It is hard not to try to see in the politics of another country a version of one's own. To match Democrat in America with Labour in England, or, say, Congress in India; to find an easy affinity between Republican and Tory, and now, perhaps, the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Pleasing as these symmetries are, and flat as the world may seem, they are false equivalencies. In fact, every society has a unique history of power, of which its politics are an expression. 
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