Political Ideas

It would be clearly claimed that people are political thinkers. They use political ideas and concepts while expressing their mind. Their literature is filled with terms such as freedom, equality, justice, rights etc. In the same way, people frequently use words such as conservative, liberal, socialist, communist, fascist etc. to describe their own or other’s viewpoint (Heywood 2003, 1). Generally ideas and ideologies have impacts on political life of people in several ways. First, they belay a particular light through which the world is understood. People see the world through some fixed beliefs or suppositions. They subscribe to a set of political beliefs which guides their behaviour and influence their conduct. Therefore, it is claimed that

Political ideas assist to promote order and social stability as a result of the provision of a political culture in society (Heywood 2003, 4). Naturally, a unifying set of political ideas can develop within a society. However, it can also be enforced to build obedience which operates as a form of social control. The values of elite groups such as political and military leaders, government officials, landowners or industrialists may diverge significantly from those of the masses. Ruling elites might use political ideas to contain opposition and restrict debate through the process of ideological manipulation. It was obvious in regimes that possessed official ideologies such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In both cases, official or political reliable beliefs dominated political life and all other social institutions in such a way that opposing views were strictly censored or suppressed. However, some argue that a more subtle form of ideological manipulation occurs in all societies. This can be seen in the Marxist belief that the culture of capitalist societies is prevailed by ideas with the interests of the economically dominant class (Heywood 2003, 5). Thus, in this chapter we discuss and consider the ideas and ideologies, the nature of political ideology, political system, and voting behaviour in Indian context. Generally, ideology refers to the study of ideas while there is no agreed or certain definition for ideology, but a set of rival definitions (Heywood 2003, 5). The British political scientist, David McLellan, in his book “Ideology” (1995) declares that “Ideology is the most elusive concept in the whole of the social sciences.”