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Conservatism in India refers to expressions of conservative politics in India. Conservative-oriented political parties have included the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Congress Nationalist Party, [1] and the Uttar Pradesh Praja Party. In addition, a number of figures within the Indian National Congress, such as Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel were conservative. [2]
A Pew research survey conducted between late 2019 and early 2020 found that India is a largely conservative country. [3]
Modern Indian conservatism arose as a reaction to colonialism under European powers and the subsequent loss of sovereignty and political power-it harkened back to a glorious Hindu past before the time of foreign invasions.Social and cultural changes laid the groundwork for Hindu revivalism as well as traditionalism. [4]
All-India Muslim League was a political party formed as a response to Hindu opposition(supported by Congress party)to Bengal partition of 1905.It aimed to safeguard the interests of Muslims.This along with the creation of a separate Muslim electorate under Morley-Minto reforms in 1909 consolidated the Hindu Right, resulting in formation of Hindu Mahasabha. [5] Later Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was started by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar [6] after being disillusioned by the participation of INC in the Khilafat Movement.
Conservatism manifested under the aegis of Indian National Congress as well in early to mid 20th century. [7]
Madan Mohan Malaviya along with Madhav Shrihari Aney split away from the party in 1934 in protest of the Communal Award (announced in 1932). They began Congress Nationalist Party afterwards. [8]
Syama Prasad Mukherjee started Bharatiya Jan Sangh in 1951 as a nationalistic alternative to Congress after he left Hindu Maha Sabha. [9]
The Swatantra party was formed by right-leaning congress members in response to the socialistic turn of INC after the Nagpur resolution of 1959.They stood for free markets and dismantling of dirigiste policies prevalent at the time.
Later another conservative faction known as the Indian National Congress (Organisation) also split from INC in 1969 due to the left-wing economic policies of Indira Gandhi, like bank nationalisations. [10]
The Swatantra party later merged into Bharatiya Lok Dal in 1974.
Conservative political parties had very limited success in the national arena even in the late 1970s. [11]
Congress(O) and Jan Sangh merged into the Janata Party in 1977. The big tent arrangement led to a government whose foreign policy led India towards closer relations with the United States. But it also caused the exit of several multinational companies from the Indian market due to economic nationalism under the Janata rule. [12]
The electoral misfortune of political conservatism changed with the formation of Bharatiya Janata Party and its later adoption of Ram janmabhoomi campaign which ultimately resulted in BJP going from two seats in 1984 to leading government at the central level in 1996 and 1998.
BJP retained power after the success of Kargil war in 1999 elections but lost 2004 polls in spite of its India shining campaign.
Later BJP returned to power with larger mandates in the 2014 and 2019 elections [13] and is currently leading opinion polls for 2024 election as well. [14]
Shiromani Akali Dal was formed in 1920 as a vehicle for Sikh conservatism in Punjab. [15]
All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen was founded in Hyderabad in 1927 as a party which wanted setting up of a separate dominion instead of integration with India. [16] [17]
Indian Union Muslim League is the successor of All-India Muslim League in post-independence India. Its first council was held on 10 March 1948 in Madras (now Chennai), adopting a constitution on 1 September 1951. [18] The party is primarily active in Kerala.
Uttar Pradesh Praja Party was formed in the state of Uttar Pradesh to oppose the abolition of the zamindari system on April 5-6 1951.But the party soon disappeared after 1951-52 Lok Sabha elections. [19] [20]
On 19 June 1966, Mumbai-based cartoonist Bal Thackeray founded Shiv Sena as a Marathi nativist organisation. [21]
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is an Indian right wing, Hindu nationalist volunteer paramilitary organisation. It is the progenitor and leader of a large body of organisations called the Sangh Parivar, which has developed a presence in all facets of Indian society and includes the Bharatiya Janata Party, the ruling political party under the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Sarsanghchalak of the RSS is Mohan Bhagwat.
Hindutva is a political ideology encompassing the cultural justification of Hindu nationalism and the belief in establishing Hindu hegemony within India. The political ideology was formulated by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1922. It is used by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and other organisations, collectively called the Sangh Parivar.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is a political party in India and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under the incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The BJP is aligned with right-wing politics and has close ideological and organisational links to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) volunteer paramilitary organisation. Its policies adhere to Hindutva, a Hindu nationalist ideology. As of January 2024, it is the country's biggest political party in terms of representation in the Parliament of India as well as state legislatures.
The Akhil Bharatiya Jana Sangh (abbreviated asBJS or JS, short name: Jan Sangh, was an Indian right wing nationalist political party. This party was established on 21 October 1951 in Delhi, that existed from 1951 to 1977. Its three founding members were Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, Prof. Balraj Madhok and Pt. Deendayal Upadhyay. Jan Sangh was the political arm of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu nationalist volunteer organisation. In 1977, it merged with several other left, centre and right parties opposed to the Indian National Congress and formed the Janata Party. In 1980, the members of erstwhile Jan Sangh quit the Janata party after the defeat in the 1980 general elections and formed the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is the direct political successor to the Jan Sangh.
Bajrang Dal is a Hindu nationalist militant organisation that forms the youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP). It is a member of the right-wing Sangh Parivar. The ideology of the organisation is based on Hindutva. It was founded on 1 October 1984 in Uttar Pradesh, and began spreading more in the 2010s throughout India, although its most significant base remains the northern and central portions of the country.
The Sangh Parivar refers, as an umbrella term, to the collection of Hindutva organisations spawned by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which remain affiliated to it. These include the political party Bharatiya Janata Party, religious organisation Vishva Hindu Parishad, students union Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), religious militant organisation Bajrang Dal that forms the youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), and the worker's union Bharatiya Kisan Sangh. It is also often taken to include allied organisations such as the Shiv Sena, which share the ideology of the RSS.
The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is a centre-right to right-wing conservative Indian political alliance led by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It was founded in 1998 and currently controls the government of India as well as the government of 17 Indian states and one Union territory.
The Janata Party was a political party in India. It was founded as an amalgam of Indian political parties opposed to the Emergency that was imposed between 1975 and 1977 by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of the Indian National Congress. In the 1977 general election, the party defeated the Congress and Janata leader Morarji Desai became the first non-Congress prime minister in independent modern India's history.
Akhand Bharat, also known as Akhand Hindustan, is a term for the concept of a unified Greater India. It asserts that modern-day Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Tibet are one nation.
Bharatiya Lok Dal was a political party in India. The BLD or simply BL was formed at the end of 1974 through the fusion of seven parties opposed to the rule of Indira Gandhi, including the Swatantra Party, the Utkal Congress, the Bharatiya Kranti Dal, and the Samyukta Socialist Party. The leader of the BLD was Charan Singh.
Mungaoli Assembly constituency is one of the 230 Vidhan Sabha constituencies of Madhya Pradesh state in central India. This constituency came into existence in 1951, as one of the 79 Vidhan Sabha constituencies of the erstwhile Madhya Bharat state.
The elections in 2012 were scheduled for seven Vidhan Sabhas and several local elections were also conducted. The 14th presidential election to elect the 13th president of the republic was also held in 2012. The tenure of the legislative assemblies of Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand were to expire during the year. The Election Commission of India issued the dates for the elections in Manipur, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Goa to take place in the first quarter of the year. Whereas the elections were held in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat in the last quarter of the year.
Samyukta Vidhayak Dal was a coalition of parties formed in several north Indian states after the 1967 assembly elections, made up of the Bharatiya Kranti Dal, the Samyukta Socialist Party, the Praja Socialist Party and the Jana Sangh. The coalition opposed the Indian National Congress party that had hitherto single-handedly dominated Indian politics.
Bharatiya Janata Party, Rajasthan is a state unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Rajasthan. Chandra Prakash Joshi is the current president of the BJP Rajasthan. Vasundhara Raje was the previous Chief Minister of Rajasthan during 2013–2018, previously she served in the same post from 2003 to 2008. She was the first female Chief Minister of Rajasthan. And the former president of the BJP Rajasthan.
Sunil Kumar Jakhar is an Indian politician and president of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Punjab unit since 4th July 2023. Previously, Jakhar was the president of the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee from 2017 to 2021. Elected consecutively three times from Abohar Assembly constituency (2002-2017), he was a Leader of the opposition in the Punjab Vidhan Sabha from 2012 to 2017. He was a member of the Indian National Congress (INC) for five decades until 2022. In May 2022, he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), claiming that he wanted to support "nationalism, unity and brotherhood in Punjab". Earlier, Jakhar was elected as a Member of Parliament from Gurdaspur constituency to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Indian parliament in a by-election in 2017.
The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) is a centre-right Sikh-centric state political party in Punjab, India. The party is the second-oldest in India, after Congress, being founded in 1920. Although there are many parties with the description Akali Dal, the party that is recognized as "Shiromani Akali Dal" by the Election Commission of India is the one led by Sukhbir Singh Badal. The party has a moderate Punjabi agenda. On 26 September 2020, they left the NDA over the farm bills.
The Jammu Praja Parishad was a political party active in the Jammu Division of the Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. It was founded in November 1947 by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh activist Balraj Madhok, and served as the main opposition party in the state. It maintained close ties with Bharatiya Jana Sangh during its lifetime and merged with the latter in 1963. Its main activity was to campaign for the close integration of Jammu and Kashmir with India and oppose the special status granted to the state under the Article 370 of the Indian constitution. After its merger with the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the precursor of the present day Bharatiya Janata Party, the party gradually rose in stature. As an integral part of the Bharatiya Janata Party, it was a partner in the ruling coalition led by the People's Democratic Party.
Bharatiya Janata Party, Maharashtra is a state unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Indian state of Maharashtra The headquarters is located in Mumbai