The conservative is characterized by a wariness of radical, forward-looking change and by a desire to restore the community to its former glory, whether real or imagined.
So, with all their talk of making things great again, the rhetoric and policies of conservatives today suggest that there is nothing left worth conserving at all. In a curious turn of events, the radical and the conservative converge in their demand for a revolution—but for the latter, it is a negative one: a return to the past.
Another point of convergence between conservatives and their adversaries is the fact that radical and revolutionary ideas have often been presented as revivals of age-old ones (appeals to the Ancient Constitution, for example), while egalitarian utopias have been modelled on lost golden ages. Traditions have been invented and false genealogies contrived to lend new ideas popular legitimacy.
In most liberal democracies, then, by advocating the uprooting of the status quo, the conservative seems to have become the new radical.
Session 1. A Survey of Indian Conservative Thought: From Ram Mohan Roy to Golwalkar
Roy, Raja Ram Mohan. Prefaces to The Brahmunical Magazine, or, the Missionary and the Brahmun: Being a Vindication of the Hindoo Religion against the Attacks of Christian Missionaries. In The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy. Vol. 1. Edited by Jogendra Chunder Ghose. Calcutta: Srikanta Roy, 1901. Originally published 1821.
Malaviya, Madan Mohan. ‘Part 1: The Need for It’. In A Proposed Hindu University. In Benares Hindu University: 1905 to 1935, edited by V. A. Sundaram. 1936. Originally published 1904.
Mookerji, Radhakumud. The Fundamental Unity of India (from Hindu Sources). London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1914.
Aurobindo, Sri. The Ideal of Human Unity. Part 1, chaps. 3 (‘The Group and the Individual’) and 5 (‘The Inadequacy of the State Idea’). In The Human Cycle, The Ideal of Human Unity, War and Self-Determination. Vol. 25 of The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Puducherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department, 1997. Originally published 1918.
Majumdar, R. C. Corporate Life in Ancient India. Pune: Oriental Book Agency, 1922.
Ghurye, G. S. The Aborigines—’So-Called’—and Their Future. Pune, 1943. Chapters 2 and 3.
Prasad, Rajendra. Statement on the Hindu Code Bill, enclosed in a letter to Sardar Patel. 1948.
Rajagopalachari, C. ‘Welfare without Freedom’, ‘Power without Wisdom’, ‘The New Party’, ‘Our Democracy’, and ‘State Programme of Compulsion’. In Satyam Eva Jayate. Vol. 1. Chennai: Bharathan, 1961.
Majumdar, R. C. Preface to History of the Freedom Movement in India. Vol. 1. Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1962.
Upadhyaya, Deendayal. ‘Lecture 3: Harmony between the Individual and the Collectivity’. In Integral Humanism. 1965.
Golwalkar, M. S. ‘Challenge of the Times’. In Bunch of Thoughts. Bangalore: Vikrama Prakashan, 1966.
Sessions 2 and 3. A Survey of Western Conservative Thought: From Hume to Hayek
Muller, Jerry Z., ed. Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.