Terms of discourse, much like terms of trade, are favourable and unfavourable to some. The dominant position in setting these terms, as held by the Left in India’s academic institutions and a major section of the English media, led to an unchallenged common sense. As a result, the rival political streams of thought, as that of conservatism, weren’t heard in their own voice, not taught in their self-definitions and self-perceptions. Instead, in post-Independence India, the contrived Left-liberal consensus ensured that the voices of the Right, if heard at all, were treated as points of departure from what was an institutionalised common sense imposed from above.
It often led to a stark lack of curiosity about conservative political thought. In the Indian context, the neglect of academic engagement with the conservative stream hasn’t been limited to the Indian Right alone. In fact, the normally Eurocentric study of political thought in Indian campuses haven’t offered space to a detailed study of even modern Western figures of conservatism in political thought—ranging from Edmund Burke in the 18th century to Michael Oakeshott in the 20th century.
