"Homely" is another word with divergent meanings. Indians want homely daughters-in-law, going by matrimonial advertisements. Homely in India means a gharelu girl, who will cook, clean and obey mother-in-law. If she's a raving beauty, that's a bonus. Elsewhere in the world, "homely" describes someone who is physically unattractive, with no reference to proficiency in the "home sciences".
Over the 250-odd years that English has been an Indian language, there has been an enormous amount of give-and-take involving it and other Indian languages in terms of common usages. Indians "manage" and "adjust" in ways that the Brits find incomprehensible, while the sahibs eat breakfast "kedgerees" that don't bear the faintest resemblance to khichri.
When the differences of usage enter politics, matters get even more confusing. "Right-winger", "left-winger", "secular", "liberal", "communal" - variations of these words are often employed as general descriptors, as insults, and as random adjectives in Indian political discourse.
These words are all consistently used in India in ways varying massively from dictionary meanings. No major Indian party can claim to be secular, right-wing or liberal with any degree of accuracy. What India does possess is a bunch of left-wing political parties, with a large number of crony capitalists thrown in.
A classic right-winger favours free enterprise, competitive markets, small government, deregulation and privatisation. A classic liberal also favours small government, private enterprise, few controls or restrictions on trade, low taxes, etc. There may be differences between right-wing and liberal positions with regard to, for example, private property and individual rights. But an economic right-winger should broadly be a liberal, and vice versa.
A right-winger-cum-liberal could have a wide range of religious views or communal orientations, so long as there's a commitment to free enterprise and private property. But, in India, these two words are only used to define social attitudes. Hence, "right-winger" and "liberal" are used as opposites, something that sounds utterly absurd if one thinks of Rajaji, or Minoo Masani, for example.
Both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are left-wing parties, which firmly believe in big states. Neither has any commitment to free flow of capital or to unrestricted trade. Both stand accused of crony capitalism. Both perpetrate massive misdirected subsidies. Both seem to want to maintain the current rigidities in labour laws. Neither has shown much commitment to simplifying tax codes.
The Congress is often described as (or accused of) being "secular", while the BJP is often accused of (or described as) being "communal". The accepted definition of "secular" is "non-religious" or neutral with respect to religion. Secularism is usually defined as a separation of government institutions and laws from religious institutions and mores. All Indian political parties have some religious, regional and/or linguistic and communal orientation, which means that no party fits the secular norm in practice.
Arguably, support for any form of reservation or positive discrimination based on caste/ tribe/ religious lines immediately nullifies the use of "secular" as a descriptor. Equally arguably, any party that claims to represent a specific regional or linguistic group is "communal". More than that, in Indian practice, the so-called secular parties bend over to appease bigots hailing from the minorities. The BJP offers similar appeasement to bigots hailing from the majority. So, neither national party is religion-neutral.
Ergo, what we have in India is a political landscape where two left-wing formations are fighting a general election. One of these is swayed by the dogma of bigots hailing from the minorities. The other's agenda is driven by bigots hailing from the majority. Semantics aside, the choices are unappetising for a voter who would like both vindalho and bhuna to be freely available and competitively priced.
Twitter: @devangshudatta