Democracy has spoken again, this time with a new accent. If in its early days, democracy in India principally represented the views of the liberal educated elite, and in the post-Mandal era, opened up its portals to a completely new, hitherto under-represented class, in the coming of Narendra Modi in 2014, what we see is the triumphant emergence of yet another class, that so far lay largely unnoticed in the folds of the Great Indian Middle Class. While Modi’s appeal has clearly transcended traditional electoral segments arrayed along the lines of caste and class, his core support base comes from a class that has been described as the urban non-English speaking aspiration-seeking section of society that is impatient to move on in life.

There is truth in this description but it is not sharp enough. While English as a language has certainly built class barriers in India, many core Modi supporters are comfortable enough in the language; indeed many are highly educated, work in international environments and deal with cutting edge technology. The divide is a deeper cultural one and one that has informed many other debates of our times. The operative fault line here is between those described as ‘liberals’ and those that see themselves as the cultural mainstream and what follows is an attempt to characterise the worldview of this section in non-judgmental terms, so as to be able to understand it fully.

To those outside this definition, the liberal worldview stands for a particular form of self-loathing that springs from a desire to challenge and even dismantle what are seen to be the ‘natural’ building blocks of identity — gender, class, caste, region and religion. Each of these sources of identity is subject to rigorous examination, and its naturalness distrusted. The focus is on differences and the attempt is to erase these so as to level the playing field. Liberal concerns tend to flow margin-inwards- how are minorities treated, how does one address discrimination by gender, caste and sexual orientation and so on. Issues of equity, justice and discrimination take precedence over others.

Using this framework, the liberal worldview has rendered the cultural mainstream not only deeply uncomfortable but virtually illegitimate. Every natural instinct of this class is subject to being labelled regressive, communal or chauvinistic. The liberal viewpoint accords to itself an implicit moral superiority which it then deployed to pass judgement on the world around it. The liberal hunt for injustice and discrimination is relentless and unsparing, even of itself and this creates an atmosphere of deep discontent given the fact that injustice and discrimination abound in the country. The standards employed are rigorous, even world class and span areas like the environment, sexual orientation, laws of all kinds, affirmative action based on caste, gender injustice, among others. For the cultural mainstream, these issues are seen as marginal, a culturally alien device that the liberal worldview uses to beat them into moral submission.

By placing issues related to equity and discrimination at the heart of its professed concerns, an entire political industry that thrives on creating pockets of influence based on patronage has been created. The political establishment is transparently self-serving while apparently looking after the interests of the marginalised. Imported idealism becomes a vehicle for local cynicism; the result is a political system that mouths platitudes while serving itself. To the cultural mainstream, the Nehru-Gandhi family has become a symbol of this political culture of creating differences and then feeding them opportunistically so as extract power for itself.

The politics spawned by Nehruvian liberalism has evoked a simmering sense of rage. For some time now, the self-described cultural mainstream has been seething at what they see as the contemptuous rejection of their way of life and their ideals by a group that deals in ideas that have no natural cultural resonance with the Indian reality. The fault line is essentially a cultural one — democracy has been seen as a vehicle that has served to impose a new set of ideals with an alien vocabulary on a passive majority.

The implicit mental model that is imagined in the new India promised by this new regime is one of benign majoritarianism, where the majoritarian is imagined not merely in terms of religion but in all aspects of reality as it exists. It is an emphatic vote for maintaining the essential structure of reality as it exists and providing propulsion from that starting point rather than focus on differences at the margin. The nation as a formulation — the notion of ‘India First’ is shorthand for existing reality with its structure and way of life intact. In truth, Narendra Modi promises progress much more than change, although that may not be immediately apparent. The constituency he represents is comfortable with social continuity and what it sees as organic evolutionary change. The right-wing fringe might think differently, but the core Modi supporter usually has no problem with social evolution and change as long as it is not structurally disruptive.

It is easy to think of the new regime in terms of Modi’s persona but as powerful a figure as he is in today’s political reality, he represents a more fundamental change. Narendra Modi has unified the cultural mainstream of India electorally. It is as if India is beginning again, this time driven by ideals of the dominant cultural mainstream. Potentially, this changes everything, and causes hope and dread of equal intensity. At this time, without question it is hope that dominates for that is the sentiment of the majority. Of course, the majority never sees itself as merely that, it always equates itself with the whole and accords to itself an air of engaging reasonableness. Armed with that self-belief, it usually has little interest in carping voices of dissent or of issues of those at the margin. Perhaps better days do lie ahead, as the Modi campaign promises, but whether that includes everyone is something that time will tell.