The Common Ground Manifesto : An Urban Middleclass Quest to End Exclusivist Identities

Despite all the progress the socio-political polarization is dividing societies like never before. We are moving away from any semblance of ‘fraternity’. Why is this happening? Can we do anything to stop it? Many of us are grappling with these questions. This book offers a bold and innovative approach through the concept of a ‘meta-Tradition’. It defines meta-Tradition as a pan-Indian network of patterns connecting the diverse local micro-traditions to one another. It argues that the Indian tradition is in fact this ‘meta-tradition’ and observes that neither the Left nor the Right has realized this. It says that this meta-Tradition was able to create a uniquely harmonious fabric of India over millennia by balancing the local diversity with the harmonizing connections to the pan-Indian core. The book explores if the application of an European model based on ‘exclusivist’ identities to India has created a break from this meta-Tradition endangering the equilibrium between harmony and diversity. It further suggests that the identity politics of today is systematically exploiting this situation. To build a fraternity we must transcend both the Right and the Left and establish a ‘Common Ground’. The book provides the initial articulation of this common ground and that of the transcended ‘Right Liberal’ viewpoint. It implores the readers to re-discover the ‘meta-tradition’ and to reject ‘exclusivist’ tendencies in order to end the polarization.