Radical centrism is the way forward for India, says Shashi Tharoor

Liberalism is facing challenges from both the left and the right, not just in India but across the world, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said here on Thursday.

He was delivering the first Jyoti Komireddy memorial lecture on ‘Radical Centrism: My vision for India’. For the left, liberalism meant an elitist belief, a doctrine that prioritized the market over morality, a theory that gave more importance to the individual than the community, and a system that alienated the marginalized.

On the right, liberalism’s emphasis on individual freedom was seen as corrosive to tradition and cultural identity. They ignored that it was foreign and imported from the west and had no roots in Indian soil. This resulted in a dangerous narrowing of the intellectual space, with freedom itself becoming suspect. Even moderation seems to be outdated.

In this context, to reclaim and reimagine Indian liberalism and give it new life and purpose as a radical centrist ideology for the benefit of the country. “The task before us is to make liberalism stronger and more inclusive… and to root it in the social realities of India, keeping it away from its universal ideals,” he said.

The MP said that in recent years, India’s political landscape has resembled a political conflict between two extreme ideologies. On one side, there was a new left championed by thinkers like Yogendra Yadav, who advocated politics based on the grievances of the poor caste classes. On the other hand, there was the cultural nationalism of the right, expressed by voices of the RSS like Ram Madhav, who preferred to base India’s identity on Hindutva values ​​and civilizational pride.

While both camps offered opposing narratives, the question remained whether there was room for a third liberal way between the two. Radical centrism would be a new, third way that would certainly not be a moderate compromise. He said it would be a path between Nehru and Patel, Rajaji and Ambedkar, with the moral clarity of the left and the cultural confidence of the right.

Radical centrism would be a commitment to Indian pluralism. This would be an active celebration of pluralism, not a passive tolerance of difference. Nehru’s vision of India as a secular, inclusive democracy would remain the basis of radical centrism but would recognize that pluralism would not only mean religion and language but would also focus on living realities such as caste, gender, region and class.