India, Dec. 26 -- The Communist Party of India (CPI), the oldest Communist party in the country, was born exactly 100 years ago on December 26 in Kanpur. Today, CPI - and, in fact, the entire family of communist parties - is facing an existential crisis, electorally and ideologically. The CPI, and its more influential offspring, the CPM, together had a total of 53 MPs in the Lok Sabha and 8% vote share in 2004; in 2024, both the parties and the CPI(ML) have just eight seats and a 3% vote share. This decline is not wholly surprising, for it mirrors the trajectory of communism world over, where it has been in retreat since the end of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. Communist parties do hold office in China and Vietnam, and have electoral relevance in pockets in Latin America and Asia, but most of these are merely authoritarian outfits facilitating State-controlled capitalism. The Communist Party of China (CPC) has explained its ideological shifts as socialism with Chinese characteristics and abandoned planks such as anti-imperialism and class struggle, central to the idea of Communist groups. Unlike CPC, the Indian Communist groups have mostly found themselves on the wrong side of history. Their stubborn adherence to internationalism found them sailing against the tide of nationalism in the 1940s: Opposition to Gandhi, the Quit India movement, the short-lived support for the Muslim League's demand for Pakistan, and finally, the Ranadive thesis period that saw an armed insurrection against independent India, prevented the party from expanding its support among industrial workers and peasants into a mass front. Dogmatic analysis limited their understanding of the caste question and the authoritarian impulse in the imposition of the Emergency. The disappearance of the Soviet utopia has made revival difficult. Where does the Communist Left go from here? The recent success of the Janata Vimukthi Peramuna in Sri Lanka and Zohran Mamdani in New York suggest that political ideologies can revive in new and unexpected forms. The CPI - and the CPM - have shown inventiveness while running governments in Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura: They were pioneers of united front politics in the 1960s and 70s that involved building social and political coalitions, creating cooperatives, and addressing questions of equality and equity through land reforms, acknowledgment of citizen rights, and welfare schemes. But, at a time of global retreat of democratic politics, the Indian Communists have failed to break fresh ground on ideas or practise, preferring dogma and nostalgia to creatively engaging with the challenges of the time such as the climate crisis, anti-migration policies, and the rise of social conservatism. Indian politics is poorer for the absence of an inventive Left....