India, March 16 -- For years, whenever someone asked about my political tilt, the response was automatic: "liberal". It felt right. The term denoted a belief in openness, tolerance and free speech, which are all things that I hold dear.
Then, during a casual conversation, a friend mentioned a way to avoid intellectual complacency: pick a stance at odds with your own and live it for a set period.
This sounded intriguing. What might it be like to undertake a "contradiction practice", and attempt to immerse myself on the opposite side of all that I hold true?
What I learnt by the end of the month-long trial was surprising: There's a conservative streak that runs through me.
The initial plan was to adopt an extreme right-wing stance, to tes...