India, May 5 -- The defeat of the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government in Kerala has significance beyond the borders of the state. For the first time since 1977, when the CPM-led Left Front won office in West Bengal, India will not have a single government led by a Communist party. Ironically, this comes two years after the Communist movement in India marked its birth centenary.

The Communist movement has had a chequered history in both pre- and post-independent India. The internationalism underpinning its ideology has led to the organisation adopting tactics that often went against nationalist undercurrents and the State. The Communist Party of India (CPI) went underground in 1948 for a brief period, only to emerge as the largest non-...