It appeared as if the Gods cursed the world’s conservatives in the 2010s. Loss after loss was followed by shining nestling hopes that turned out to be flashes in the pan, instead beckoning a deepening of darkness. The signs and signatures of the Left already dominated elite culture but were now stamped onto political institutions, signaling a cementing of rule and a change of guard.

In 2014, Scott Alexander described the phenomenon of an increasingly intolerant liberal belief system of American Democrats as the “Blue Tribe.” Balaji Srinivasan has recently pointed out that this belief system is not simply restricted to American Democrats anymore. Go to New York, New Delhi, Nairobi, Naples, Nottingham, Nagoya, or any other alliterative large city worldwide, and you will meet people who bow to this now global Blue Tribe ideology. Whether they were converted by their university, an intelligence apparatus masquerading as an NGO, or Netflix, they genuinely believe in this set of left-wing ideals to further themselves or their people forward.

Yet amongst this Blue tsunami enveloping countries across the globe was an unrelenting saffron fire. In the world’s largest and most challenging democracy was a party that brought the bloodsport of Indian politics to an all-out war. The Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Narendra Modi, would not only topple the long-dominant Indian National Congress but is in the middle of an increasingly fruitful campaign against India’s institutions and cultural elites who had for decades flown the flag of Congress and Blue Team at large.

In the process, the BJP has delivered on massive policy goals and cumulatively infiltrated India’s institutions with its own people. It is not a revolutionary spirit but a reformist machine methodically remaking Indian society, state, and culture—in that order. Manu Joseph, a seasoned Indian columnist, has crafted an excellent short essay detailing how there can never be any global right-wing like the global left or Blue Team. Nonetheless, there are many lessons from the BJP’s uphill battle against India’s long-dominant Blue Team, in which it had decimated a decades-long dynasty and finally seized the peacock throne of Delhi. 

Ground & Pound Game

The BJP is the organizational child of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or the RSS. The RSS has an infamous reputation in the hallowed and oh-so-truthful halls of academia as a fascist Hindu Nationalist outfit carving India into a Nazi regime. No doubt, the RSS has a goal of Hinduizing Indian society and state. Still, the RSS’s main activities mainly include cadre support to the BJP for campaigning, disaster relief, community events, and organizing regular meetings called shakhas to educate and recruit youth into its organization. One of the most integral lessons in these shakhas is the idea of Hindu unity. You see, Hinduism, for so long, has been divided not just by sects like other religions but also by caste and ethnicity. In the RSS’s version of history, the losses of Hindus over the last 1000 years, which resulted in them being colonized by Turkic Muslims and European Christians, were primarily due to the disunity of Hindus themselves. This is the basis of the RSS and BJP’s ground game. While the BJP initiates political action, the RSS inculcates societal transformation in a missionary-like fashion. RSS members go far and wide across India from village to village, planting the seeds of their ideology under every mind they can find.

However, the BJP has not settled with just physical word-of-mouth. Opponents of the BJP-RSS parody the organizations as dens of pot-bellied dinosaur uncles mashing their thumbs on WhatsApp, forwarding alternating messages of “Good Morning Dear” and “LOOK AT WHAT THIS MUSLIM DID.” Okay, there’s a bit of truth to this stereotype, but it’s also a polemic cope. The organizations are incredibly tech-forward, and that is precisely why they win.

The BJP is a cyborg organization. Before any other party, it outfitted itself with a robust digital appendage to give it an arm and leg up on the competition. Narendra Modi himself spearheaded WhatsApp and Facebook campaigns in the run-up to his 2014 victory. Without missing a step, he would encourage the BJP to build out frenzied yet intensely tactical social media teams on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, the latter two being an uphill battle as the opposition initially had much more dominance in those domains. Not to mention, this digital war was fought on battlefields that gave a Himalayan high ground to left-leaning ideologies.

The final element of the BJP’s ground game is, ironically, the man at the top – Narendra Modi. Some chalk it up to Modi’s star-aligned background of coming from a lower caste, poverty, and practicing a salt-of-the-earth Hinduism. This heritage covers and connects with large swathes of the Indian population. They say he is lucky to have a fumbling and bankrupt opposition despite this same opposition successfully controlling India for decades by exploiting the same festering fissures India has today. This all has some truth to it, but at the end of the day, again, it’s cope. Mostly because people overrate the individual politicians of the opposition and completely underrate the opposition as a ruthlessly efficient, deep-seated socio-political apparatus (A la Yarvin’s Cathedral). Good things come to those who act, not wait. 

Not since Mahatma Gandhi left hundreds of millions awestruck by his austerity and activism have we seen such a political animal and ascetic as Narendra Modi. Modi practices a scathing conceit and arrogance against India’s old elites while simultaneously exhibiting an unbreaking humility to the Indian masses, who now revere him as a savior. Modi’s reverence for Indian culture, something long ignored or even derided by India’s haughty Anglophile elites, his penchant for action, and his reputation for being incorruptible in a nation where scams are as common as cows invoke the ancient ideal of an Indian ruler, the rajarshi or sage-king. He is a man of dichotomies. One day, Modi will rub shoulders with international leaders and businessmen at Davos; the next day, he will visit the home of a woman who was given permanent housing and gas connections by one of the various welfare schemes that have endeared Modi to India’s poor. The Davos denizens will butter him up as a monumental world leader, but the women whose house he visits will literally call him a God as they serve him ghee-laden rotis. Modi has not only captured the imaginative aspirations of Indians but, more importantly, left his fingerprint on their hearts. With such a leader at the head, the BJP has gone straight for the throat in politics.

The Politics of Pragmatism

The mythic Greek hero Theseus triumphantly returned to Athens after his legendary exploits on a magnificent ship. As its oars and boards rotted away, each would be replaced until the entirety of the boat was made of new wood and materials. Thus, the great philosophers of Athens argued about whether this ship was even the same as that of Theseus. While the whole boat looked identical as it would’ve during Theseus’ minotaur slaying, its parts were wholly anew. 

“It doesn’t matter whether a cat is white or black as long as it catches mice.”

– Deng Xiaoping

The BJP has soared to the zenith of Indian politics through the sail of the Ship of Theseus. While maintaining a core shape of policy points, particularly on the cultural agenda, it has remained flexible and reactive on other aspects of governance. In addition, it has used the cadre-based ethos to resolute effect by clamping down on those advocating policies that do not serve immediate electoral interests (think Republicans actually telling pro-lifers or alt-righters to chill out or at least bide their time). While having its share of rabble-rousers and controversies, the BJP has moderated its rhetoric over time while pushing the boundaries of its culture war. By cloaking his messaging in Gandhian platitudes, Modi pushes policies that concurrently lull stability to fence-sitters while making the old radical scion of Hindutva, Veer Savarkar, smile. Nonetheless, the BJP’s most significant obstacles to staying in power were the establishment’s twin inertias – Indian society’s addiction to socialism and rabidly cannibalistic caste politics. 

Modi’s first demonstration of pragmatism was his rapid pivot from Reagan and Thatcher’s little secret to a technology-streamlined welfare king. A full-blown flank from the left left the Indian opposition careening into electoral oblivion. By leveraging technology veterans from India’s IT sector, the BJP created an all-encompassing FinTech stack called India Stack to ensure direct welfare and the formalization of the Indian economy. Money that used to skid against the prying hands of corrupt middlemen was now smoothly sent to Indian bank accounts. Modi would compound this by going on an infrastructure blitzkrieg by laying roads, toilets, electricity lines, water connections, airports, and so much more; in many cases, doubling or even tripling construction by all his predecessors combined. For many of India’s poor, “right-wing” Modi was a Marxist Godsend. Only later in his term, once he had the trust of India’s poor, did he venture into privatization and right-wing economics. 

Continuing with this theme of expansion is how the BJP made inroads with communities it wasn’t traditionally successful with. It’s important to understand that in function, Indian politics is a contest between a million minorities. Different castes, sects, ethnicities, and other identities clash in a dizzying political contest that is much more complex than binaries of Hindu-Muslim or upper and lower caste. To win an election, a party must solidify a group that votes for the party at high margins (70%+) and then create a coalition of other groups that don’t have much antagonism with the base group. 

The BJP was primarily known as a party of Brahmins and Baniyas, caste groups known for their adeptness at knowledge and mercantile work, respectively. However, it expanded to other castes through a deft combination of the aforementioned welfare and infrastructure push (which particularly drew in less well-off castes), more inclusive representation among leadership, and perhaps its most controversial yet iconic element—Hindutva or Hindu Nationalism.

The Moving of Minds

For the past decade, Western newspapers and observers have lamented India’s slide into genocide, economic meltdown, and civil war. Their primary diagnosis for these calamities is Hindutva. The issue is that their dark omens never manifested. India has instead become the most attractive emerging market in the world and experienced a steady decline in communal riots. This does not mean that the BJP’s Hindutva is a mirage as some far-right Indians believe, but rather that it has cumulatively inched Hindutva forward rather than launched a chaotic onslaught.

The BJP has delivered on various big-ticket items such as removing the special status of India’s contentious Muslim-majority province, Kashmir, enacting a refugee law accelerating non-Muslim refuge from South Asian Islamic states, and perhaps its crowning achievement of restoring Ram Mandir, one of Hinduism’s holiest temples that Islamic invaders previously destroyed. Meanwhile, state governments under the BJP have pushed forward cultural agendas such as banning beef, changing textbooks, and implementing anti-missionary policies.

Much of the BJP’s “total war” policy regarding Hindutva is encapsulated in the Ram Mandir restoration movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Without this movement, India may have continued its descent into caste and linguistic-ethnic conflict. Hindus are a divided people, but this socio-political movement united them like never in their history. It is also yet another example of how the BJP used “left-wing” rhetoric to achieve its aims. Decolonization and indigenous rights have become a post hoc explanation for the 1991 demolition of the mosque that once stood atop Ram Mandir, the site of the Hindu God, Lord Ram’s birthplace. The late 80s saw a cultural revolution in India as the BJP-RSS successfully galvanized Hindus in a movement that brought nearly a century-long case over the disputed site to its head. Delivering such a momentous cultural win this year has shattered the opposition alliance and permanently shifted India’s Overton Window. 

From a mass movement to political ascent to cultural domination, the BJP has achieved a full-spectrum victory through the vehicle of the Ram Mandir movement. Modi made sure to slowly infiltrate institutions and build alliances with powerbrokers to upend the storied (pseudo)secular Indian establishment, but he did so over almost a decade, avoiding a Trumpian dysfunction in government with nonstop firings and instability. 

During his most recent term, Modi has reached out to popular cultural icons to promote his schemes and policies, becoming an influencer-in-chief utilizing his technological fetish to full effect. At the temple’s opening, Modi featured in a central, almost imperial role, inviting his allies, neutral big-name celebrities, and even enemies to ensure that all either bend the knee or be cast as pariahs in India’s new cultural consensus.

Patience and discipline are the virtues that need to be emphasized here. The BJP did not bumrush its way into the middle of the Indian establishment just to be skewered from all sides. It truly treats politics as war. Feints, alliance-building, flanking, adoption of technology, and all other features of military strategy across history are employed to beat the opposition to a pulp. While niceties and honor will be displayed in the interim, at the end of the day, there will be no prisoners for Modi and the company. They want to fundamentally transform India into a defacto Hindu Rashtra or Hindu state. A state that upholds, defends, and promotes Dharma instead of treating India’s most integral cultural aspect as an untouchable ideal.

Going Beyond Labels

With such an assault on historic institutions and cultural mores against an entrenched foe, is it even accurate to call the BJP conservative?

India is undoubtedly a conservative society, but a large part of that entrenched culture and inertia was to the advantage of the INC or Blue Team. For years, the INC has benefited from old caste conflicts and socialist stagnancy. In a way, the BJP presents a progressive and offensive force in Indian society and politics. They are laying siege to the establishment’s citadel rather than trying to conserve it.

This contrasts sharply with conservative parties worldwide who haven’t even realized they’ve lost, let alone understood how badly. There is no grand “return,” as the past is an idyllic apparition. The BJP emphasizes restoration but also remaking. While grand temples will be constructed, festivals patronized, relics exalted, and pilgrimage sites revitalized, the BJP rejects elements of traditional Indian society that do not serve its political aims, such as rigid and discriminatory aspects of the caste system. As illustrated earlier, it is also not puritanical about economic beliefs. It moves with political expediency, not dogma.

There is an element of aspiration in the BJP. If you recall the tidbit about the million minorities theory, Indians have multiple identities that stack on top of each other. Certain identities are more salient than others. For much of the Republic of India’s history, caste was the dominant identity. Those who progressed in society would engage with more cosmopolitan identities such as Nehruvian Secularism or Communism. With Hindutva, the BJP has given an aspirational ideology with a cosmopolitan sense of Hinduism beyond simply one’s caste, sect, or region. Now, all of India’s history and achievements belong to a person, not just those from one’s locality. For those who are more well-off, Hindutva means horizontal expansion. For those less well-off, Hindutva means vertical mobility. Many conservative parties do not offer an ascendent cosmopolitan ideology to counter the global liberalism of the Blue Tribe. Thus, the educated and urbane flock to the Blue Tribe.

Yet despite this correlation with affluence and education, the BJP isn’t a party of intellectuals. The RSS has been described as anti-intellectual in bent, an accusation which many members simply shrug off. Groundswell and sending the opposition to political hell without highfalutin intellectual gymnastics has kept this mentality up. This has begun changing in recent years as new right-wing thought leaders’ lectures fill with the youth while the left-wing stalwarts of yesteryear talk to themselves in parched halls. In that way, Hindutva has an organic element to it, from being a reactionary movement to secular, colonial, and Islamic excesses to now trying to define Indian society, state, and indeed the idea of Hindutva itself. The most vibrant debates in Indian society are within Hindutva and the BJP, whilst the Left has been rendered outcast.

Other conservatives, such as the Republicans, have different problems. A large section of its base is enamored with wild conspiracy theories and a boorish communication style that turns off educated and cosmopolitan people. Opposite the “low” of the party are the “high” who have increasingly gone down the rabbit hole of white identitarianism, a massive electoral albatross in a country where most whites are disgusted by the idea and with demographic changes not in their favor. The party apparatus, on the other hand, is most obsessed with which random third-world village to bomb next or cutting taxes for companies that want to guillotine their constituents. So busy in these twin follies that the Republican establishment does not realize the fanaticism present in Democrat activist and leadership circles who want nothing more than to obliterate Republicans. Republicans do not have the level of intent and seriousness towards politics that Democrats have at the moment. Republicans treat politics as a contest; Democrats treat politics as war. 

Nevertheless, the BJP has some armaments of luck and long-term thinking that other conservatives cannot replicate on the fly. Constructing a cadre and unearthing a Modi-like leader from that cadre takes time. The history of Islamic conquest and European colonization gives Hindutva a sense of intense, soul-cutting grievance that many other countries do not possess. The shadow of partition and even present-day antics of Indian Muslims are a goldmine of propaganda material for the BJP. 

However, tactics like controlling one’s extremists, pursuing new vote blocks, and creating composite, cosmopolitan ideologies to counter the Blue Tribe are doable. Leaning more into technology and showing some pragmatism in policy by flanking your enemy is not blasphemy. Pursuing cultural hegemony and institutional capture in a cumulative instead of caustic way may not be “BASED,” but it’s more likely to result in victory. But above all, there needs to be a detachment from conservatism itself, as there’s little left to conserve at this point. Now is the time of conquest. Go forth, expand, and win. Debate details later.

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“…Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.”

-Mao Zedong