BBC. Not quite, but the Communist Party of India (Marxist) had ruled without interruption in West Bengal since 1977. As the main party in the Left Front there, it lost to Congress in the 2011 state assembly elections. Another historic event of 2011.
We can expect West Bengal to return to something of its historic form and be hyped as a new “emerging market” in the coming years.
The CPI(M) split from the Communist Party of India in 1964. It had dominated the Left Democratic Front which had been ruling in Kerala and also lost to Congress. West Bengal and Kerala had been its two bastions. It continues to rule only in Tripura, whose elections are not due until 2013.
There is also a Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), formed in Calcutta in 1969. Its founders had mobilised a revolutionary peasants’ movement in Naxalbari, which evolved into an armed uprising of the Santhal tribal inhabitants. The Communist Party of India (Maoist) has roots in it. Naxalites has become a general term which refers to various militant communist groups in different parts of India.
Red Corridor: Naxalite-affected districts in 2007
January 10 2013 at 11:13 pm
[...] of increasing divisions between rich and poor that lead servants to murder masters and foment Maoist movements in the country’s hinterland; synopses of so many rapes and sexual assaults that [...]