Written by: Vitalee Deori
For decades, the Indian Left has occupied a special place in the country’s political landscape, shaping debates on class struggle, labour rights, secularism and welfare politics. Various facets of left-based organisations emerged over time, with contradictions of ideological basis and means of the movement. The significance of the Indian Left is its presence in the various state assemblies and the parliament through the means of election. However, today the political reality of the traditional left parties has been shrinking in the electoral field for the last two decades.
Once, powerful trade union movements and long periods of ruling states like West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala, Communist parties seemed to be firmly rooted in India’s democratic framework. But the steady erosion of their electoral base over the past decade speaks to a larger transformation in Indian politics, where the ideological class-based mobilisation they have relied upon has increasingly been replaced by identity-driven narratives, welfare populism and forceful nationalism. The phrase, “Baam to Ram”, coined here to explain the drift of Left voters towards the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Bengal, has now come to represent a much larger political realignment that is happening all over the country.
The “Age Raam, Pore Baam” (First Raam, then Left) slogan emerged in West Bengal after the 2021 Assembly elections. As noted from the slogan itself, it described the shift of Left voters and cadres towards the BJP, particularly from the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Half a decade later, the phrase has evolved beyond an electoral slogan and now reflects a much larger transformation in India’s political landscape.
With the fall of the last Communist-led government in Kerala, India now has no Left-led state government for the first time since 1957, and this shows a change in politics that many thought would be inconceivable a decade back. “Baam to Ram” highlights how significantly the political scene has shifted in a matter of a decade, not only in West Bengal but across the country, where the citadel of the Left has fallen. The character of the electorate has changed from Class-based politics, which gradually gave way to identity politics, welfare populism, and majoritarian nationalism, altering voter loyalties in states where the Left had wielded significant organisational power.
In many regions, particularly Bengal and Tripura, segments of the Left’s old support base switched directly to the BJP, drawn by a new political narrative centred on the Hindu identity. As was seen several times, even the Joy Bangla slogan was countered and sometimes eclipsed by the Jai Shree Ram in the sloganeering of the contesting parties.
The timing has an ironic historical coincidence. On May 4, just a day before Karl Marx’s birth anniversary, the Indian Left lost its last major political stronghold. Long before Kerala, Communist regimes had fallen in West Bengal and Tripura, where the Left was once considered unbeatable electorally. Kerala’s defeat is more than just another election loss; it marks the end of a significant chapter in Indian politics that began with E. M. S. Namboodiripad leading the world’s first democratically elected Communist government in 1957.
The fall of Left in West Bengal is tied to the Singur and Nandigram episodes, which represented a contradiction in Left politics for Bengal’s political observers: a party that had previously been linked to land reforms and peasants was now seen as putting private big capital above the farmers’ rights. By representing herself as the protector of displaced farmers and rural people, Mamata Banerjee was able to turn this rage into a widespread political movement. In addition to undermining the Left’s rural support base, the repercussions from Singur and Nandigram also destroyed the Left’s moral authority. This led to the Trinamool Congress’s historic triumph in 2011 and the start of the Left’s swift slide in Bengal.
Between 1977 and 2011, the Left Front governed West Bengal for 34 years in a row, making it one of the world’s longest-serving elected Communist governments. In another state, for decades, the Left governed Tripura’s state Assembly and Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council. However, in the last council elections, voters reduced the Communists to zero seats, a result that many within the party saw as indicative of a deeper organisational collapse rather than simple anti-incumbency.
The most recent electoral cycle, which included Assembly elections in Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and the Union Territory of Puducherry, as well as subsequent by-elections, highlighted the Left parties’ further declining footprint. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India maintain pockets of power in labour unions, student politics, and civil liberties initiatives, but their electoral machinery has decreased significantly in states where they once had widespread support.
In contrast to the political rise of the BJP, it can be understood that 285 out of 289 candidates had forfeited their deposits in the 2011 Assembly Elections in West Bengal with a vote share of around 4%. The CPI(M) in that election, although it lost power, had a vote share slightly higher than 30%, with only 2 candidates with Forfeited Deposits (FD). In 2026, however, the BJP won 207 seats and saw an incremental rise in its vote share, gaining nearly 46% of the statewide vote share, whereas the vote share of the CPI (M) plummeted below 5%. The first correlation of the shifting of vote share was witnessed in 2016 when the vote share of CPI (M) plummeted below 20% and a direct rise of BJP’s vote share to 10%, which was the first evidence of “Baam to Raam” voter behaviour. Despite the rise in vote share, 263 candidates lost their deposits in the election, and the Left-led Mahajot Alliance lost deposits in about 10 seats. From 2011 to 2026, it is also the number of forfeited candidates who saw their shift from one party to another.
| Year | Party | Vote Share (%) | Forfeited Deposit |
| 2011 | BJP | 4 | 285 |
| CPI (M) | 30 | 2 | |
| 2016 | BJP | 10 | 264 |
| CPI(M) led Alliance | 20 | 10 | |
| 2021 | BJP | 38 | 11 |
| CPI(M) led Alliance | 8 | 250+ | |
| 2026 | BJP | 46 | NA |
| CPI (M) led Alliance | 5 | NA |
Table: Comparison of vote share and the Forfeited candidate list
Source: Election Commission of India (ECI)
The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is seen to be the difference between the BJP and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the recent elections; however, the smooth shifting of the voter base from the CPI (M) to the BJP is particularly significant.
Electorally, the “Baam to Ram” transition symbolises a dramatic shift in India’s political imagination from class mobilisation to religio-nationalism, from ideological mass movements to identity-driven politics. This shift in the electorate highlights the interests of the voters, where the electorate is seen to have made a watershed decision that would perhaps change the way the questions of ideology would be viewed in the days to come. With the swearing-in of Suvendu Adhikari as the Chief Minister of West Bengal, the shift from Baam to Raam is now complete.