Thousands join the Left Front’s Anti-War Day march in Kolkata, raising slogans for peace and condemning wars in Gaza, Lebanon and West Asia while opposing India’s foreign policy shift.
Souvik Ghosh | Sep 02, 2026
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Kolkata, West Bengal: Braving an overcast sky that threatened rain through the afternoon, thousands of Left Front cadre, sympathisers and left-wing student activists poured into central Kolkata on September 1 for the Left’s Anti-War Day march, a fixture on the city’s political calendar that this year found itself speaking to a crowded field of live conflicts, from the Strait of Hormuz to Gaza and Lebanon.
The march, called jointly by 15 Left parties, began with a public meeting at the Lenin statue in Esplanade, the same corner that has hosted Left Front gatherings for decades. Two feeder processions, one from Howrah and another from Sealdah, converged at the spot before the merged column set off along Kolutola Lane, banners fluttering overhead and slogans of “juddho noy, shanti chai” (we want peace, not war) rising from the ranks as the march snaked its way toward Mahajati Sadan.
The march, called jointly by 15 Left parties, began with a public meeting at the Lenin statue in Esplanade, the same corner that has hosted Left Front gatherings for decades. Two feeder processions, one from Howrah and another from Sealdah, converged at the spot before the merged column set off along Kolutola Lane, banners fluttering overhead and slogans of “juddho noy, shanti chai” (we want peace, not war) rising from the ranks as the march snaked its way toward Mahajati Sadan.
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“War Itself Is a Problem,” Says Md. Salim
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Addressing the gathering before the march moved off, Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] Polit Bureau member and state secretary Md. Salim remarked that the turnout, despite the weather, was itself a statement, that it is precisely because people stand against war that peace-loving people across the world come together. “This is internationalism,” Salim said, pointing to the ongoing crisis in the Strait of Hormuz as evidence that the danger of war was not confined to distant headlines but was reshaping fuel prices and household budgets back home in Bengal.
Addressing the gathering before the march moved off, Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] Polit Bureau member and state secretary Md. Salim remarked that the turnout, despite the weather, was itself a statement, that it is precisely because people stand against war that peace-loving people across the world come together. “This is internationalism,” Salim said, pointing to the ongoing crisis in the Strait of Hormuz as evidence that the danger of war was not confined to distant headlines but was reshaping fuel prices and household budgets back home in Bengal.
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Md Salim Speaking at the rally, 1 September 2026
Md Salim Speaking at the rally, 1 September 2026
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Salim did not mince words on Gaza. He accused the United States and Israel of carrying out a sustained genocide against the Palestinian people in order to retain their grip over West Asia’s resources, and said the same pattern of aggression was now visible against Lebanon and other countries in the region, even as resistance to these actions builds up worldwide.
He traced the CPI(M)’s anti-war position back to the anti-imperialist politics of the independence movement itself, reminding the crowd of the party’s historic solidarity with liberation struggles across Asia, Africa and Latin America. Imperialist powers, he said, thrive by dividing ordinary people along lines of nation, religion and language, since a divided people cannot unite against the system that profits from war. He linked Tuesday’s (September 1) mobilisation to a call given by the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) for peace-loving people across the globe to unite against war.
Responding to those who ask why Bengal’s Left concerns itself with wars fought thousands of kilometres away, Salim reached for a piece of the city’s own history. When British colonial forces fired on protesters at Jallianwala Bagh, Rabindranath Tagore himself had joined citizens at the Shaheed Minar ground to protest the massacre. All victims of oppression, Salim said, share a common cause, and it is the dehumanising of people that fuels the frenzy for war.
War-mongers, he argued, serve as a convenient cover for diverting money that ought to go into food, housing, employment, education, healthcare and transport into weapons manufacturing instead. A nation must be able to defend itself, he clarified, but that defence need not become aggression. “War does not solve problems,” he told the gathering, in what became the day’s most repeated line: “war itself is a problem”.
Salim went on to link the American offensive posture on Iran to the rising price of petrol, diesel and LPG cylinders in India, arguing that the burden was being passed straight onto households and farmers. He held the Modi government responsible for opening up India’s agricultural sector to American interests through a string of trade agreements, and extended solidarity to Palestine solidarity activists within the United States as well as to people across Asia and Africa resisting wars imposed by what he termed exploitative regimes.
On foreign policy, Salim recalled that during the Morarji Desai government, then external affairs minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had told a Ramlila Maidan rally in Delhi that Israel was an expansionist power occupying Palestinian land, and that India stood with Palestine. He contrasted that legacy with what he called twelve years of the Modi government’s tilt toward Israel, arguing this broke with India’s own foreign-policy tradition, its civilisational heritage rooted in the Panchsheel principles and the teachings of Gautam Buddha. “Those who court war are themselves anti-national,” Salim said, adding that international respect has to be earned through genuine work for global welfare. Merely appending the title “Vishwaguru” achieves nothing.
He traced the CPI(M)’s anti-war position back to the anti-imperialist politics of the independence movement itself, reminding the crowd of the party’s historic solidarity with liberation struggles across Asia, Africa and Latin America. Imperialist powers, he said, thrive by dividing ordinary people along lines of nation, religion and language, since a divided people cannot unite against the system that profits from war. He linked Tuesday’s (September 1) mobilisation to a call given by the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) for peace-loving people across the globe to unite against war.
Responding to those who ask why Bengal’s Left concerns itself with wars fought thousands of kilometres away, Salim reached for a piece of the city’s own history. When British colonial forces fired on protesters at Jallianwala Bagh, Rabindranath Tagore himself had joined citizens at the Shaheed Minar ground to protest the massacre. All victims of oppression, Salim said, share a common cause, and it is the dehumanising of people that fuels the frenzy for war.
War-mongers, he argued, serve as a convenient cover for diverting money that ought to go into food, housing, employment, education, healthcare and transport into weapons manufacturing instead. A nation must be able to defend itself, he clarified, but that defence need not become aggression. “War does not solve problems,” he told the gathering, in what became the day’s most repeated line: “war itself is a problem”.
Salim went on to link the American offensive posture on Iran to the rising price of petrol, diesel and LPG cylinders in India, arguing that the burden was being passed straight onto households and farmers. He held the Modi government responsible for opening up India’s agricultural sector to American interests through a string of trade agreements, and extended solidarity to Palestine solidarity activists within the United States as well as to people across Asia and Africa resisting wars imposed by what he termed exploitative regimes.
On foreign policy, Salim recalled that during the Morarji Desai government, then external affairs minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had told a Ramlila Maidan rally in Delhi that Israel was an expansionist power occupying Palestinian land, and that India stood with Palestine. He contrasted that legacy with what he called twelve years of the Modi government’s tilt toward Israel, arguing this broke with India’s own foreign-policy tradition, its civilisational heritage rooted in the Panchsheel principles and the teachings of Gautam Buddha. “Those who court war are themselves anti-national,” Salim said, adding that international respect has to be earned through genuine work for global welfare. Merely appending the title “Vishwaguru” achieves nothing.
Left’s United Stand
Salim was flanked on the dais by Communist Party of India (CPI) state secretary Swapan Banerjee and Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) general secretary Manoj Chakraborty, both of whom accused the Modi government of abandoning India’s independent foreign policy in favour of aligning with imperialist powers, and argued that countless lives were being lost to imperialist aggression as these forces expanded their reach across Asia in pursuit of natural resources. Forward Bloc state secretary Sanjib Chatterjee, CPI(ML) Liberation leader Kartik Pal and Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI) state secretary Chandidas Bhattacharya also addressed the meeting, which was presided over by CPI(M) state secretariat member Kallol Majumder.
Across the State
The Kolkata mobilisation was mirrored elsewhere in the state. Left parties organised similar Anti-War Day marches in Jalpaiguri and Maldah districts of North Bengal on Tuesday, extending the call for peace beyond the capital and underlining that the day’s observance was conceived as a coordinated, statewide response rather than a Kolkata-only affair.
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Anti-War Rally in Siliguri
Anti-War Rally in Siliguri.
On the Ground
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Along the Esplanade-Kolutola stretch, the mood among marchers was less one of spectacle than of a familiar, well-worn conviction, with party flags interspersed with hand-painted placards reading “No to War”, red banners bearing Lenin’s image jostling for space with posters demanding peace in West Asia.Left-wing student and youth organisations also turned out in significant numbers alongside the Left parties. Despite the rain throughout the afternoon, the column held its shape all the way to Mahajati Sadan, where the meeting formally wound down with organisers reiterating that “No to War” was not merely a slogan for the day but a call for humanity that the marches across the state had once again tried to answer.
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