If there is a BJP-led NDA victory in the summer of 2019, India’s parliamentary Left will once more debate its strategies. It will represent a third successive electoral disaster for the CPI/M, since the highs of 2004. The debate will probably be more rueful than painful and will need to be more searching than sectarian, for it is often said that “India’s overall makeup since independence appeared to have all the makings of a country ready to turn communist”—a brutal social hierarchy in