Righteousness of electoral choices

India’s perhaps most polarized election in its recent past, concluded with a thumping victory for India's right-wing forces lead by Sh Narendra Modi. Its electorate sidelined Indian National Congress, which primarily positioned itself as a Left to center political ideology. Congress tried to become a ‘champion of poor people’ promising ‘justice’, yet it got much less support than its rival rightwing party.

Both Left and Right are equally defensive about their ideologies, philosophy, programs, and agendas. Why are that seemingly intelligent people, who are all likely to well-educated, still having sharply different political ideologies? Why such people don’t sit across the table and debate amongst themselves to find policies that are consensual so that Policymaking would be faster and easier. ? But in the real world, it can’t happen so. We will examine why and how both Left and Right are essentially different and hence any argument between them would be like a dialogue between dumb. Let’s examine why it is like that.

We all support a political ideology essentially because we sincerely believe that it is the right thing to do for the betterment of the world. We, most of us, support either left or right, not because of our selfish interest, but because of our sense of Self-righteousness. We also tempt to believe that our opponents are selfish to the core and that is the reason why they oppose ‘my righteous’ idea.

This disbelief is more acute for Leftists than to Rightists. Leftists are least bothered to know why many people are outside its fold and why these people believe in ‘backward-looking, regressive, fascist’ Rightwing ideas. Their sense of self-righteousness is so strong that they always demonize and even de-humanize anybody who believes in ‘Rightist’ ideas. They are at disbelief that how ‘educated’ men can embrace the party of ‘evil’. This is because; they deny that there is an alternate moral world which has a certain set of values those Leftists dismisses altogether. The truth is that both Rightists and Leftists live in a different moral universe.

To understand why Leftists and Rightists have different kinds of ‘Righteousness’ let’s look into some aspects of Moral Psychology. According to Jonathan Haidt, author of the book ‘Righteous Mind’, we vote for a party/idea which we sincerely believe as right and that sense of righteousness comes from some set of moral foundations. Accordingly, he opines that we, humans have 6 foundations of Morality. They are

a)      Care Foundation

b)     Fairness foundation

c)      Liberty  Foundation

d)     Loyalty foundation

e)      Authority foundation

f)       Sanctity foundation

While Leftists focuses only on first 3 foundations of morality and rest 3 are irrelevant for them, Rightists consider all the 6 moral matrices but focuses more on the last 3 without ignoring the first 3.

Moral values based on Sanctity Foundation is the most important one to understand the crucial difference between the Rightist and Leftist preferences. For Left, Nation is nothing but just a land mass to be used for human consumption.  People living here are just human beings, who happened to born here and acquired citizenship thereby. For Rightists, this Nation is not just a land mass but a divine entity, worthy of worship. People living here are not isolated, unconnected, selfish human beings, but belong to a Moral community. ( For Rightists, even if you are a legal citizen, but does not have belief and sense of  belongingness  to this Moral community, you may be  called as Anti-national ) Individuals are not of prime importance, but the moral community which is bonded together by a certain set of divine values that should get primacy over individuals.

Rightist war cry of Bharat Mata ki Jai, Jai Shriram etc is an attempt to reinforce believes that this land and its gods are not just utilitarian objects but are sacrosanct. They know that people have deep-rooted believes in these ideas and hence they bring Sanctity foundation of morality into these ideas.

Let us come to the main focus area of Congress party which essentially is a Leftist oriented party as of today. It focuses on NYAY or Minimum Support Income, farmer welfare, compassionate leadership. (in contrast to Masculine leadership style of Mr Modi ) etc,  which is nothing but moral value system based on Care Foundation. Again it talks about simplified GST, taxing rich more, etc which is based on Fairness foundation.

BJP or Mr Modi talks about a tall leader who can bring order and discipline in this country, which is about moral values based on Authority foundation. Again it talks about anti-India forces ( tukde- tukde gangs), Maoist insurgency, Kashmiri militants etc which they believe is a threat to the unity and integrity of this country and hence need decisive leadership to lead this country. Again, it questions the loyalty of these people to this country and brings Loyalty foundation of morality.

This does not mean that Rightists completely ignore the Care and Fairness foundation. Mr. Modi often talks about LPG cylinders, toilets, houses for poor, etc to emphasis on his ‘Care’ aspects. He also talks about his poor backgrounds, his contempt towards entitlements, privileged classes etc which in reality is his ‘Fair foundation’.

In conclusion, it can be said that Leftists care only about Care, Fairness and Liberty foundation, but Rightist top up it with Sanctity, Discipline and Loyalty foundations of morality.  So Rightists have more ‘Right things’ to talk about, while Leftists have limitations and fewer things to discuss.

We also see how a single incident was viewed by both of them. For Rightists, Pulwama killings were not just a human tragedy but also an assault on Nation (Sanctity and Loyalty foundation). But for Leftists, they were seeing it through the prism of Care foundation, ie people got killed and their families became orphan, etc. Similarly, Rightists in India view Cow as divine (Sanctity Foundation) and hence to be protected, while Leftists see it just another animal. Similar issues of conflicts between the two are those issues which both sides see it through different Moral foundations. Hence seemingly irreconcilable differences between the two groups, in reality, are those in which both of them use different Moral foundations to see through.

These six foundations of morality upheld by a Rightist politics gives it a superior competitive advantage to its rival Left-wing politics which mainly focus on Fairness and Equity Foundation.

It is a delusion that people’s voting preferences are decided exclusively by Care and Fairness foundation. Conventional wisdom says that poor people bother mostly about their livelihood issues and do not have the luxury to think about other moral values. However, truth is that people are bothered to think about all six foundations of morality and not just the first two. Rightist politicians are intuitively aware of this aspect and hence try to reach to all the six foundations of morality and not just the first two as foolishly done by the Leftists or Congress. Hence, Rightists are having more issues to talk about and can get extremely popular amongst a large section of the population. However, the only condition is that there should be one super efficient messenger who can take this message to the people and whose credibility is beyond question. That explains the secret behind the stupendous victory of Mr. Modi and his colleagues.