Conservatives vs Liberals : an Indian perspective

It's not surprising that the words take on different connotations in different cultures and political systems.

In the essentially two-party US, the battle lines are very clearly drawn on some very specific issues :  healthcare, abortion, gunlaws, religion, immigration and the like.  In the very confusing multi-party system of my country, it's often difficult to make such clearcut distinctions.

In theory, India represents the political spectrum more effectively and diversely than the US.  We have a religious and nationalist Right, a traditionally socialist Center, and even a communist Left.  The economic policies of the two powerful parties on the Center and the Right are not greatly different though : mixing shades of corporate capitalism (unabashed wooing of the corporate sector) with populist welfare policies (India being a largely poor country, prices need to be controlled etc to keep public sentiments in check). The Left  doesn't seem to have a cogent economic policy at all, except for blindly protesting globalization and corporatocracy, and has never been as powerful in Indian politics.  On the social front, no party shows holistic concern for the progress of minorities, women and disadvantaged groups - which has led to the formation of small vociferous political parties on ethnic or caste lines, which confine their attention to the protection of  interests of their particular minority group. This cannot be such a good thing for a democracy but is a natural reaction to the bigger parties being unable to accommodate their interests on a common plank.  That said, social progress indicators are definitely higher in the two Left ruled states. I don't know how much significance the labels "conservative" and "liberal" carry in such a fractured and confused scenario.  If one were to try and come up with several key issues of current interest (like abortion, healthcare etc.)  that polarize Indian public opinion, then I would go with the following :   

religion vs secularism,  attitude to  Pakistan and the Kashmir problem,  attitude to globalization and corporate culture (including the setting up of industry on farmland),  social progressiveness vs conservatism (women's rights, caste prejudice etc.) and take on local/regional vs "national" interests (mainly in matters of interstate labor immigration). 

In some of these cases, the implied connotations of "liberal" and  "conservative" might be flipped : like the introduction of capitalist culture in synch with the global economy ( the reason why a section of the Indian middle class is so well off today, and India's economic prestige largely rests on them) was definitely a liberal step in view of the conservative socialist protectionism of previous governments. But when the same champions of free economy start throwing all their weight behind corporate interests against their own rural disadvantaged groups, they get to be called "neoliberals" (like the Chinese leader Deng Xiaopeng whose model they purportedly follow.)  Cultural and social attitudes are often shaped by old religious or ethnic ties rather than by modern political affiliation. And the condition of women is uniformly bad. (If it was good, they wouldn't have agreed to have a billion babies in the first place.) In fact this, along with the caste system,  is what I consider is the greatest impediment to social progress in India, seeing that even people with modern western education and careers tend to stick to such unfounded prejudice.  The deep economic divisions mean that Communism remains a relevant force in India, at both the level of democratic parties and armed rebel groups.

This is why many Indians do not understand the labels "conservative" and "liberal" very well. This is a murky and confusing world, where two parties with theoretically opposite worldviews might suddenly find agreement on a lot of issues. A progressive secular liberal with a Hindu background might find common cause with a  conservative Muslim when it comes to protesting the actions of the Hindu right.  To an outsider it is as chaotic as an Indian city traffic.  This is why when explaining liberal vs conservative debates to an Indian friend, I settle for blunt and dramatic statements like :

 "Liberals like sex, Conservatives violence."  :P