Zohran Mamdani’s viral campaign is inspiring CPI(M)’s social media pitch for Bengal polls

“If you’re among the corrupt and wealthy 1% loved by the BJP, stop watching,” communist leader Dipsita Dhar said at the start of the video, looking into the camera. Though the line echoed the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s longheld ideology of class struggle, the vocabulary of “1%” was new, borrowed from the politics of the United States.

The video also broke from the CPI(M)’s usually stern communication style. In this short video, which has garnered over a million views on Facebook since it was uploaded a week ago on March 29, the 32-year-old sounded cheeky while attacking the Bharatiya Janata Party. It was shot with her walking down the street with stylised music and colourful, blocky text.

The impetus for this change? “Zohran Mamdani,” said Dhar, who studied at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. “His videos are very refreshing to look at. As young people we should be talking like this.”

The research scholar is contesting the upcoming Assembly elections in West Bengal from Dum Dum North, a seat situated in a Kolkata suburb. She was not the only one to bring up the socialist Mamdani’s viral election campaign from 2025, which catapulted him from being a minor politician to mayor of New York.

Afreen Begum, who also appears in the video, seconded her. The CPI(M) has fielded Begum, 29, from Kolkata’s Ballygunge seat. “Mamdani’s campaign material inspired us a lot,” she said. “We got some ideas from there.”

David versus Goliath

The Communist Party of India (Marxist), which ruled West Bengal for 34 years before Mamata Banerjee rose to power in 2011, is fighting for its very existence in the state. In the last two Lok Sabha elections as well as the 2021 Assembly polls, it failed to win even a single seat in West Bengal.

While the BJP, too, has struggled to defeat Mamata Banerjee, it has successfully managed to replace the communists as her principal opponent. That is why the CPI(M)’s messaging is focused more on the BJP than the ruling Trinamool Congress.

“What we see today is less politics and more identity,” lamented Dhar, bemoaning the fact that many Bengalis have been voting along religious lines of late. “We want young people to think beyond that.”

Given that this is the predicament that the CPI(M) faces in West Bengal, taking a leaf out of Mamdani’s book was a no-brainer for Dhar. “Fighting in New York, which has a large number of Jewish people, he talked about Palestine so firmly and unapologetically,” she explained.

Besides Mamdani’s style and ideology, the young Bengali communist also spoke admiringly of the David-versus-Goliath nature of his victory in New York. The head of her party’s social media team in West Bengal echoed this.

“The lack of resources makes you creative,” said Dhrubajyoti Chakraborty, who conceptualised the viral CPI(M) video from last week. “If you don’t have money to do theatre, you start doing theatre in the streets.”

The two-minute video took over two days to make with most of the time spent on writing the script and planning the production, Chakraborty said. Shooting with the candidates was easy, he added, because they are both young, camera-friendly and social media savvy.

Once the footage was ready, the editors took over. Chakraborty remembers the prompt he gave them: “Make a Zohran Mamdani-like video.” The 44-year-old himself knows a thing or two about visual content. He has a master’s degree in film studies from Jadavpur University.

Now, he heads a team of roughly 25 people that has been tasked with making and circulating audio-visual content for the CPI(M). About half a dozen are volunteers with longstanding ties to the party, while the rest are paid professionals. Chakraborty underlined that nobody in his team is above 30.

The party plans to put out more Mamdani-style videos as the election campaign picks up. “It gets more viewership,” the social media head stated directly. “We have tested it over many weeks and analysed the reactions. During elections, people want to hear something from candidates, not other party leaders.”

Begum, who is contesting from Ballygunge, said the style was working. She even claimed that being in the video had made offline canvassing easier. Some residents of middle-class neighbourhoods and high-rise buildings had brought it up when she visited them. “We have seen your video,” is something she’s heard from voters, she told Scroll.

Speaking of revolutions

Directing time and resources towards promoting the party online, however, has opened them up to criticism, some of which comes from fellow communists. “Biplob social media tey hoy na,” Dhar recalled one of her comrades telling her. The revolution will not take place on social media.

But the “technological revolution” had already taken place, she argued, and CPI(M) was late to the party. Even though they finally had a team in place, they were still not the “narrative makers” in West Bengal.

“There is a lot more to do,” Dhar complained. “We should up our game and be more and more dominant on social media.”

Chakraborty, the party’s social media head in the state, agreed. While he, too, admitted that the CPI(M) was late to jump on the social media bandwagon, he attributed the delay to what he called a “tragic coincidence”.

“Between 2010 and 2015, when social media was on the rise and smartphones were becoming universal, the CPI(M) was going down in West Bengal,” Chakraborty pointed out. The party also had little money to play with, he added.

That is why adopting the Mamdani model made sense for the Bengal unit of the CPI(M). The videos look slick, but don’t cost a lot. In fact, Chakraborty claimed that they use iPhones, and not any sophisticated cameras, to shoot.

Still, the CPI(M) continues to face disapproval from sections of the Left for bringing professionals on board. When it put out a hiring call on Facebook last September, the comments section was flooded with adverse reactions.

“We are not like I-PAC [Indian Political Action Committee],” Chakraborty said in his party’s defence, referring to the political consultancy firm that works for the Trinamool in West Bengal.

“I-PAC is dictating what Mamata should do,” he alleged. “What we communicate is solely guided by the party. The professionals are just to make the content attractive so that people engage with it.”