Philosopher John Locke tellingly argued that “things of this world are in so constant a flux, that nothing remains long in the same state”. Seemingly localised events such as the French Revolution, the two world wars, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the September 11 attacks and Lehman Brothers’ crash all kickstarted profound global disruptions. The 2008 financial crisis unleashed socio-economic pressures that heralded a tsunami of populist-autocrats leading right-wing parties (henceforth the Right). As evidenced by contemporary global upheavals (the conflict in West Asia being just the tip of the iceberg), this tsunami is the single biggest threat to the liberal world order.

Most analyses focus on the ‘what’ of this phenomenon, namely that the Right is fashioning a neo-conservative world order — where nations have spheres-of-influence and might is right; are culturally pure (code for xenophobia and racism); and where the liberal world order’s norms are vilified as impediments to a mythical golden period. Other analyses outline the similarities in the Right’s domestic politics or how it embeds undemocratic and atavistic norms in the new world order they are forging. What is understudied is how the Right breathes life into its shared goals and why it acts like it does.

In deciphering the how, the Right has colluded to establish an “international ideological axis” over decades. Networks such as the International Democracy Union, the Movement, the National Conservatism Conference, the Conservative Political Action Conference, the Heritage Foundation (whose Project 2025 United States President Donald Trump is scrupulously unleashing globally) either train parties on manufacturing consent, create networking opportunities for right-wing politicos, frame coordinated responses on global issues, and weaponise their respective diasporas to support populist-autocrats. Through these, the Right has unleashed undemocratic upsurges against progressive values and parties, as well as the liberal world order. It is no coincidence that 91 countries representing 72% of the world’s population are classified as autocratic by the Varieties of Democracy Institute.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s role in this counter-hegemonic project is illustrative. Having effected a gleichschaltung on the Indian state, the BJP has redeployed the nation’s foreign policy systems to help redraw the global map ideologically. As outlined in a recent book, India’s Tryst with the World, Indian missions are bypassed as the BJP’s ideological outposts (the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh or HSS, the Overseas Friends of BJP and other Sangh Parivar affiliates) map and harass liberal academics working on India, obfuscate the targeting of foreign citizens (highlighted in a 2024 Canadian Security Intelligence Service report) and support the Right as part of an ideological internationalism.

Evidence of boots-on-the-ground collaboration can be found in the Operation Dharmic-Vote campaign in the 2019 British general election, which saw the Overseas Friends of BJP campaigning for Conservative Party candidates in 48 constituencies. Similarly, the ‘Howdy Modi’ and ‘Namaste Trump’ rallies stumped for Mr. Trump, as did Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pre-Operation Roaring Lion visit, which politically endorsed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of Israel’s national elections.

Likewise, exorbitant funds are channelised for extremist causes (a 2022 report by Jasa Macher found that just seven Sangh Parivar affiliates in the United States spent over $158.9 million on right-wing causes). Some of this has yielded results, as democratic regressions in France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. testify.

Although this evokes a perverse epicaricacy among some in India, the BJP’s Janus-visage lies bare abroad. Belying efforts to project Mr. Modi as a Gandhian vikas-purush, the BJP’s role in this international axis has sparked deep unease.

First, transparency groups have alleged that the Prime Minister’s personalised diplomacy transcends collusion with populist-autocrats, and furthers the interests of crony-capitalists (who support the BJP’s politico-ideological objectives).

Second, progressive parties increasingly perceive the BJP’s ideological internationalism as arming the Right in their respective nations. For example, as a Daily Mail report alleged, the BJP’s involvement in fomenting tensions in Leicester vitiated politics and tried to strengthen the Right. Likewise, BJP delegations actively courting far-right parties across Europe has sparked deep unease among global progressives.

Third, the BJP’s ideological adventurism has triggered diplomatic reprisals (including the expulsion of Indian intelligence officials from various nations — a historic first).

Fourth, hate speech and racist attacks on Indian students abroad has mushroomed, while restrictions to visas for skilled Indian immigrants have escalated. Both suggest that the BJP-enamoured-diaspora’s efforts to ingratiate themselves with the Right yield no returns.

Finally, the BJP’s adventurism has also compromised India’s national interests. For example, by condoning kidnappings and assassinations of heads of state, wilfully ignoring the conversion of India’s strategic backyard into a conflict-theatre, circumscribing India’s historical support for a two-state solution and peace (because of an iron-alliance with Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party) and tacitly sanctioning coercive unilateralism in West Asia and South America, the BJP has undermined India’s case on Pakistan Occupied Kashmir while imposing massive geo-economic and geo-political costs on India (as the adverse impacts of the war in West Asia prove).

The world reads India’s reticence under the BJP government as an abdication of India’s moral leadership of the Global South, and not responsible statecraft. Contrary to Jawaharlal Nehru’s principled internationalism (which successive Indian governments continued), in doing nothing to mitigate conflicts between NATO/Ukraine-Russia, or America/Israel-Iran, or on the Palestine issue, the BJP government is tacitly conceding that nations can violently forge hemispheric hegemonies, which is why few nations condemned China’s aggression in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh, or Pakistan after Operation Sindoor (2025).

This brings us to why the Right is dismantling the liberal world order. Focusing on the domestic to illustrate the point, even though the BJP blithely continues India’s long-standing efforts to forge a multipolar world, it is primarily striving to inscribe itself into a global conservative cartography (partly because of its ideological proclivities, and partly because it mistakenly buys into its self-propagated synonymity with the nation-state). The reason why the BJP’s covert support for the dismantling of the rules-based world order (evocatively wrapped in decolonisation rhetoric) has traction is because of the injustices of the neoliberal world order — dealt with in the article in this daily, “Navigating the global economic transformation”, October 16, 2025. After all, the Global North’s economic colonialism (including structural adjustments, capital accumulation, cheap labour, environmental colonisation and trickle-down economics), and ruthless pursuit of national interests (including through sanctions and tariffs) predate the Right.

Similarly, the Global North’s liberal incrementalism on overhauling international institutions (a sine qua non for India and the Global South) and inertia (despite conflicts afflicting five continents, there has not been a substantive United Nations Peacekeeping operation since 2014) has made the attack on transnational institutions seem kosher. Likewise, the Global North’s promotion of cloud-capitalism has not only exacerbated socio-cultural fault-lines, but inevitably rewarded populist-autocrats.

Ironically then, it is the “progressive” establishment’s standpattism that has paved the way for the Right. If progressives are to reclaim the centre, they must cut the self-created Gordian knot and shed familiar comforts. This means restoring confidence in shared futures, accommodating rising powers, honouring historical grievances, rewriting the geo-economic norms underpinning the world order, and reimagining multilateral institutions.

Given the polycrisis engulfing us, progressives must shed their Macbeth-like fog of nostalgia, bureaucratic hesitation and technocratic chimeras. Eschewing liberal echo-chambers, progressives should mould new value-aligned partnerships with each other (especially between the Global-North and Global-South parties) and non-political stakeholders. This necessitates new institutional arrangements (like what Spain’s Global Progressive Mobilisation and India’s Bharat Summit promise) that allow structured dialogues between evangelical accelerators from all nations (which the Non-Alignment Movement once was). This means exerting unprecedented political will, and recalibrating operational methodologies (such as the recent Hungary, Poland and New York campaigns) to sway the silent majority more effectively than the Right. Only then can we weave multiple national visions into a global symphony, and put democracy back on track.

Salman Khurshid is a former Minister for External Affairs. Pushparaj Deshpande is Director, Samruddha Bharat Foundation