Modi’s offensive against communists in India

The ultra-conservative government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is promoting an offensive against the communists of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the CPI(M), the largest left-wing organization in the country and one of the few acronyms recognized throughout the immense Indian territory.

Covered under the discourse of combating corruption, the central government of India instrumentalized the state apparatus to try to silence the most combative voices of the Indian people.

Under Modi, the “Inspection Directorate” (DF), directly linked to the executive branch, opened more than 4,400 investigations against opposition members, which represents 95% of all cases handled by the body.

This method is part of a systematic strategy. In West Bengal, ruled by the CPI(M) between 1977 and 2011, the DF carried out more than 20 operations in the two months before the April 2026 elections, targeting opposition leaders. Simultaneously, 9.1 million voters were excluded from the electoral rolls, affecting 3.11 million Muslims. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the elections in the state, which had never happened before.

In May this year, the CPI(M) was electorally defeated in Kerala, a state it had ruled for a decade. The winner was also the BJP. A few days later, on May 27, the Enforcement Directorate carried out searches at the residence of Pinarayi Vijayan, former Chief Minister of Kerala and member of the Party Secretariat.

The action was a “politically motivated act of revenge”, as denounced by the General Secretary of the Party, MA Baby. The pretext used was the so-called “Exalogic case”, an investigation in which Indian courts have already concluded that Vijayan has no involvement.

The CPI(M) reacted immediately and organized, under the leadership of its general secretary, a protest in front of the DF headquarters in New Delhi. The state’s response was brutal repression: police detained more than a hundred protesters, including feminist leader Brinda Karat and Secretariat members Ashok Dhawale, Mariam Dhawale and Vijoo Krishnan.

MA Baby called on the party to mobilize “strong protests across the country” against the selective persecution of opposition leaders and attacks on democratic rights.

What is happening in India today is not an isolated phenomenon, but the local expression of a global offensive against popular democratic achievements, a recipe for political persecution and judicial manipulation that Latin America, unfortunately, knows in its smallest details.

By trying to suffocate the CPI(M) through brute force and fabricated inquiries, the Modi government demonstrates that it is unaware of the history of the people it governs. The trajectory of Indian communists was not written in the air-conditioned offices of New Delhi, but in the dust of the roads, in peasant resistance, in general strikes and in the uncompromising defense of the marginalized sectors of society.

MA Baby’s call for national protests emphasizes the historical resilience of the Indian communist movement, highlighting that the strength of the CPI(M) lies in its popular insertion and social capillarity, elements that institutional and police repression are incapable of annihilating.