The Right Turn

It’s different in the West. In the West, communist-turned-conservatives not only abound, they are also important participants in public discourse. They played a key role in heralding the Reagan-Thatcher revolution of the 1980s; the conservative revolution continues under George W. Bush. Arguably, the most prominent among them is Irving Kristol, the first neo-conservative whose ideological and biological progeny set the agenda for Washington. A former Trotskyite, he is a profound thinker and a prolific writer. His views would be considered reactionary in India. For instance, he recently wrote that ‘‘a secular state cannot prosper-indeed, cannot survive-in an entirely secular society. Families and churches are the two institutions that make for inter-generational stability.’’

Another conservative icon is Paul Johnson, a Briton. One of the most important living historians, he was once a leftist. Later, he became one of the staunchest critics of communism. His book, Modern Times, a history of the 20th century, begins with a description of and an attack on moral relativism. He hailed the Reagan-Thatcher era as one in which the ‘‘recovery of freedom’’ became possible.

The story of Whitaker Chambers is even more dramatic. A former Communist Party member and Time magazine senior editor, he became famous (or infamous, from the liberal point of view) because of his testimony in the 1950 Alger Hiss trial, which heralded the age of McCarthyism. Chambers became an aggressive anti-communist.

David Horowitz’s journey from the left to the right has been equally dramatic. Hailed as ‘‘one of the great thinkers on the American scene today,’’ his new book Left Illusions delineates his defection to conservatism. Reflecting on his adolescent days, he told an interviewer that he thought that he had the wisdom to instruct President Harry Truman. A variety of factors — the rigidity and dogmatism of communism, the continuous reports of killings in communist countries (80 to 100 million dead), the failure of command economy all over the world, and the unprecedented prosperity created by capitalism-brought leftists and many liberals in touch with the real world. Kristol famously said that a neo-conservative is the liberal who got ‘‘mugged by reality’’; the same was true for the leftist.

In India, however, the liberal and the leftist have fortified themselves in the ivory towers of political correctness and socialist rhetoric. They frown upon the very idea of an excursion, even a forced one, into the real world. Those who have to accept the inexorable logic of capitalism — which is the only humane system mankind has ever witnessed — do so diffidently and apologetically. An illustration: Bimal Jalan, a leading liberaliser, who has held almost every office an economist can dream of holding, justified economic reforms in his book (in 1996) by saying that such reforms are ‘‘consistent with our socialist ideals’’!

Even the few who turn rightwards find it prudent to follow the left-liberal consensus, rather than challenge it. If the reports about Kulkarni’s influence over Advani have even an iota of credibility, his effort was to make the BJP leader consistent with the consensus. While in the West the ideological defector challenges the liberal consensus, his Indian counterpart is happy following the canons of conventional wisdom. This keeps the Indian intellectual shielded from the assaults of reality.

The writer, a business journalist, is at: raviskapoor@gmail.com