Liberalism is visibly under retreat as a global phenomenon. Donald Trump’s surprise victory, based on a shrill attack on such cherished liberal ideas like a human face to immigration, multi-culturalism and pluralism, and his counter espousal of a more insular white-centric political and economic ideology, shocked liberal ideologues. Following Brexit, a swing to the illiberal right is simmering in Europe too. Are we seeing a similar trend in India, and if so why?

Undoubtedly, a definitive shift in India to the right is being raised to a new crescendo after the BJP came to power in 2014. This may not be a permanent trend, but the new rightist upsurge should prompt liberals to seriously introspect about what has gone wrong. Could it be that, cocooned in the self-righteous certitudes of what should be, liberal opinion has overstated certain assumptions, and understated others, leading to a cumulative backlash against a more inclusive, tolerant and broad-minded society?

In response to this question, three aspects come to mind. Firstly, while it is true that we have evolved to become a ganga-jamuni, multi-cultural and plural tehzeeb – and that is the only way we can survive as a nation – certain liberal assumptions of how this has happened are an intellectual gloss and a distortion of historical facts.

Jawaharlal Nehru, in his well intentioned magnum opus The Discovery of India, writes that it is “wrong and misleading to talk of a Muslim invasion of India … Islam did not invade India; it had come to India some centuries earlier”. While it is, indeed, true that Muslim traders from the Arab countries practised their faith undisturbed in Kerala more than a thousand years ago, it is wrong to believe that the Turkish, Afghani or Mughal invaders who came later did not come as Islamic invaders and proselytisers.

Thousands of temples were destroyed and mosques built in their place by them, often with the debris of the demolished temples. Where temples survived, mosques were built in deliberately close proximity. The destruction was devastating, obliterating or mutilating a huge chunk of ancient India’s architectural heritage. The loss was irreparable. It is said that when in 1200 CE Bakhtiar Khilji destroyed Nalanda, the Harvard of Asia, the library continued to burn for months.

The gradual and enriching synthesis that occurred between Hinduism and Islam happened in spite of this wanton destruction, and not because it did not happen. The purpose here is not to revive history to ignite acrimony, but merely to state that historical misrepresentation often serves to provoke dormant memories, thereby creating avoidable backlash.

Secondly, liberal India has continued to believe that any reference to the achievements of Hindu India is almost tantamount to communalising the historical narrative. Frankly, this is political correctness taken to a ridiculous extent. Ancient India saw a remarkable level of refinement and excellence in philosophy, science, literature, culture and the arts. To equate an acknowledgement of this contribution to non-secular obscurantism is a travesty of history.

Somehow, there is a reticence in ‘progressive’ historical writing to give space to the Hindu imagination. For instance, the great kingdom of Vijayanagar with beautiful Hampi as its capital, flourished for two and a half centuries from 1336 to 1565 CE as the last Hindu bastion against Muslim invasion, but has hardly received its due in our historical memory. At its apogee Vijayanagar comprised a vast territory from the river Krishna to the Indian Ocean. But it merits but one paragraph in The Discovery of India, and no one has thought it worthy to name at least one road in New Delhi after the Vijayanagar king Krishnadevaraya, perhaps one of the greatest rulers in Indian history.

Thirdly, there is a need to revisit the ‘s’ word: secularism. Religious faith is a dynamic conditioning factor for the vast majority of Indians. To understand this, and to cull from this the need to respect all religions, is one thing. To repeat the mantra of secularism without even a knowledge of such basics as the meaning of important religious festivals, is quite another.

Gandhiji was a convincing spokesman for communal harmony because he was thoroughly familiar with his own religion, the essential tenets of other religions, and the substance of his own culture. However, for much of the anglicised elite, secularism has often become a stance to be invoked, almost as a reflex, every time there is the slightest whiff of religion. For some of its members, faith is tantamount to medievalism, and all religious practice the equivalent of ritual and superstition.

Such an attitude of disdainful dismissal would still be valid if it was not rooted in a nondescript cosmopolitanism, mistaken for too long as modernity. The crisis of liberalism is that the entirely valid concept of secularism is tending to maroon itself in a ‘progressive’ island of its own, cut off from the religio-cultural impulses that continue to animate the vast majority of Indians.

Ultimately, the biggest challenge before the liberal project in India is how to reiterate its valid beliefs while being rooted in the cultural ethos of the country. It is unlikely that those who see modernity only in Western categories, and know more about Shakespeare than Kalidasa, can become authentic spokesmen for this cause.