Can The Red Star Rise Again?

Despite a decade in the political wilderness, the CPI(M) hopes to regain lost ground in 2026 West Bengal Assembly polls. But can it revive its old support base in a state transformed by Mamata Banerjee and the BJP?

West Bengal

For more than three decades, the red flag of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) flew high over West Bengal, as its leaders transformed the state into an ideological fortress. From the rise of the Left Front in 1977 to its dramatic fall in 2011, the CPI(M) ruled unchallenged, crafting a unique political model that blended agrarian reform with urban industrial policies. But in the years since its defeat at the hands of Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC), the party has been reduced to a political relic, struggling to remain relevant. Now, if his recent remarks are anything to go by, CPI(M) stalwart Prakash Karat believes the party is poised for a resurgence in the 2026 West Bengal Assembly election. The question is whether Bengal still has space for the Left?

While acknowledging the party’s decline, Karat ascribed the erosion of support in its once-loyal bastions in West Bengal and Tripura as the prime cause of the CPI (M)’s decline. Once the undisputed leader of Bengal’s working-class politics, the CPI(M) today is a distant third place, squeezed between the TMC’s populism and the BJP’s aggressive Hindutva politics.

The party, which once boasted 43 MPs in the Lok Sabha in 2004, has been reduced to just four in 2024. Its decline has mirrored the broader unravelling of the Left in Indian politics. Yet, Karat insists that the path to revival lies in mobilizing the party’s traditional base and confronting what he calls the BJP’s ‘communal agenda.’

The seeds of the CPI(M)’s decline was sown during its own years in power. The land acquisition debacles in Singur and Nandigram, where police violence against farmers alienated the very constituency that had once powered the Left to victory, proved to be turning points. Mamata Banerjee seized upon these crises, positioning herself as the champion of the dispossessed. By 2011, she had dismantled the CPI(M)’s decades-long grip on Bengal. The collapse in Tripura in 2018, where the BJP dismantled a 25-year-old Left regime, only compounded the CPI(M)’s woes.

For years, the party’s leadership has been engaged in soul-searching, debating whether past missteps like Jyoti Basu’s refusal to accept the Prime Ministership in 1996 contributed to its downfall. In a recent interview, Karat dismissed this notion outright, insisting that the party’s strength lay not in holding office but in grassroots movements.

However, in a rapidly shifting political landscape where ideological purity has taken a backseat, the once-mighty Left Front is now a pale shadow of itself, struggling to form effective electoral coalitions even with the Congress.

Yet, Karat believes the CPI(M) can mount a credible challenge in 2026. The party’s strategy appears to rest on two pillars: positioning itself as the only true alternative to both the TMC and the BJP and reigniting mass movements among workers, farmers, and students. The rise of the BJP in Bengal has given the CPI(M) a new narrative of fighting communalism and corporate influence. Karat has accused the TMC of paving the way for the BJP’s expansion, claiming that Mamata Banerjee’s politics have enabled the RSS to strengthen its presence in the state.

As per the CPI(M), Bengal, once a bastion of communal harmony under Left rule, is being turned into a communal battleground. But the party faces a daunting challenge given that in the decade since its fall, it has lost not just power but also its connection to younger voters.

To regain relevance, the CPI(M) will need a vision for Bengal’s future. Can it offer an economic model distinct from both Modi’s corporate-backed policies and Mamata’s populist welfare schemes? Bengal may still have a place for the Left, but whether the CPI(M) can reclaim it is far from certain.