At The Harmony Hub, a WhatsApp group of secular, inclusive, broadminded, empathetic humanists (as expected, all cis hetero males, all Marathi Brahmins), someone started to talk of their journey from being a right-wing fanatic to reaching where they find themselves standing today. All of us seem to have had similar journeys, with the turn coming at various points. Mine was 6th December 1992, when the Babri Masjid was vandalised, on the 36th anniversary of Ambedkar’s death, which was, in hindsight, quite fitting, given how every constitutional promise we made to ourselves seems to have been reneged on in a single afternoon. I have a theory about why we were right-wing in the first place, and it has a great deal to do with our socio-economic positioning (caste + income + wealth), but that hypothesis can wait.
We were, as expected, rather pompously proud of the fact that we had escaped our conditioning and circumstance, and had arrived, through effort or luck or both, on the “right” side. Someone brought up an earlier article of mine where I had argued that everyone has a price to change their minds, and asked whether we still had one. My answer was that it may not always be money, power, or coercion. Sometimes, and for me every single time, it is simply the presentation of new data: new perspectives, new facts, new arguments, new experiences, new logic. That is, after all, precisely how I turned. I was given better understanding, whether through books, debates, films, press, conversations, or through my own stumbling and occasionally expensive life. And if I could turn one way, I see no principled reason why I could not turn back.
To this, someone in the group remarked that such a reversal seemed rather improbable, because, and I quote, “When you have seen the light, there is no going back.”
I was intrigued. Because the people who hold the exact opposite position from everyone in that group would say, with equal sincerity and equal certainty, precisely the same thing: that it is they who have seen the light, that it is they who cannot go back now, that it is they who stand on the right side of history, and that it is we who are lost and groping in the dark, mistaking our confusion for clarity.
I have argued before, in this very space, that the old binary of conservative versus liberal is a lazy map of a complicated terrain. What I have come to believe is that the more honest division is between status quoists and rebels. A liberal in a liberal society defending the established order is a status quoist. A conservative in a deeply traditional society who challenges orthodoxy from within is, by that definition, a rebel. The labels we wear tell you nothing about the courage required to wear them. Context is everything, and most binaries are convenient lies.
But I digress. Back to the matter.
I have decided to run a thought experiment. For the next few days, perhaps longer, perhaps shorter, I am going to cross the floor. Not in my soul, not in my vote, not in my life. But in my mind. I am going to sit with the arguments, inhabit the logic, and see if I can make the case, with the same passion and coherence I would bring to my own positions, for a worldview that is not mine.
The themes I intend to explore, in no particular order and with no particular schedule, are these.
Hindu rashtra and Akhand Bharat, and the civilisational and cultural logic of a Hindu identity that predates the modern nation-state by several millennia. Prakhar rashtravaad, unapologetic and unashamed. The Indic knowledge systems and ancient wisdom traditions that were systematically delegitimised by colonial education and have never quite recovered their standing. The revival of Sanskrit as a living language and a vehicle of knowledge rather than a museum exhibit. The Modi-Yogi combine as an expression of genuine political will that half this country has voted for, repeatedly and enthusiastically, and which therefore deserves more than metropolitan contempt.
Bulldozer justice and the reclamation of sacred geography, including the construction of temples in places that carry historical and civilisational wounds. Encounter killings and the pragmatic argument that a broken system sometimes requires extrajudicial force to protect ordinary citizens from extraordinary criminals. Godse and Savarkar, not as monsters to be dismissed, but as men with a coherent ideological framework that millions find compelling and that deserves engagement rather than excommunication from polite discourse.
Varna vyavastha understood not as the caricature of caste oppression but as a system of social organisation that, in its original conception, was functional and even sophisticated, and the parallel argument for the abolition of affirmative action on the grounds that it has calcified into a political instrument rather than a social corrective. Traditional gender roles, marriage as an institution between a man and a woman, and the family as the foundational unit of civilisation rather than an oppressive structure to be dismantled. The case for compulsory military service as a nation-building exercise and for benevolent authoritarianism as an efficient alternative to the chaotic theatre of electoral democracy.
Guru-shishya parampara as a pedagogical model that produces depth of learning and transmission of wisdom in ways that the factory model of modern education simply cannot. A firecracker-laden Diwali as an assertion of cultural identity rather than an environmental concern, and Holi as a festival of communal abandon that does not require the sanitising hand of consent culture. The banning of Pakistani artists and cricketers as a legitimate expression of national sentiment rather than cultural insularity. Propaganda cinema as a tradition as old as cinema itself and no more dishonest than the propaganda of the other kind.
The cow as national animal and the cultural logic of its protection in a civilisation that has revered it for thousands of years. The rejection of Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve celebrations as colonial and commercial impositions on a culture with its own calendar, its own seasons of love, its own moments of new beginning. The jailing of dissidents without bail and strict sedition and treason laws as tools of national security rather than instruments of political persecution, seen through the eyes of those who genuinely believe the nation is under siege. More muscular contempt powers for courts as a defence of institutional dignity. A revisiting of the constitution, written by a committee under the shadow of Partition and the pressure of a newly independent nation, to ask whether it still serves, or whether it has become its own kind of constraint.
And in the broader registers of public life: protectionist economic nationalism over free-market globalisation; a rejection of multinational health frameworks in favour of traditional medicine systems like Ayurveda and Unani; a military posture that is not merely defensive but projective; a foreign policy that is civilisational in its ambition rather than merely transactional; an education system that centres Bharatiya history, Bharatiya philosophy, and Bharatiya languages rather than apologising for them; an environmental philosophy rooted in dharmic stewardship rather than Western climate activism; a media landscape that is unapologetically nationalist; and a cultural agenda that celebrates rather than interrogates.
Have I turned? No. I remain, for now, the same argumentative, self-doubting, chronically secular, affirmative-action-supporting person I have always been.
Will I turn? I would be a fool to say never, and a liar to claim there is nothing that could move me. That would make me less liberal than I pride myself on being. Genuine liberalism requires the courage to be persuadable. I have changed my mind before, on smaller things. I see no reason to exempt the larger ones.
Am I planning to turn? No. This is a mental exercise. A thought experiment conducted in public, which is, when you think about it, what most of my writing has always been.
But somewhere in that thread, between the arguments and the silences and the occasional voice note from someone who felt the point was too large for text, I realised something uncomfortable: if I could not make the opposing argument as well as the person who believes it, I did not fully understand my own position.
That bothered me. It bothers me still.
So. Wish me luck. Or don’t. I may write about all of this. I may write about none of it. This may last a decade, or it may end tomorrow. I make no promises about frequency, output, or whether I shall emerge from the other side with my priors intact.
What I do promise is this: if I write, I will not be dishonest. I will not be sneering. I will not construct strawmen for the pleasure of knocking them down.
The other side deserves better than that. And frankly, so do I.
