Almost everyone seems to know how to fit Indian politics into the usual left-right binary. The BJP is the right-wing party, dominated by religious conservatives. Its worldview is rooted in tradition. Its supposed goal is Hindu Rashtra. The Congress is the liberal, socialist, and secular alternative. No wonder then that the Congress gets so much support from global media outlets, the intellectual class in foreign universities, and so on, and the people back home who also have a global outlook. You know, the educated folks in the big cities.

But wait a second, because we know we have already gone wrong. How is a BJP stronghold like Bengaluru supposed to be the most conservative part of Karnataka? Even within the city, look at the tech hub in Bengaluru South. The Congress has not won this Lok Sabha seat since 1989. In India, the BJP dominates the cities. Even in Kerala, where the BJP usually struggles to open its account, they just got their mayor in the capital city of Thiruvananthapuram. Also, the higher the level of education, the more likely the support for BJP. This seems upside down, when you look at global trends, such as in the United States, or almost any other Western country.

So what is happening? What if we changed some labels and tried a completely new understanding of our political system, and see if that explains things better? Like why do the urban, educated classes vote for BJP? Why is Congress stronger in villages? Who really is a conservative and what is a liberal? What is nationalism? And where do minorities fit into this?

Let us see if we can explain why the BJP is not family-run, but the Congress has to be. Not just the Congress, but almost all its partners in the so-called INDIA bloc, from the RJD to the DMK, with the sole exception of the Communists. We will explain that too. In fact, the Communists and BJP could be closer than we think, if you look deeply at historical processes, that is. And why does the year 1848 matter so much? Let’s get curious, and perhaps a bit naughty.Politics is a creation of the modern age. In the old days, there was no such thing as politics, because there was no need for it. Almost everyone lived, worked, and married within their own little village community, or just around it. Each group had its own traditions, which played the role of laws. This made sense too. Without modern communication, how would a centralised government understand the needs of people a 1,000 miles away? If they made a decision, how would it be implemented? How would people living far away from the capital even know about it?And so, all we had was nobles with some loose authority over village chiefs. This was the structure of empires of the past. The nobles supported the king, and the king kept the privileges of the nobles in place. The most common form of transfer of power was from father to son. This is the basic structure of the Congress party today, and almost all its partners in the INDIA bloc: a collection of ruling families, each from one caste or language group. Each ruling family gets its power from smaller, more local ruling families at the district, block, or panchayat level.........

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