Progressive vs Conservative in India

Once I was talking to a girl and she mentioned that it was unlikely that we would get along with each other, because I was a conservative and she was a liberal. It obviously would not have worked out, not because she was a liberal and I was a conservative, but because she leads a very different life than mine and I would never have been able to catch up with her on that front.

But it brought up an interesting conversation, she thought conservatives were someone who did not progress with time, and I thought it was idiotic because why would someone want to classify themselves into that bucket. So I tried explaining to her, what being a conservative actually means. Turns out, it was much more difficult than I anticipated. I assumed myself to be conservative because of I into family values and not into the woke culture. Then again, it doesn't define conservative beliefs.

So I started re-examining and going to the roots, conservative essentially is someone who wants things to remain as is and progressive are vying for change always. This is the root of definition and everything else from here is just extrapolated. The problem with this definition is, it's not based on any particular idea or belief but it's more process-oriented. S for instance, it's very much possible you may want few things to change-making you progressive on that but other things to not change so making you conservative on that front.

Largely, conservative and progressive then is defined by current hot topics, for instance in the US, progressives want to change on laws related to gay marriage, transgender rights, use of transgender pronouns and less easy access to firearms. So by that definition, I would fall somewhere between progressives and conservatives.

Things get interesting when it comes to India because in India there is currently a nonpolitical push from any party for gay marriage laws and virtually no conversation on transgender pronouns. Because India's political parties just go on if you did it's wrong if I attempted it was right. The true way than to classify which government is progressive and which is conservative is to then just aggregate and see which governments want to change things move

And clearly the present government from 2014 to 2020 has brought about monumental changes and moved past old issues, from abolishing Triple Talaq to GST from Abolition of 370 to CAA, if any government wants to bring about change its BJP government. SO that would make it progressive government. However, if you do not support the government but think of yourself as progressive, you shouldn't because being a conservative or progressive should not automatically put on a particular side of the moral barometer. If you think this thing was not necessary and should not have been done, you were conservative on this issue, but might still be an avid gay right supporter that's fine. However, for everyone's sanity let's leave the tags of the conservative and progressive outside of our vocabulary for the time being so that conservative don't themselves at being progressives and progressives don't suffer through sleepless nights of being conservative