The Right in the Left

The challenge before communists is to use the lessons gleaned from historical hindsight to advance the movement today

- Dipankar Bhattacharya

AS 2025 draws to an end, the organised communist movement completes its centenary in India. At the other end of the ideological spectrum, the far-Right Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) also celebrated its centenary on October 1, 2025. The coincidence obviously leads to the question of why the communists find themselves electorally marginalised while the RSS has reached the zenith of power. Yet, when we look back, for much of the last 100 years, especially in the first five decades, it was the RSS that remained rather isolated while the communists had a fairly noticeable electoral presence.

The two trajectories could well have been different. There have been moments that the communist movement missed or mishandled, while the RSS benefitted immensely for several turns of events in the last few decades. As long as the Congress dominated the scene, there was a period when the Left and the Right oppositions grew simultaneously, albeit in different parts of the country, but with a growing rightward shift across almost the entire policy spectrum and the Congress giving in to the aggression of the Sangh brigade, India since 2014 has been witnessing a virtual Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) takeover while the communists have lost momentum.

Historical hindsight can offer plenty of experiences and lessons.

However, the challenge before communists is to use those to good effect to advance the movement today. Like in many former colonies, in India too, the communist movement had emerged as a powerful anti-colonial stream. Within the overarching agenda of freedom from colonial rule, communists had distinguished themselves by their unwavering commitment to the secular democratic character of the republic and the cause of abolition of landlordism and the feudal order; securing of workers' rights; and attainment of social progress.