Chhibber and Verma (2018: Chap: .8, p.169) postulate that ‘the ideological divisions between the politics of statism and the politics of recognition [of identities] have remained stable for the period for which we have data on party activists and ordinary citizens’. Without disputing this, we wish to analyse the contemporary crop of Indian political parties in terms of the following classification which is a product of historical as well as the present patterns of politics in the country and takes varying stances to statism and identity: (i) centralist parties, (ii) the leftwing, and (iii) the Rightwing. This primary or simplistic three-fold classification needs to be made more complicated and dynamic and therefore empirically more valid by inclusion of additional parameters, such, for example, as cultural or ethnic factors as well as nationalist or regionalist orientations, to say nothing of personalised, dynastic and familial and personal domination of parties. Moreover, there are compounding factors and yield categories of the left-of-the-centre, right-of-the-centre parties as well as purely or predominantly regional or state parties. These compounding factors apply to most or almost all parties, considered individually or in terms of ‘party families’, e.g. Congress family, Sangh (Rashtriya Swaymsevak Sangh or RSS) parivar (family), Janata Party/Dal parivar, Vampaksha (leftwing), and regional parties including the parties of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) (other than Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes), and Scheduled Castes and religious minorities.
The Indian National Congress and the Congress family parties may be regarded as the major examples of the centrist or the left-of-the-centre political parties in Indian history and politics. The Congress was the locus classicus of the nationalist movement, a platform holding practically all parties within its fold in conflict and  cooperation relationships, with the possible exception of the Muslim League and the Justice Party/Dravida Kazhagam parties. Several other splinters from the Congress party after independence either at the national or state level retain the centrist orientation with a right or left or regionalist tilt in practically all states and regions in the northern, western, eastern and the southern parts of the country.