Hinduism would probably point in a similar direction. Rajiv Malhotra sees in
tolerance of ambiguity a core feature of behaviour, thinking and psychological condition
of people coming from a Dharmic tradition. Being aware of the risk of reproducing
uncritically the old Indian genius thesis, 4 it has to be acknowledged that this tolerance of
ambiguity has indeed a base in what we are used to call Hinduism.
Hinduism is, or Hindu culture consists of, a complex multitude of divergent beliefs,
philosophies, scriptures and practices (for a perceptive introduction to doubt and disagree-
ment in Hinduism, see Sen 2005). The terms Hinduism or Hinduisms are contested and a
dogmatic interpretation of Hinduism is impossible. For practical reasons, Gantke (2013)
categorizes the Hindu traditions as (a) mystic religion(s) where the idea of or the belief in
a unity of all things, of all beings, of divine and worldly affairs, of reality is a predominant
feature. The distinctive coexistence of large numbers of different holy scriptures and
divine incarnations, and the rejection of taking any single historical event as central to
Hindu traditions, makes this ‘system’ of beliefs a cultural background of tolerance per se.
Gantke sees this mystical thought of union as the base for the preponderance of changing
and multiple identities in India. Of course, the discrepancy between idealized ethical principles and ‘real-life’ practice is always apparent, but it is particularly glaring in the
case of Hinduism. Even though mystic Hinduism is characterized by an inclusive under-
standing of tolerance, the contrast to social reality, most visible in the caste order, is
obvious. From a Hindu philosophical point of view, social contradictions are just another
indicator for the imperfection, the dualism of this-worldly affairs compared to the absolute
where union is reality. On an abstract level, we find conservative ‘ideology’ openly
expressed in this line of thinking.
It is striking that the otherness of these Dharmic traditions compared to the Abrahamic
traditions is sometimes highlighted in a fashion attempting to conserve ‘real’ India.
Malhotra for example aims at a recovery of Dharmic ways from its Muslim andEuropean distortions. This conservatism on the other hand is not always reflected by
voters and members of BJP and its affiliated organizations. Advocates of Sangh Parivar
and voters of the BJP are basically anxious middle-class and high-caste people – as we
will see internationally and transculturally the traditional proponents of conservatism –
prone to insecurity about their privileged social positions. According to concepts of
authoritarianism and conservatism in the ‘West ’ individuals displaying these character-
istics are typical voters of right-wing and conservative parties. However, Malhotra claims
that the lack of tolerance of ambiguity is not at all an Indian feature, but rather the
psychological pattern of people from messianic traditions. Extrapolating Malhotra’s
claims, it can be concluded that Hindutva’s rigidity of separating right from wrong can
be understood as another aspect of its strong ‘Western’ influence. As Ashish Nandy noted
in Nandy (1991):
Speaking pessimistically, Hindutva will be the end of Hinduism. Hinduism is the faith bywhich a majority of Indians still live. Hindutva is the ideology of a part of the upper-caste,lower-middle class Indians, though it has now spread to large parts of the urban middleclasses. The ideology is an attack on Hinduism and an attempt to protect the flanks of aminority consciousness which the democratic process is threatening to corner. […] Hinduism,I repeat, is a faith and a way of life. Hindutva is an ideology for those whose Hinduism hasworn off. Hindutva is built on the tenets of re-formed Hinduism of the nineteenth century.Reformed according to the reading of those who saw Hinduism as inferior to the Semitic
creeds, in turn seen as well-bounded, monolithic, well-organized, masculine, and capable of sustaining the ideology of an imperial state. […] Hindutva at this plane is Western imperi-alism’s last frenzied kick at Hinduism. It is an ideology meant for the super-market of global
Global Discourse 47
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mass culture where all religions are available in their consumable forms, neatly packaged for the buyers. […] To those who live in Hinduism Hindutva is one of those pathologies which
periodically afflict a faith or a way of life, Hinduism has, over the centuries, handled manysuch pathologies; it still retains the capacity to handle one more. After all, has not theHinduism coped for more than a century with the modern civilization, which Gandhi, usedto call satanic? Hinduism, the argument goes, will eat up Hindutva once a sizable section of the semimodernized Hindus gives up as a lost cause the pathetic search for a psychologicaldefense against the encroaching forces of the market, the national security state, and theurban-industrial vision and, instead, confront the reality of these forces directly.
In India, the 1990s post-cold-war situation consisted of three national election victories for
the BJP, the party that represented this allegedly lost cause mentioned by Nandy, accom-
panied by strong efforts for economic liberalization. It was defeated in 2004 and 2009, but
the victory in the 2014 national elections was overwhelming. Pradeep Chhibber (1997)
explained BJP’s success since 1991 ‘lay not in mobilizing only the “religious” but in its
ability to put together a viable coalition between religious Hindus and those disaffected by
excessive political intervention in the economy’ (631). With the exception of the short-lived Janata coalition, Indian politics have been a synonym for Congress politics. This
dominance failed to meet the interests of the urban middle-classes that gained influence
during the 1980s and 1990s. The Hindutva-inspired propaganda against Congress is
always directed against its secularism that allegedly favours religious minorities and its
state interventions that accordingly are allegedly directed against free entrepreneurship
and the ‘Hindu’ way of life. While the BJP presents itself and is mostly understood by
(especially ‘Western’) commentators as driven by normative ethics based on Hindutva
ideology, the middle-class voters of the BJP seemed to feel attracted by its liberal
economic programme, at least until recently. After the 2014 general elections that gave
BJP an absolute majority, more evidence exists that both BJP’s economics and religiosityappeal to many Indian voters today. Most first-time voters supported the BJP, and the
party could enlarge massively its social voting base. While the typical BJP voters before
this election have been ‘urban dwellers, upper castes, middle classes and the educated’
(Chhibber and Verma 2014) this time also large portions of people from the lower and
lowest strata of the Indian society supported BJP, namely Other backward classes,
scheduled tribes and dalits (Chhibber and Verma 2014).
Most analysts of the elections agree that BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra
Modi won the elections due to his personality and personal history as a man in the street,
as well as the economic policies in the state of Gujarat where he served as chief minister.
During the election campaign, Gujarat was presented as an outstanding development
model and has also been highlighted as such by many foreign analysts and governments
all over the world. Voices mentioning that Gujarat is one of the states with the worst social
indicators have largely been ignored (Müller 2014). Classical Hindutva themes emphasiz-
ing Hinduism-based identity and nationalist issues have dominated the appearance of the
BJP in the past but stood back this time behind economic issues. The uplifting of the
downtrodden people by policies for a robust economic growth and by being firm against
corruption have been the major topics during BJP’s election campaign. ‘Sabka saath,
sabka vikas’, meaning ‘ participation of all, development for all’, has been Modi’s recent
slogan. Chhibber and Verma even claim that it was Modi who won the elections and not
BJP because in a survey every fourth BJP voter said s/he would not have voted BJP under
a different candidate for prime minister. Added to the disappointing performance of Congress in office, this is probably the reason for the emergence of non-traditional BJP
voters. According to Chhibber and Verma, economic liberalization, the issue the BJP
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promoted during the 1990s, is generally not supported by BJP voters (Müller 2014).
Therefore, it must be assumed that the pro-growth propaganda was successful only
because many voters for some reason trusted in Modi’s religiosity – in the programme
of a man who has been accused of being jointly responsible for the Gujarat massacre in
2002 and of being a Hindu nationalist hardliner. They trusted him probably because he
and his party stand for a different India that claims to represent the ‘real’ India, an India
unspoiled by foreign distortions and powerful in its own traditions. That a man who in the
past made his living by selling tea on railway platforms competed for being the new prime
minister made him for many at the same time more authentically ‘Indian’ and a symbol of
hope.
While secularism has been one of the core tenets of a Congress which has shaped
India since independence, it has been challenged by BJP’s propaganda of a ‘real secular-
ism’. Congress’ and leftists’ versions of secularism, they argue, is not secularism in a real
sense, because it protects religious minorities and guarantees special jurisdiction for them,
while the vast Hindu majority of India does not have any privileges. To the contrary, the
argument goes, unorganized Hinduism and Hindu culture are endangered because theyhave no means to protect themselves against organized religious minorities that keep on
converting Hindus to Christianity or Islam. Congress-style secularism was intended to
produce harmony, but in fact it created disharmony, a situation BJP with its own Hindu
culture-based politics of harmony can probably exploit. In his victory speech on 20 May
2014 at the Central Hall of Parliament, Modi made it clear that his guiding principles are
derived from Hindutva ideas: ‘The coming year 2015 – 2016 is important to us all, it will
be Pandit Deendayal Updhyaya’s centenary year, chairaveti, chairevetimantra was given
by him and this led to establishing a system of sacrifice and hard work. We have to think
about how to fulfill his dreams and work and strive to fulfill them’ (The Hindu, May 21,
2014). Deendayal Updhyaya (1916 – 1968) was a politician of the BJS, the forerunner organization of BJP and the mentor of ‘Integral Humanism’, the official ideology of the
BJP and mandatory belief for BJP members.5 Integral Humanism rejects concepts deriv-
ing from ‘Western’ political thought like individualism, socialism and capitalism because
of its underlying materialism and non-Indian origins. It promotes an idea of social
harmony that is derived from Hindu thought, with an emphasis on social communion,
and is ‘integral’ insofar as it is a holistic approach that wants politics to serve human
needs on all levels of human existence (body, mind, intelligence and soul) (Updhyaya
1965). In this respect, the ‘ideology’ of the ruling party of the world’s largest democracy
is at the same time conservative and anti-Western. The conservatism of BJP is in some
respect an integral version of conservatism that conservatives in the ‘West ’ might envy.
The Hindu mythological background does not require a theoretical split into metaphysical
and evolutionary conservatism that troubles, for instance, American conservative intellec-
tuals like Larry Arnhart (2010).
Everywhere, conservatism is a political force that tries to combine the struggle for the
interests of (mostly privileged) groups with a concept of society promoting an ahistorical
understanding of it as an organic order or harmony, respectively. In Indian conservatism,
this idea is most obvious and can very openly refer to Indian religious traditions.
Conservatism in a capitalist society can be distinguished from liberalism insofar as the
latter sees the free individual as a starting point and purpose, while conservatism puts
organic sub-state units like families, castes et cetera at the core of its assumptions, or more
precisely at the top of a hierarchy of purposes. Within this frame, different conservatisms basically differ in their tendencies to emphasize egoism or contempt for egoism, the two
sides of the ideological dilemma of capitalism outlined by Max Horkheimer.
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Egoism and harmony – conservatism and ideology
In Egoism and Freedom Movement , one of the founding documents of the Frankfurt
School, Max Horkheimer (1988) presented an analysis of the opposition between egoism
(pleasure) and anti-egoism (altruism) as a constitutive part of bourgeois ideology.
Horkheimer sees the same moral base in the Machiavellian anthropological conceptionthat attempts to domesticate an egoistic human nature for a higher good as much as in
Thomas More’s Utopia where altruistic people deliberately condemn egoism due to their
good nature. Both assumptions about human nature – also represented by Hobbes vs.
Rousseau – point to a basic contradiction within capitalist civil society: the contradiction
between a theoretical aversion to egoism and a highly egoistic practice. This fact is far
from mysterious because the balance or imbalance between interest and common goals is
at the bottom of all political thought. While this holds true for much non-bourgeois
political thought as well, it is the conscious condemnation of individual pleasure seeking
that, according to Horkheimer, is peculiar for the epoch. For Horkheimer, this situation
stabilizes a capitalist society, because group interests are constrained or even immunized
in order to serve the leadership of the capitalist state. If we exchange the Marxian term of
the capitalist state with the conservative terms organic society, ordered liberty or social
harmony, we can get an idea about how much this core contradiction is reflected in
conservative thought.6
In order to give an illustration of how this basic contradiction translates into con-
servative thought, let me start with an exam ple of a conservative interpretation of the
‘ pleasure suppression’ problem. John Gray’s7 book Straw Dogs contains a chapter where
he explains why drug use is a common human phenomenon and at the same time banned.
He writes that humans, being conscious animals, try to escape the suffering which
accompanies consciousness by using drugs. In his anti-progressivist approach, he argues
that the more infected states or societies are by the delusion of rationality and progress, theharsher governments oppress drug users (2002). His argument contains some persuasive
parts, especially where he points out that pleasure seeking, here by drug use, is natural and
policies against it are directed against this nature.8 For Gray, the only way to explain the
suppression of drug use (pleasure) is to blame humanist believers in the improvement of
the human condition for imposing their (finally Christian) delusional ideas on others.
Particularly interesting in this argument is the conservative interpretation of the problem.
Gray sees the individual human animal deprived of its harmonious oneness with nature
and prevented from satisfying its pleasure drives by groups within society that follow their
narrow-minded egoistic beliefs. These beliefs are harmful because they are dominant and
do not integrate into a larger harmony, they promote a sameness that is consideredunnatural. The idea that the suppression of pleasure itself might be a condition for
civilization/society in general, according to Freud (2010), or late-capitalist societies in
particular, according to the Frankfurt School (especially Marcuse 1974), is alien for Gray.
That the suppression of pleasure and, at the same time, the advocacy of pleasure is part of
the same phenomenon is incomprehensible to conservative thinking, not because con-
servatives are not smart enough for dialectics, but because of their conviction that social
harmony is the result of a functional fit of its different constitutive parts. That it is the
functioning of social harmony which requires pleasure suppression at the individual level
is concealed. Conservatism, a strand of bourgeois ideology, cannot take into account the
underlying socio-economic and psychological logics of capitalism, because it rejects these
as manifestations of hostile (Marxist) ‘ideology’, and can only imagine the existence of
disapproved practices (for Gray, the ban on drugs) as the result of ‘ideological’ currents
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that do not submit to the great harmony. Additionally for Gray, the desire for drugs results
from a defect of human nature, namely consciousness. By that, the ideological character
of conservatism unfolds. The apparent problem that individuals are deprived of experien-
cing pleasure while the happiness for the whole community is propagated is interpreted in
a conservative fashion. In Gray’s interpretation, the problem is conditioned by nature
(inaccessible to human intervention) and progressivist ‘ideology’.
Ideology in the Frankfurt School’s approach is understood as a consciousness that is
necessary and wrong at the same time. For Adorno (1966; Horkheimer and Adorno 2003),
ideology is the combination of truth and falsehood at any historical state; only in post-
liberal late-capitalism and fascism, ideology becomes obsolete because the social actuality
becomes its ideology itself. Conservatism persists within the sphere of ideology in the
former sense, because the relationship between today’s actual social reality and modern
conservatism can be interpreted as a reflection of social actuality that is partly true and
false. From Louis Althusser (1995), we learn that ideology not only is an immaterial
superstructure resulting from a certain material base, the state of development of produc-
tive forces, but also has a material side itself, namely its practical realization. According tohim, ideological state apparatuses – social, religious and academic practices included –
reaffirm the very mode of production these practices originated from without being
conscious. From Adorno (1969) and more recently from Slavoj Žižek (1995), we have
regularly been informed that ideology is inescapable. From this perspective conservative
philosophy – even when it puts on an anti-philosophical attitude like Gray’s does – can be
nothing more than an unconscious practical affirmation of the existing socio-economic
order.
Of course, Horkheimer ’s ‘ bourgeois ideology’ refers to capitalist ideology, and this
par excellence is liberalism. It is conservatism that made the dilemma identified by
Horkheimer a system of belief itself. The protestant working ethic that came alongwith the capitalist mode of production (Weber 2010) shows how liberalism on an
abstract level can acknowledge egoistic drives for finally serving the society (‘the
invisible hand’) and at the same time condemn the pleasure-seeking drive of egoistic
acting. Conservatism is in a way more straightforward than liberalism in enduring the
constitutive contradiction of capitalist ideology, because it provides a holistic perspec-
tive on society that acknowledges economic inequality without the moral need for
more equality due to assumptions about a natural defectiveness of human individuals
and groups (mostly families) and a harmonic understanding of society. Conservatives
across all cultural backgrounds share the belief in need satisfaction seeking unequal
individuals and groups (egoism) that together form an organic society (anti-egoism).
Different strands of conservative thought come together in their advocacy of this kind
of holistic harmony. Psychologically, there may be large differences between ‘status
quo’ conservatives and ‘laissez-faire’ conservatives (Stenner 2009), but a commonality
on the level of conservative political thought exists. The idea of society as an organic
entity, where a functional differentiation of segments of the society – ‘to each his own’
– generates harmony, is a basic assumption of conservatism. It does not matter if an
author like Honderich (1990) describes any conservative claim for being concerned
with the common well-being of a society as a mere hypocrisy or if it is presented as a
sincere conviction (Schmitz 2009), or if conservatives deny the existence of divine
ordering principles (Arnhart 2010). The existence of a core assumption for all con-
servatisms is the reason why a large variety of offshoots of conservative schools andsects still carry the same label of being conservative. That these ‘enhancements’ are
far from being a recent development, but – contrary to the prejudice – a constant
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principle of conservatism’s adaptability to changing socio-economic conditions, will
be illustrated by the brief history of the flexibility of conservative thought in the
following sections.
The flexibility of conservatism
When 25 years ago Brian Girvin (1988) saw in the merging of conservatism with
liberalism a new transformation of conservatism taking place, he was already wrong.
Though they existed next to each other and represented quite distinct groups within
capitalist societies in the nineteenth century, liberalism and conservatism are not mutually
exclusive.
For a long time, the way capitalism and civic society developed in the British Empire
and North America was taken as the normal, liberal way capitalism has to develop.
However, a type of capitalism developed that historically had its most radical expression
in the German path of development, the so-called German Sonderweg (special route).
While the former is often described as the ideal means by which liberal values and ideaslike the juridical freedom of the individual and freedom of enterprise are advanced, the
latter is often depicted as a distortion of the ‘healthy’ path of development in which
capitalism and the state are joined and entrepreneurialism pursued under conditions of
authoritarianism. After the Second World War within the post-fascist Federal Republic of
Germany, some remnants of this peculiar tradition survived – like the conservative
emphasis of community – but today Germany is largely recognized as another example
of a ‘normal’ ‘Western’ market economy and not an odd case of capitalism. If today
‘special paths’ of authoritarian capitalist development are discussed in international
political science and public media, they usually deal with the People’s Republic of
China or Russia. In the historical case of Germany, very often a conservative resistanceand counter-revolution against the liberal bourgeoisie, or a violent occupation of the levers
of power by the members of the ancient regime, is used to explain the special German
development. This view is challenged by the actual behaviour of the German liberals
during the respective period. Understanding this behaviour is essential to understanding
the character of conservatism.
While in Europe conservative parties for a long time were loyal to the crown, in the
United States the loyalist Tories had to cope with the absence of a ‘native’ American
nobility and monarchy. In lieu of the King, conservatives adopted the constitution as a
point of focus. ‘American advocates of inequality have usually fallen back upon the
institution of private property as a bulwark against egalitarianism. The American con-
servative has found in the doctrine of liberty a defense against equality’ (Shannon 1962,
14). Nevertheless the ‘Declaration of Independence leaned toward liberty, but the farmers
of the Constitution were motivated by a desire to create stability and security, especially
the security of property’ (15). Shannon comments on the aversion of American conserva-
tives against the state:
Governments were regarded as inherently evil. Were it not for the evil nature of man,government would not exist at all. The fact that the governments complained of wheremonarchical or autocratic was glossed over, and all government was categorized as bad.The notion of government as a referee, primarily a restraint upon violence, is deeplyembedded in the American tradition. The fact that this ideology was a by-product of anagrarian, self-sufficient society is ignored’. (1962, 16)
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The socio-economic strata of American conservatism did not differ much from its
‘strange’ German counterpart – landowners, high officials in military, state and church.
But German liberals had to cope with their country’s status as a latecomer to the world
economy, namely the economy of colonialism. Most likely, this was the reason for the
state-friendly development of capitalist ideology in Germany. Michael Gugel (1975)
argues that, for the German liberal bourgeoisie, the coming together with the traditional
elites and the government as an executive force was a rational attempt to prosper on the
world stage. The explanation that the divide between economic progress and political
underdevelopment in German history was the result of oppression by reactionary groups
is not sufficient, because the bourgeoisie in Germany did not advocate emancipatory
actions, but shared many political aims with the still powerful nobility. On the other hand,
the feudal elites realized that policies against the capitalist economy where unpromising.
The shared prior aim of both classes was the development of a strong state to foster
national power and economic expansion. The desire for a naval fleet were as much
symbols of this attitude as the attempts for national homogenization during the
Kulturkampf (Bismarck ’s culture struggle) and the strategic mobilization of Germanminorities living outside of Germany (Nele 1995; Gugel 1975; Thörner 2008).
These short summaries of the ideal types of diverging developments in capitalism call
to mind that capitalist ideologies differ according to historical conditions. Conservatism in
the United States is strongly linked with a liberal minimal state attitude, because the state
traditionally is associated with a potential risk to private property. In Germany, the state
was the bulwark of feudal elites and the new bourgeoisie to organize and exercise
international competitiveness. According to Gugel (1975) and Nele (1995), the notion
that conservatism in Germany until 1918 was only the ideology of the former feudal class
and a hindrance to capitalist development is wrong. The conservatism of the traditional
elites was rather modern in its adaption to the new social and economic conditions, andthe conservative outfit of the German bourgeoisie was to large parts strategic.
Conservative ideology’s combination of egoism with a notion of an organic communal
order of society was applicable to both historical and geographical conditions. In the
United States, conservatism tended strongly to the side of (family) egoism, while in
Germany it emphasized (national) community. Of course, other traditions and experiences
enforced these different developments, like the history of self-sufficiency as well as
religious backgrounds of the American settlers, or the influential tradition of anti-indivi-
dualist thought and organic romanticism in Germany’s nation-building process. But
beyond experience-based cultural differences and actual economic and political require-
ments of particular historic situations, both trends can be embraced as conservative.
Conservatism is a liberal ideology that includes an illiberal disregard of the individual
and its civic rights to the advantage of groups. While families have priority in all
conservative variants, socio-historic conditions determine how these interests are pro-
moted. And, as the German case has shown, it happens that the requirements of entre-
preneurship make the bourgeoisie adopt conservative ideas, propaganda and political
decisions. Flexibility, and not a general resistance to change, are characteristic of con-
servative politics and policies. The only unchangeable elements are core assumptions
about human inequality and an organic understanding of social harmony.
Until today and across national and cultural boundaries, conservatism is basically a
middle-class phenomenon. The fact that modern conservative parties are able to mobilize
other social spheres for their aims is partly a result of religious-based moral convictionsoutside the traditional conservative socio-economic strata that coincide with values
propagated by conservatives. This is partly because many people vote according to
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economic concerns and have no fixed party affiliation and partly because authoritarian/
conservative dispositions within individuals exist across all social strata. In most democ-
racies, conservative parties cannot rely on their traditional class base alone, and therefore
during election campaigns they regularly reach out to other sectors of the society. The
hypothesis that conservatives tend to adapt to different situations by adopting different
values in public is also sustained by the middle-class voting behaviour that historically
supported two opposing political tendencies: authoritarianism and liberalism. In Germany,
for example, the middle class has been the voting base for the Nazi-Party, but after the
Second World War it has become the base for (economic) liberalism. An explanation for
this flickering behaviour may be found in the anxiety of social descent, of which the
lower-middle class suffers regularly, as well as in rationally calculating the costs and
benefits in supporting a political trend. In his description of US conservatism, Shannon
writes that
No conservative, however, has undertaken to defend government aid to agriculture as a means
of preserving the economic base for rugged individualism. Conservatives rather support thetechnological revolution, which is destroying the very people and institutions they profess toadmire. (1962, 18)
While anxiety and stubbornness are depictions of the classic image of a change-resistant
conservative, they actually very often show highly flexible attitudes and behaviour. In
an interview I conducted with the Indian politician L. Ganesan of the BJP, he expressed
his party’s strong opposition to a ‘Western’ lifestyle that, according to his understand-
ing, comes along with an erosion of traditional gender relations in India and propaganda
for harmful sexual liberties. At the same time, he stressed that the inferior role of women
within the Indian society was a result of Muslim and British occupation that infected
India first with Islamic rigidity against women and then with Victorian sexual morals.
Flexibility in highlighting certain aspects within the pool of conservative attitudes is a
recurrent feature of conservatives. As the example of L. Ganesan illustrates, conserva-
tive attitudes to gender roles can vary according to actual conditions. Also, ‘Western’
conservatives who might favour a woman’s role according to traditional ‘female
domains’ (children, kitchen and church) can strongly disagree with the traditional
subordination of women in other ‘cultures’. This changeability of mind alludes to either
a hierarchy of values, when for example a desire for ‘cultural’ homogeneity scores
higher than for the dominance of men over women, or a rational evaluation of how to
better sustain one’s egoistic interests, by allying with one’s ‘own’ women against
‘aliens’, or the other way around. Here again, we find the conservatives’ tendency toact egoistically while believing that doing so is necessary for a higher purpose. It can
also be mere political calculation. Erdman (1978) described the strategic use of non-
conservative liberal language for conservative aims in India as a necessity for conser-
vatives to be attractive in public.
The conservative psyche
If egoism is one driving force for conservatism’s ends, we also have to assume
rationality as a basic assumption for conservative thought. Understanding conservatism
as mere class propaganda that serves the justification of amoral egoistic behaviour, likeHonderich (1990) does, implies an assumption of a full rational capacity among its
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proponents. Understood like that, values propagated by conservatives would be a mere
‘ideological’ tool for the deception of people, and for consciously fulfilling the interests
of an amoral section of the bourgeoisie. For different reasons, this assumption can be
challenged.
Besides the fact that ideology does not deserve this name when it is only a fully
conscious programme to trick other people, the research from psychological perspectives
on conservatism (and authoritarianism) suggests that conservative thinking is limited to
certain ways by disposition. If character and trait to a large extent determine conservative
or non-conservative attitudes and behaviour, rationality can be applied by both groups, but
only within the limits of their psychological condition.
The psychological literature on conservatism often confirms common-sense knowl-
edge about conservatism. For example, while compared to liberals, the judgments and
decision-making processes of conservatives are better structured and more continuous.
While conservatives have difficulties in adjusting their response patterns to new condi-
tions, liberals on the other hand show higher tolerance of ambiguity and complexity and
are more open to novelty (Amodio et al. 2007). Conservatives have a higher need for cognitive closure, are more competitive and are more coercive and aggressive against out-
groups if these are perceived as a threat to the in-group (De Zavala, Aleksandra Cislak,
and Wesolowska 2010).
Another body of literature that deals with conservatism from a psychological perspec-
tive overlaps with large parts of the psychological research on authoritarianism. Because
conservative movements have always been the precursors of right-wing authoritarian
regimes, this association makes sense from a non-psychological perspective.
Nevertheless, conservatives might consider this association as disrespectful due to the
fact that economic liberalism plays such an important role in today ’s conservative parties
in the ‘West ’, and also because of the conservative post-fascist and post-socialist self-imagination as anti-totalitarian political forces. A tangible example of what the psycho-
logical concept of authoritarianism/conservatism is about comes from Hetherington and
Weiler (2009). They conclude that people voting for George W. Bush tended to be the
same people who favoured corporal disciplining of children. Correlations between voting
behaviour and education styles point to the fact that political decisions do not only emerge
in the political sphere, but correlate with pre-political attitudes.
The body of literature on the topic is vast, so for the purpose of this article it shall be
sufficient to outline some of the best established theories and findings in psychological
authoritarianism and conservatism research. In general, individuals described as author-
itarians have fixed stereotype assumptions about the social reality, are resistant to counter-
evidence, idealize authorities, adore conformity and are aggressive towards nonconfor-
mists (Altemeyer 1996, 2006). According to Robert Altemeyer ’s findings, authoritarian
characteristics appear if anxiety and self-righteousness come together (2006). A strong
correlation between authoritarianism and the belief in a dangerous world had been found
by Altemeyer, which brings together the aspects of anxiety and threat perception as
possible indicators for authoritarianism or conservatism.9 Both aspects are closely related,
but the predominance of one has opposite effects on human behaviour than the other.
Anxiety can lead to higher risk-averse behaviour, while the perception of threat creates
willingness for an aggressive response (Huddy et al. 2005). Nevertheless conservatives
tend to show both. The Right-Wing-Authoritarianism (RWA) scale developed by
Altemeyer is the longest established instrument in the field, but continues to be criticizedfor several reasons. In particular, the implicit equation of authoritarianism with conserva-
tism is problematic. Feldman (2003) sees ‘no evidence whatsoever that conservatism
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contributes to the dynamics of authoritarianism’ (67). Nevertheless, he agrees on a strong
correlation between conservatism and social conformity. One point rejected regularly in
Altemeyer ’s research is that the RWA scale contains many items that refer to classical
conservative attitudes. Therefore, it is hard to distinguish if somebody is really an
authoritarian or a conservative if s/he scores high on the scale (2003).
For a clearer distinction between authoritarianism and conservatism, Karen Stenner
(2005) advances the notion that conservatives are basically concerned with maintaining an
established status quo that is sanctioned by authorities, while authoritarians are basically
concerned with the establishment of uniformity. In other words, conservatives put stability
first even if the established stable society is diverse, while authoritarians are willing to
change the order they live in, because they have a prevailing urge for homogeneity.
Furthermore, she states that personality traits are activated, become visible and are
practised only if normative threat to the social and value order they wish to preserve is
experienced. The last of Stenner ’s assumptions is theoretically supported by the affective
intelligence model of Marcus, Russell Neuman, and Mackuen (2000), which claims that
changes in political behaviour depend strongly on the personal experience of threateningchange.10 On the other hand, the reaction to search security in strong institutions that
might protect one is a common human behaviour in exceptional situations, even though
the ability to cope with these situations independently differs according to one ’s education
(Oesterreich 1997). For the argument outlined here, yet another interesting correlation is
found between beliefs in a just world (‘everybody finally gets what one deserves’) and a
tendency to see justice in the current social order and a negative attitude against victims of
illness, social and economic discrimination or crime. (For an overview of just world belief
research, see Hafer and Bègue 2005.) Rubin and Peplau (1975) have conducted several
surveys which show that people who believe in a just world are more conservative, more
religious, greater advocates of hard work (they used the Protestant Ethic Scale of Mirrelsand Garret) and more authoritarian. Just world belief is a psychological expression that
reflects in a rather unveiled form conservatives’ understanding of social harmony.
At first sight, it is puzzling that versions of conservatism exist that seemingly go
beyond the framework of conservatism. Namely, the conservative tendencies towards
intolerance of ambiguity and intolerance of diversity have to be re-evaluated. With
Karen Stenner ’s work, we have to acknowledge that diversity does not necessarily arouse
a conservative’s emotions or create cognitive dissonance. Still a conservative’s tolerance is
limited due to their strong insistence on stability, order and conformism, as well as their
comparatively clear distinctions between ‘right ’ and ‘wrong’ – even where these distinc-
tions are in contradiction.
According to Stenner ’s research (2009), conservatives also differ psychologically
whether they are status quo or laissez-faire conservatives. Lacking reliable data, it is
hard to say if this holds true for all conservative milieus of the world. As we have seen,
Indian conservatism seems to blur this distinction when we look at its peculiar under-
standing of organic harmony. In the following sections, I try to support this account of
blurring further.
Two Indian conservatives, one conservatism
In February 2013, I conducted interviews with several politicians in the South Indian state
of Tamil Nadu. Next to asking questions about their opinions on the ‘West ’s’ impact onIndia and Tamil Nadu, I asked them to complete the RWA scale test. To limit and
contextualize the scope of my findings, one has to be aware that politics in Tamil Nadu
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is particular and hasty generalizations for all of India must be avoided. Tamil Nadu’s
political party landscape is dominated by parties that emerged from the Dravidian
Movement, which represented politically the linguistic South Indians and, later, basically
the Tamil population in decisive distinction to North India, Brahmin dominance and Hindi
language. The Dravidian Movement stands theoretically for a secularist, largely anti-
religious programme, social equality on all levels (gender, caste, class) and an ethno-
nationalist Tamil agenda. The movement had already been a social movement for more
than half a decade, when Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) came to power in 1967.
Since then, Dravidian parties have ruled the Legislative Assembly of the State. The
policies of the currently ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK
or ADMK) have moved far from the original Dravidian agenda, but the Dravidian
Movement ’s ideas still prevail in large parts of the population and the symbolism of the
party. This ideational ground led to a situation where right-wing agitation in the Hindutva
tradition still has a hard time to take root.
For the purpose of this article, I present from my sample some findings from inter-
views with two conservative politicians from Tamil Nadu. One of my interviewees was L.Ganesan,11 the national executive member of the BJP in Tamil Nadu. Due to the special
conditions mentioned above, the BJP plays a minor role in Tamil Nadu politics. Another
interviewee was Prof. Kader Mohideen, the national general secretary and president of the
state unit for Tamil Nadu of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML). The IUML is an
all-Indian moderate Muslim party with a stronghold in Kerala. In the past, it had been a
coalition partner of several leftist parties, including INC, DMK, ADMK, Communist
Party of India and Communist Party of India/Marxist, which again indicates the pragma-
tism of conservatives.
Both interview partners emphasized that they considered traditions to be very impor-
tant and to be defended, especially those traditions that circled around the family and therelationship between the generations. Interestingly, they both referred to the Tamil saying
‘the whole world is my village and all folks are my kinsmen’ and explained to me that
they were proud of this heritage. For L. Ganesan, it was important to stress that this is not
a Tamil traditional view of the world, but an Indian one. He also put an emphasis on the
protection of Indian culture and the country itself as well as a traditional respect for
women. He pointed out that, for him, more important than the way any Indian worships
god is the fact that s/he is Indian and shares the Indian culture. For him, the term
‘tradition’ was only applicable to countries, but not to religions. The major attack on
these traditions he saw as coming from the ‘West ’. Kader Mohideen was concerned about
the loss of certain Muslim traditions due to attempts within the Muslim community itself
or the spread of un-Islamic ‘Western’ lifestyles through global media, the exhibition of
private acts (kissing) in public, gay marriages and gun-culture in particular. He understood
tradition first as Muslim tradition and second as Tamil tradition. Asked what they perceive
as the major threat for the world, India and Tamil Nadu, L. Ganesan said the conversion of
Hindus to Islam or Christianity, while Kader Mohideen stated political extremism (Hindu
nationalism, Naxalites and Islamist terrorism). Nevertheless, L. Ganesan and Kader
Mohideen both expressed the opinion that they are not at all opposed to everything
‘foreign’ or ‘Western’, especially in the field of technology. Both interviewees expressed
the typical conservative focus on the interests of one’s own ethnic and/or religious group,
while seeing this not as contradictory to an overall harmony and peace. Concerning
international relations, L. Ganesan said that no other country can be trusted and Kader Mohideen that no county exists that can be considered not trustworthy. They both saw the
stability of a good traditional social order at risk: for L. Ganesan, the traditional Indian
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ways (in a Hindutva sense); for Kader Mohideen, the religious Muslim life within a
diverse India. They were both typically conservative in stating that they had never
changed their ideas during their lifetime.
The conservatism expressed by these representatives of these two parties that are
strongly opposed in actual political struggle is to large parts typical. The BJP representa-
tive stands mainly for an Indian nationalism based on the assumption of the supremacy of
Indian/Hindu culture, while the IUML representative depicts a Muslim religious conser-
vatism that is at the same time proud of Tamil culture and Indian diversity. Kader
Mohideen expressed his gratitude to the anti-religious Dravidian Movement that both
makes life easier for Muslims and helps to avoid extremism in the Muslim community in
Tamil Nadu. On the other hand, L. Ganesan described the Dravidian Movement as being
against everything good. Both representatives are examples for the highly context-sensi-
tive and flexible character of conservatives. Both interviewees scored high on the RWA
scale – L. Ganesan a little bit less so than Kader Mohideen. Even though the scales are
invented for the investigation of large groups, it provided an orientation for the evaluation
of my interviews. According to the scale’s standards – not developed for the Indiancontext – both must be taken as (moderate) authoritarians.12
What is striking in the context of the above attempt to conceptualize conservatism are
statements from both interviews that support Karen Stenner ’s assertion that conservatives
are not against diversity in general. What they oppose is novelty in norms. L. Ganesan
laments the decline of traditional Indian broad-mindedness and the introduction of intol-
erance due to ‘westernization’, while Kader Mohideen was unhappy about the rigidity that
some groups within the Ummah try to impose on all Muslims.
To my surprise, L. Ganesan very strongly agreed with the statement ‘There is no
“ONE right way” to live life; everybody has to create their own way’ (RWA scale
question 20), while Kader Mohideen strongly agreed . Had they not given this evaluation,they would have scored even higher on the RWA scale. It suggests itself that the scale has
to be reviewed for universal use in the light of the Indian experience, because this
statement does not at all oppose conservative thought in India.
Is Indian conservatism universal?
To complete our idea of what conservatism might be, the situation becomes complicated if
we conceive of conservatism as an elaborate cluster of a large variety of fixed attitudes,
but it is easily applicable to the empiricism of global conservatism if we reduce these
fixed attitudes to belief in an organic social order consisting of unequal groups and
individuals. It is highly flexible and multiply realisable, just according to particular
temporal or permanent constellations of interests. Indian conservative thinking is striking,
because some of its currents differ vastly from the prototype image of old-style conserva-
tives in the ‘West ’. These were characterized by intolerance of ambiguity and intolerance
of nonconformity. As we have seen, these traits exist among those Indian conservatives
who understand being Indian in a highly exclusive way. This type of Hindutva conser-
vatism is very similar to many conservatisms and authoritarianisms in the ‘West ’. But we
have also seen that intellectual and spiritual conservatism in India can be inclusive and
tolerant of ambiguity and diversity. We have seen with the case of Kader Mohideen that
advocates from Abrahamic traditions can share these qualities if raised in a respective
context, too.Malhotra (2013, 193) writes: ‘Dharma is critical to the maintenance of social stability
and harmony and is the ethic governing the pursuit of wealth and pleasure. [ …] The
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contextual nature goes hand in hand with the spirit of openness to multiple answers to
complex ethical questions’. According to the commonly held opinions, historical varia-
tions of conservatism and the conservative psyche of the ‘West ’, this statement would be
unlikely to pass as a conservative one. How can a conservative advocate a world view
where something (Dharma) is adored, that is critical to social stability and (organic)
harmony and where at the same time no clear distinction between ‘right ’ and ‘wrong’
exists? As we have seen, the non-dualistic concept of Dharma is unlimitedly inclusive and
embraces diversity as a divine play (lila), a mutually advancing movement within the
cosmic totality where no absolute distinction between ‘good’ and ‘ bad’ exists. A con-
servative adhering to Dharmic ideas has simply a broader concept of the order to be
preserved than those societies with strong foundations in the – from this perspective
narrow-minded – dualistic Abrahamic and Greek traditions. Of course s/he does not
assume the possibility of a breakdown of Dharma – the kind of breakdown that according
to Stenner triggers conservative’s authoritarianism, but s/he would like her/his ‘own kind’
to follow ‘the traditional ways’ that are sanctioned by established authorities.
Additionally, the assumption of having inherited a superior vision of reality and truthwhere other religions and spiritual tradition are only seen as parts of the actual unity can
lead to an arrogant attitude that reflects the same exclusionist behaviour patterns in other
traditions. Much of Hindutva apologetic writing confirms that this risk exists, but it is far
from proven that a Dharmic perspective necessarily has this consequence.
The Indianization of conservatism
As long as their core belief remains untouched, conservatives are able to acclimatize to
different conditions. Social change can threaten people and trigger both conservative and
authoritarian reactions, possibly making people re-evaluate formerly held opinions.Conservatives will seek protection from normative change provided by established autho-
rities, while authoritarians are generally seeking (ethnic and religious) homogeneity. How
can we apply these findings to the current change of ‘Western’ conservative parties? Let ’s
have a look at the recent developments in the European Union.
With the exception of Greece, countries with a comparatively low unemployment rate
have experienced significant successes for right-wing parties in the elections for the
European Parliament in 2014. One may conclude from this observation that voters appeal
mostly to the anti-immigrant programmes of these parties when they are in a state of fear
of losing their jobs and privileges, and not if they are already unemployed and in
otherwise socially and economic desperate conditions. This is exactly how Erich
Fromm (1994) and Wilhelm Reich (1980) explained National Socialism’s appeal to the
middle class in 1930s Germany and corresponds to contemporary understandings of the
conservative and the authoritarian psyches. The fear of socio-economic decline does not
necessarily have to make someone a racist or anti-Semite, but a portion of the population
that show high levels of ‘anxiety and all righteousness’ (Altemeyer 2006) will ‘flight into
security’ (Oesterreich 2005) under the umbrella of an authority that is believed to be
capable of defending one and also engaging in aggressive actions against nonconformists
believed to be responsible for one’s plight – a phenomenon known as ‘conformist
rebellion’ when directed against groups considered influential (‘imagined authorities’).
However , according to Stenner, these people are authoritarians, not conservatives.
If we look at these new developments in EU voting behaviour, we can assume that, asa tendency, decisively xenophobic political forces get support from authoritarians who
belong to the in-groups of the respective parties, while those conservative parties that
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started to embrace multiethnicity and plurality of lifestyles are supported by (psychologi-
cal) conservatives. The conservative aim of preserving belief in an organic structure of
society, the individual’s and group’s inequalities and desires for need satisfaction does not
depend on any kind of homogeneity within a society. Therefore, John Gray’s assumption
that (British-style) liberal conservatism depended on a pre-pluralist society, meaning that
contemporary conservatism is moribund, has to be challenged (Burns 1999). His inclina-
tion to a post-humanist conservatism that limits organic harmony not to society or a
peculiar Christian transcendental order, but preserves this conviction in an atheist under-
standing of a law of nature is far from being randomly inspired from ‘Eastern’ traditions.
He expresses universal conservative ideals that are not bound by culture in a time when
this is the most adequate conservative adaption possible. The development of many
conservative parties more than 10 years after Gray’s decision to engage with New
Labor – where he expected to find a more adequate dealing with the challenges of the
diversification of the society while conserving certain established values – shows that they
seem to have learned the lesson. Today, it is possible to remain conservative, in the sense
of this article, if it follows the example of India, where conservatism since its inceptionhad to cope with a situation of multiculturalism and diversity. That India is sometimes
described as a world by itself helps to illustrate the argument. In a globalized world, a
large number of conservatives see the importance of national identity in decline, just as
conservative nationalists in India give little importance to regional identities. The needs of
humanity have increasingly been highlighted for reasons other than propaganda.13 The
belief in a cosmological whole so appealing to conservatives has been elevated from its
old national romanticism to become part of cosmopolitan conservatism. Nevertheless,
contemporary Indian conservatism shows how an appeal to the good of all humans (or
even all beings) can be entangled with an agenda of national pride and self-esteem and
even national chauvinism. This large range is the guarantee that conservatives will be ableto be an attractive electoral proposition for a wide range of people.
While adherence to market policies is not a new feature of conservatism, it is the new
openness of many conservative parties (in the ‘West ’) that is new. It seems like the typical
right-wing aspects of conservatism, like ethnocentrism, sexism, homophobia and religious
intolerance, have become weaker among many ‘Western’ conservative parties. From a
materialistic point of view, these new developments can be understood as the ideological
reflections within conservatism of new conditions within the post-cold-war material
reality: the massive impact of new information technologies on culture and economics,
the increase in economic insecurity, the new options and risks for global entrepreneurship,
the rising importance of the third sector and its impact on governance, the pluralization of
lifestyles, the increasing importance of ethnicity and religion within class struggle and the
reality of violent conflict and forced migration as well as new means of representation in a
globalized media.
The overall picture of today’s political reality has in many respects become much
more diverse within the last two decades. For the ‘Western’ mind, plurality and diversity
are much more a social reality today than 20 years ago. Next to real-life experiences, the
common awareness of this plurality and diversity has been made possible by global
media. On top of that, the diverse work of social activists of all kinds accelerated by
new media options has had an impact on moral evolution among conservatives as well.
‘Western’ conservatives have to provide answers to pressing questions, within this con-
text. Plurality and diversity in various areas that have long has been a social reality inIndia and a core assumption of mystic Hinduism are becoming a global reality due to the
current state of world capitalism. ‘Western’ conservatism adapts to this situation by
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allowing more inclusive assumptions about what is ‘right ’ and what is ‘wrong’, who
belongs to us and who does not. That does not mean that conservatives finally cease to be
conservatives, it just means they have adopted a more adequate strategy to achieve their
unchanging goals. And they do it in a fashion that resembles Indian conservatism.
From that perspective, Indian conservatism serves as an example that is worth
following if conservatives want to cope with the challenges of today in order to secure
their privileges. This is not to be understood as a conscious imitation of Indian conser-
vatism by ‘Western’ conservatives, but as an acclimatization to new conditions. Once
again, ideology comes along with actual practice and vice versa. For conservative parties,
this is a challenge, because psychologically conservatives oppose change of norm orders.
Therefore, it is an intricate task to define in front of the voters what is a conservative norm
and what is not. David Cameron’s ‘I support gay marriages, because I am conservative’ is
illustrative of these practical difficulties. Conservative parties can manage this adjustment
much more slowly than liberal, social-democratic and socialist parties. That for conserva-
tives it ’s the established authorities that define what is ‘right ’ and ‘wrong’ may help them,
but the authoritarian element of the electorate can only keep if they, like BJP, allow veryright-wing factions under its umbrella. Otherwise, they will lose these voters to the new
radical right-wing parties.
Conclusions for an understanding of contemporary conservatism
F.A. Hayek wrote in (von Hayek 1960): ‘Personally, I find that the most objectionable
feature of the conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new
knowledge because it dislikes some of the consequences which seem to follow from it
– or, to put it bluntly, its obscurantism’ (526). Hayek ’s critique of conservatism is outdated
because conservative parties today try to cope with the ‘well-substantiated new knowl-edge’. But it was also not fully true in 1960, because conservatism has throughout its
history been very adaptable to new conditions. It is the new right-wing challengers of the
established conservative parties, those who appeal to psychological authoritarians and
only to some extent to conservatives that match Hayek ’s description.
The traditional orientalist discourse in the sense of Edward Said very often equated
mystic Hinduism and obscurantism while contrasting it with the rationalistic ‘West ’.
Ironically, the qualities of conservatism from ‘obscure’ India are the newest turn of
‘Western’ conservatism to pragmatically pursue its goals.
As we have seen, it is hard to claim a general intolerance of plurality and diversity to
be a foundational aspect of conservatism. Central to a definition of conservatism that
includes the Indian version is Karen Stenner ’s distinctive classification of conservatism
compared to authoritarianism mentioned above. According to Stenner ’s model of an
authoritarian dynamic, (1) conservatives differ from authoritarians conceptually because
conservatives are primarily preoccupied with societal change, while authoritarians’ fore-
most concern is their aversion against difference within societies and (2) that authoritar-
ianism and intolerance of world views is strongly correlated, although this is not true for a
variety of conservatisms. Conservatives are simply happy with the ways they perceive as
the status quo. This situation is increasingly rare in an ever-changing world. It is proble-
matic that conservatives can choose quite freely what they take as the period of the ‘good
old times’. We see, even though the psychological attempts to define conservatism are
very helpful in showing the boundaries of the concept, that in understanding the phenom-enon precisely we are always drawn back to the basic conservative interest of securing
(inherited) privileges as a consequence of the conservative understanding of social
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harmony. Conservatism in the meaning proposed in this article – having a tendency to
both egoism and organic community – survives by opening up to a larger reality. Without
that strategy, the large reality of today would devour conservatism soon. As we know
from India, embracing plurality and diversity is not necessarily a successful means to
guarantee stability and peace. The notion of society as an organic community and the
politics of safeguarding group privileges are also pre-modern desires, potentially endan-
gering the rule of law. We should remember the fact that the term used in South Asia for
violence among religious groups is communal violence. International conservatism’s new
coping strategy is more inclusive, but it has not definitively tamed conservatives from
potentially engaging in misanthropic thoughts and actions.
Notes
1. ‘West ’ will be put into quotation marks because without it would suggest that ‘the West ’ is asocial, political and psychological fact. The facticity of an entity called ‘West ’ is more than
doubtful, and its continuous use is just a continuation of a certain partisan perspective onhumanity I try to avoid.
2. Sangh Parivar, the family of organizations, is the umbrella term for the Hindu nationalist organizations. It was introduced by RSS members and contains today several bigger andsmaller organizations, including the BJP.
3. ‘Ideology’ and ‘ideological’ in quotation marks stands for a world view or a school of thought,while these terms without quotation marks refer to the Marxian and critical theory use of it.
4. By ‘Indian genius thesis’, I understand the notion of India as a superior cultural entity in someof the admiring ‘non-Indian’ receptions of spiritual authorities like for example SwamiVivekananda or Sri Aurobindo. The thesis romanticizes India as the good ‘other ’ comparedto the ‘West ’.
5. Pledge made by BJP aspirants when joining the party:
I believe in Integral Humanism which is the basic philosophy of Bharatiya Janata Party.
I am committed to Nationalism and National Integration, Democracy, GandhianSocialism, Positive Secularism (Sarva Dharma Samabhava) and value-based politics.
I subscribe to the concept of a Secular State and Nation not based on religion.
I firmly believe that this task can be achieved by peaceful means alone.
I do not observe or recognize untouchability in any shape or form.
I am not a member of any other political party.
I undertake to abide by the Constitution, Rules and Discipline of the Party. (Elst 1997)
6. In Horkheimer ’s argument, reverberations of Sigmund Freud’s understanding shows throughthat society and culture necessarily require the suppression of the individual pleasure-seekingdrives for its very constitution (Freud 2010). Besides one’s attitude on psychoanalysis or if someone ‘ believes’ in psycho-dynamics below the surface of political thought or not, I wouldlike to invite the reader to accept Horkheimer ’s description of the (ideological) core contra-diction in capitalism for a while to develop my argument.
7. John Gray turned from a liberal conservative to a supporter of Blair ’s New Labour because hesaw the latter to be better equipped to meet his (conservative) convictions while facing thechallenges of contemporary ‘Western’ societies (Burns 1999). A couple of years later, hisconservatism prevailed in his leaning to ideas from deep ecology and an anti-mystic reading of Taoist classics. As we will see later, Gray’s conservatism is of the psychological kind
described by Karen Stenner with tremendous openness for traditions not derived from an in-group narrative, even an open contempt for the ‘millennialist ’ ‘West ’ (Gray 2007). For anillustration of my argument, he represents a conservative who similar to Indian conservativesembraces diversity and tolerance of ambiguity.
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