I have often been baffled when I see people use “Right Wing” loosely associating it with anything to do with “Hindus”, and I have often wondered when did anything ‘Hindu’ become symbolic of Right Wing when the concept came from French Revolution. Why I specifically mentioned Hindu is because, I haven’t seen anyone use the same “Right Wing” for Muslim League or for that matter AIMIM (All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen). If we have to associate “Right Wing” with religion then it should be applicable both ways. If Religion is the criteria for defining LEFT or RIGHT in India, where do the casteist parties like BSP, SP or RJD fall? Anyway, one thing is for sure that we in India actually have no idea about Right Wing and what it stands for. Left Wing is still easier to understand may be.

It was the era of French Revolution when politics of Right-Wing and Left-Wing first came into existence, and over a period of time it has taken a different meaning in different countries depending on the political set up of each individual country. Initially this concept originated from the seating arrangement in the National Assembly during French Revolution in 1789. Supporters of the revolution sat on the left whereas supporters of the monarchy sat on the right when the constitution was being drafted. The French National Assembly constituted of Royalty, Clergy and the Common Man, the three estates. While two of them, Royalty and Clergy sat on the right, the common man was seated on the left.

Going through the history of French Revolution, those on the left, the common people were the ones who challenged the establishment and advocated change, while those on the Right were loyal to the monarchy, and spoke of preserving traditions. Left constituted of common men, workers and they were for equal rights and equal distribution of wealth. During 1790’s even newspapers started mentioning “progressive left” and “traditionalist right”.

When Napoleon assumed the throne, this distinctive divide got somewhat diluted, but with constitutional monarchy in 1814, the people on the left and right took their positions in the legislative arena. Towards the middle of 19th century, political parties started identifying themselves not just as “right” or “left” but also “center left,” “center right,” “extreme left” and “extreme right”. With so many variations in place, it becomes rather difficult to present an exact difference between the two major components of politics, the LEFT and the RIGHT. Broadly speaking the difference between these two ideologies center around the rights of individuals vs. the power of the government.

While the LEFT says that people are served better with an expanded role of the government, RIGHT believes in minimum government and more individual rights and civil liberties. LEFT advocates entitlement programs like social security, universal healthcare, food security, free education, unemployment benefits, and regulations on industries, and is anti-free trade. RIGHT is pro free trade, prefers market based solutions to these entitlements, like free marketplace for healthcare, or privately held retirement accounts instead of government’s Social Security. It believes such programs are detrimental to the nation and are bad for economy, because to fulfill such programs ultimately we start borrowing money to fund them and push the nation towards never ending debt.

Freebies are also not good for social welfare as a slow economy leads to unemployment, and supporting the unemployed people through further social welfare schemes, causes strain on the support system. The LEFT considers assisting and supporting people as the job of the government and by doing so, it believes that the government is helping economy by ensuring that people don’t become too poor. These social security programs sound too idealistic and unless the economy is really robust these social welfare schemes are harmful for the nation, very difficult to sustain, Greece is a perfect example of this. RIGHT considers economic growth to be the first priority, whereas LEFT considers capitalism evil and reason for the large difference between the rich and poor which would limit overall prosperity.

Now, when we talk about LEFT and RIGHT in Indian context, the divide is along the social lines and has nothing to do with economics. LEFT believes in a strong secular fabric, but that actually gets translated to minority appeasement, in India. Our grand old party Congress is the perfect example, though they do not claim to be on the LEFT, but they follow policies that are close to the leftist ideology. On the other hand, we have BJP referred to as the RIGHT wing, but has to continue with the social welfare programs because of the country’s level of poverty and unemployment.

Another very interesting feature that I find is, while LEFT is supposed to be more progressive and liberal, as compared to RIGHT, which is allegedly more old school and rooted in traditional approach; today we find the so called RIGHT leaning parties are adapting more aggressive policies for country’s growth, whereas LEFT or left leaning parties prefer conservative approach, not ready to deviate from their age old policies. The “hierarchical order” within political parties and governance is also an important point for differentiation.

While we know, LEFT ideology is about equality and distribution of power, is there a single communist ruled country where we see this being applied? While RIGHT is always clubbed with dictatorship for reference purposes, the truth remains that world has seen more LEFT dictators than of any other ideology. Coming back to hierarchical order in India; if we consider Congress to be Left leaning, we do know the kind of hierarchy that works within the party, and the kind of “power distribution” it has.

So basically Indian politics, Indian political parties and issues are so diverse that restricting them under any definition of “Left” or “Right” will only lead to confused expectations. I would conclude by saying every political party in India, be it national or regional is composed of both left and right policies and leaders who endorse them and their policies are opportunistic and their actions, populist.