The CPM in Kerala is in a stupor. The party leadership is still struggling to ascertain whether it was an anti-Modi wave or a vote against chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s “Sabarimala line” that decimated the party in the Lok Sabha elections.

It was a combination of both that left the CPM gasping for breath with just one seat from Kerala, where it had expected to win at least five — although Vijayan had claimed the party would win no less than 18 of the 20 seats.

With no representation from the erstwhile strongholds of Tripura and Bengal, the party has found some solace in neighbouring Tamil Nadu where it has won two seats, thanks to M.K. Stalin and the DMK cadre.

One thing is certain: the voters in Kerala have rejected the party’s pre-poll contention that the CPM is better equipped than the Congress to take on Narendra Modi and his “fascist forces” at the national level.

During electioneering, the party had projected itself as the sole guardian of secularism in the country. “There is no point electing Congress representatives as the moment they reach Delhi, they will switch over to the BJP,” Left leaders had told rally after rally.

The voters thought otherwise. Vijayan had to admit that the defeat was “unexpected”. He, however, found solace in the contention that “it was the political stand taken by the LDF that resulted in the BJP failing to get any seats in the state”.

In hindsight, it’s clear that the chief minister and his party were out of touch with the ground reality.

Each time Prime Minister Modi and BJP president Amit Shah came to Kerala, they created fear among the minorities, especially the Muslims, through their strident Hindu nationalism. This resulted in a never-before mobilisation of the minority vote in favour of the Congress.

Although the CPM had expected such a consolidation of the minority vote once Rahul Gandhi decided to contest from Wayanad, the party never thought that all of those would go into the Congress kitty. After all, the minorities had always stood with the CPM in Kerala.

A day after the results, the party said that some of its loyalists were “misled by Right-wing” parties and this impacted the voting, but it did not mention Sabarimala by name.

Even during the electioneering, the CPM had deliberately ignored the Sabarimala dispute. Many in the party were aware of the faults in the “Pinarayi line” on Sabarimala but preferred to keep quiet.

Had the party’s state leadership shown the courage to question Pinarayi’s arbitrary decisions, the damage could have been minimised.

No one dared question the haste with which Pinarayi decided to implement the Supreme Court order, despite it not being time-bound, to allow women of all ages to enter the Sabarimala temple. The government went to the extent of stage-managing the entry of one or two women.

This led to the alienation of a majority among the Hindu community, the mainstay of the CPM support base.

On the other hand, the Sabarimala dispute helped the BJP grow in stature in the state, prompting the party to see it as a “golden opportunity” to exploit in the elections.

But the BJP’s calculations went wrong, with the majority of Hindus seeing through its political agenda of hate and deciding to back the Congress.

This is not the end of the CPM in Kerala as is being forecast by some. The state CPM leadership has now promised to “rectify the lapses through serious introspection at all levels and regain the lost public support”.