What interests me instead is one of the explanations offered by the BJP for its sweeping victory. Soon after the results, BJP social media accounts went abuzz with a quote attributed to Suvendu Adhikari, claiming that the party’s victory was also made possible because it received Left votes. The reference was actually to a remark Adhikari had made in 2021 regarding his narrow victory over Mamata Banerjee in Nandigram. Yet the quote seemed to fit neatly into the narrative surrounding the BJP’s 2026 success as well.
The 2021 Adhikari remark, widely circulated again after the recent election, stated: “If the 10,000 CPM votes hadn’t come to my account, I couldn’t have defeated Mamata Banerjee. I know who gave me those votes, who didn’t give me, and who managed those votes... Mamata Banerjee had to be defeated, and that’s why those 10,000 Left votes came to me.”
I was not particularly surprised by the claim, nor especially interested in how the CPI(M) reacted to it. What struck me more was how strongly it took me back to my student days in the first half of the 1970s.
At that time, I was an active member of the Students Federation of India (SFI) at Kirori Mal College in Delhi. The SFI, the student wing of the CPI(M), had fielded a candidate for the post of general secretary in the college elections, and we campaigned enthusiastically for him. We were confident that our candidate — whose exact name I no longer remember, though I recall he was a Singh from Haryana — would win comfortably.
A day before the college and university student union polls, however, the SFI leadership convened a meeting of activists. There, we were instructed to vote for a particular Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) candidate for the president’s post. We were told this arrangement would ensure the “safe” victory of both the ABVP candidate for president and the SFI candidate for general secretary.
Many among us — including Biswaroop Das, Sohail Hashmi, Iqbal Jameel and others from Kirori Mal College — were deeply disturbed by this “fatwa.” All along, our CPI(M) mentors had taught us that the ABVP, the student wing of the Jana Sangh-RSS combine, was “reactionary” and “fascist.” Yet here we were being asked to vote for it. The immediate goal was to defeat the Congress-backed candidates by any means possible, both in the college and university elections. At the time, many within the CPI(M) considered Indira Gandhi a greater danger, and more reactionary, than the Jana Sangh-RSS.
No political explanation was offered. Winning the student bodies appeared to have become the overriding priority.
The elections took place. I do not know what others did, but I voted for the SFI candidate in the college election and for the All India Students Federation (AISF) candidate, Amarjeet Kaur, in the Delhi University Students Union polls. I left the ABVP section on the ballot paper blank, thereby “violating” the directive.
The SFI candidate won in the college because the ABVP had transferred its votes to him, and the ABVP candidate also won. After all, the SFI enjoyed considerable support in the college. Amarjeet Kaur, however, lost narrowly. She had opposed any such barter of votes, even though the SFI and AISF had joined hands in the university and college elections.
The episode led to sharp divisions within the SFI. The Delhi CPI(M) secretary convened a meeting of activists at the party office. We called him “Comrade Major” because he was a former army man. He appealed to us to remain united “for the sake of revolution,” saying: “I know, comrades, examinations are round the corner. But the cause of revolution is equally important.”
Our faction was unconvinced. We protested and walked out of the meeting in anger. The question that haunted us was simple: why had we aligned with the ABVP? Comrade Major appeared dumbstruck. The split within the SFI became complete, and one after another, several of us left the organisation.
By then, Jayaprakash Narayan’s “Total Revolution” movement had already begun. I remember being impressed by CPI leader Mohit Sen, who, during a speech at Delhi University, remarked: “Both Jana Sangh-RSS and CPI(M) are under JP’s umbrella. And both claim they have nothing to do with each other. We object to this doublespeak.”
I subsequently joined the AISF. Almost immediately, a CPI(M) leader — a university lecturer who supervised SFI activities in Delhi University — branded me “Indira Gandhi ka lathait.”
Returning to the West Bengal elections, a few days after the results I received a curious phone call from a senior journalist based in Kolkata. He offered a geopolitical explanation for the BJP’s victory. According to him, the Modi establishment wanted communal polarisation at any cost.
“It wanted forces aligned with Islamist groups to gain control in Bangladesh, especially in the border regions,” he told me. “That is why it did not want Sheikh Hasina, a secular leader, to remain in power. The resulting communal polarisation helped the BJP win massively in the border constituencies.”
The geopolitical argument sounded interesting, though I did not know how to respond to it. What interested me more, given my Left background, was whether CPI(M) voters had consciously shifted toward the BJP.
“Oh yes,” the journalist replied. “This happened on a massive scale. They may not admit it openly, but there was a strong feeling within the CPI(M) that unless Mamata Banerjee’s All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) was routed, the Left had no chance of returning to power.”
I then spoke to a senior CPI(M) activist in Kolkata whom I have known for over a decade. Frank and incisive, he told me: “The overall atmosphere in West Bengal was anti-Mamata. This enabled the BJP to attract our votes on a massive scale.”
Even while insisting there had been “no direction from the party leadership to vote for the BJP,” and dismissing Mamata Banerjee’s allegation of a “Ram-Bam” alliance as baseless, he admitted: “Our supporters, and even many local-level leaders, often had very little understanding of the BJP’s political ideology. They voted against the TMC because they were tired of Mamata’s misrule. Wherever they felt the CPI(M) candidate could not defeat the TMC, their votes shifted to the BJP.”
It was, indirectly, an admission of ideological weakness at the grassroots level.
Meanwhile, I came across an interesting article in The Quint titled “The Fatalism of First Ram, Then Bam: Bengal’s Left Cannot Return by Enabling the Right.” The article argued that “the ‘First Ram, Then Bam’ idea is a political self-sabotage dressed up as tactical realism.”
It observed: “One of the strangest arguments to emerge from West Bengal’s recent electoral churn is also one of the most politically revealing: Ebar Ram, pore Bam — this time Ram, next time the Left.” The slogan, it argued, may not always be literal, but it captures a genuine voting logic among sections of anti-TMC, non-BJP voters.
The analysis, written by Niladri Chatterjee, noted that for many opposition supporters, particularly in areas where the Left’s organisational structure had weakened, the BJP appeared to be the only force capable of defeating the ruling party. Referring to the Lokniti-CSDS 2021 West Bengal post-poll survey, the article noted that 10.7% of valid respondents said they had voted “to defeat someone else,” while another 6% described their choice as driven by “a bit of both” preference and opposition.
It further recalled that in 2019, late CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury had acknowledged hearing the slogan “Ebar Ram, pore Bam” during the campaign, though he insisted the tendency existed among Left supporters rather than CPI(M) members themselves.
The article also cited a 2021 ground report from Birbhum and Purulia, where former Left workers admitted they remained emotionally or ideologically attached to the Left but viewed the BJP as the only available instrument against the TMC.
Suggesting that the situation has not changed, Chatterjee -- Senior Lecturer and Researcher, Department of Cultural Sciences, Linnaeus University, Sweden; and Affiliated researcher, University of Oslo, Norway -- said that during the run-up to the 2026 election, while speaking to CPI(M) workers in North 24 Parganas, he repeatedly encountered the same political logic echoing at the grassroots level.
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