Portside

The LDF, which comprises the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India and nine other allied parties, gained over 20 extra seats over the 2011 election results in Kerala defeating the Congress Party and the ultra-right BJP. This was a victory to celebrate even though the Left Front continued to lose ground in West Bengal.

Far from offering a new or original vision of collective good, the Hindu right-wing, which is Modi's political home, peddles a recycled imperial understanding of India and is parasitic upon some of its worst civilisational assumptions and the repressive institutions the British Empire bequeathed its former possession. These include laws criminalising 'sedition' and criminalising homosexuality, both of which are embraced enthusiastically by the Hindu right.