West Bengal Assembly election 2026: Naxalbari, cradle of the red, now painted saffron

Naxalbari: “Kanu Sanyalera bari kothai?” (Do you know where Kanu Sanyal’s house is?)

The traffic policeman, busy scrolling reels on his smartphone, looks up and shrugs his shoulders. Once the most wanted man in West Bengal, Kanu Sanyal is long dead. And no one is looking for him. Not even in Naxalbari, the cradle of the first Left-wing armed insurgency in India.

If Charu Majumdar was the ideological heft behind the 1967 uprising, Kanu Sanyal was the chief mobiliser of the tribal sharecroppers and contract labourers against the exploitative landowners.

The police reprisal was swift and strong. But the sparks of what unfolded in Naxalbari, a small town nestled among the 300 square miles of tea gardens spread at the base of Darjeeling hills, would spread to large parts of India in the coming decades.

It took almost 50 years for the Indian state to declare victory over Naxalism. In Lok Sabha last month, Union Home Minister Amit Shah declared the final assault on Left-wing extremism in India successful.

When the red fades, it often turns saffron.

Pani Tanki, the Indian checkpoint at the Nepal border is 20 km away from Bagdogra, the strategically important airport in the narrow Chicken’s Neck that connects the Northeast with the rest of India. The settlements on both sides of the highway are dotted with pennons fluttering in the strong gale gliding down from the hills.

“They were put up during Hanuman Jayanti and Ram Navami celebrations recently. Even meat shops were closed during Navratras in the area we live,” says Rinki Sharma, deeply sucking at his cigarette over a cup of tea, as trucks rolled over the bridge to enter Nepal.

Lord Ram, emblasoned on the saffron flags, holding his divine bow, is battle ready. Hanuman, as in other parts of the country, is angry.

Ananadamoy Barman, BJP MLA from the Matigara-Naxalbari constituency, has been renominated by the party. Amid shouts of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' and 'Jai Shree Ram', his convoy reaches Zamirdarpur, a small village on the banks of the Manja, a small tributary of the Mahananda that flows through Siliguri before merging with the Ganga.

“The way the TMC government has exploited the people of Bengal it is time we bid a final farewell to Mamata di,” he tells his supporters.

The language of political mobilisation remains the same. Exploiter vs the exploited. Haves vs the have-nots. The actors and ideology metamorphose with the changing times.

“CPM candidate Jharen Roy is well respected here, but can he put up a fight?” asks a villager. Roy’s former CPI(M) colleague Shankar Roy is now a BJP MLA from the adjoining Siliguri seat.

In the last couple of elections — both Lok Sabha and Aassembly — the BJP has done well in north-Bengal. Barman won the Naxalbari seat by a margin of over 70,000 votes. This constituency has a substantial population of tribals and the Scheduled Caste Rajbansi community, whom the BJP is aggressively wooing.

Not far from here, President Draupadi Murmu addressed the International Santal Conference in March. She was upset with the State government over the lack of protocol. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has raked up the issue in his election speeches. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has accused the President of playing politics at the behest of the BJP.

Late last year, Mamata Banerjee laid the foundation for the construction Mahakal Temple at Siliguri. Her candidate against BJP’s Barman is Sankar Malakar, the former Congress MLA who shifted base to the TMC ahead of the elections.

The Naxalbari constituency with its large tribal population is being actively wooed by the BJP.

On our way back, we finally managed to meet someone who knew where Kanu Sanyal lived.

“I participated in Kanu Sanyal’s funeral when he passed away,” Jaganath Munda says, directing us to Hathighisha village where the Naxal ideologue lived before he took his own life in 2005.

“The party is a past. It's the BJP that now dominates,” Munda tell us.

In his own village, Sanyal’s house is an island of red amidst a burst of flowers on the BJP and TMC flags. A rusted lock dangles at the main gate where Sanyal lived and died.

On the wall is pasted an appeal, typed in bold on an A4 sheet: “Stop Israeli imperialist war against Iran.”