The moment being experienced in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu immediately brings to mind the last time such a seismic shift occurred on the landscape of these two electoral states. Just three years after the death of Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1967, nearly six decades ago, the politics of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu changed beyond recognition.In Tamil Nadu, the venerable Congress leader, once president of the Congress and ex-chief minister, K. Kamraj lost to a student leader in February 1967. It became only the second instance of a non-Congress party storming to power in a state. The first was when the Communist Party of India had won Kerala in 1957.Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, led by C.N. Annadurai, riding at the back of high prices and unrest springing therefrom and the anger at Hindi imposition from the Centre burst on the scene. Subsequent developments, led to the DMK splitting into the AIADMK, with M.G. Ramachandran emerging from within the party and between the two Dravida parties, providing a formidable binary that went on to keep the Congress party out of power all the way until 2026, and also ensure the development of a very competitive and hardy ‘Dravidian model’ that with distinct differentiators from the rest of India, tried to wed social justice with economic progress, with considerable success for sixty years.C. Joseph Vijay, cine-star and leader of the Tamil Vetri Kazhagam has now broken the strict binary and prised Tamil Nadu open, beyond what the Dravidian parties and their coalitions had deemed and dreamed for the state. For the first time after 1967, there is a political opening for a party, which is neither DMK nor AIADMK, to lead a coalition and control Fort St George. The swift movement of the Congress party towards TVK is not as sudden as it appears. Relations between the DMK allies had been frayed for a while, and the Congress senses its best chance to stake out on a political map in Tamil Nadu that has suddenly opened up before it. The move also sends a message to other allies like the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh and Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar, because a lot of Congress leaders have felt that they have been given an unfair deal as a junior partner in these states.§West Bengal saw the first United Front government in the state also in 1967. Ajoy Mukherjee, of the Bangla Congress, was sworn in as chief minister in March 1967. The CPI(M)’s Jyoti Basu, leader of the opposition in the state assembly for 10 years from 1957-1967, an MLA in the state since 1952, assumed office as deputy chief minister. It was a time of political turbulence in the state, and the state got its first coalition government that year. Remember that Naxalbari was already a factor and the state was convulsed by the tremors it generated. The United Front government was to fall in the very same year, and there was to be another coalition government in 1969, again headed by Ajoy Mukherjee. The state of West Bengal having made up its mind to elect a non-Congress and a Left government was not something the Centre could swallow and two bouts of President’s rule followed, but Ajoy Mukherjee was to return again as chief minister in 1971, this time, for an even shorter stint.Siddhartha Shankar Ray, the chief minister who went on to earn notoriety, especially after the 1972 elections in the state which the opposition withdrew from – a very violent and contested affair, was to run affairs in West Bengal till 1977. His tenure and the violent elections were the forebearers of other grim events in the country; the national Emergency and the crackdown on anybody daring to dissent followed, till in the 1977 state elections, held with the general elections in the country, Ray’s government was voted out. The Left Front went on to remain undefeated for 34 years. The Congress is yet to be re-elected to power in the state.Currently, in the light of anti-incumbency against the TMC government but a scandalous Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, which has deleted 91 lakh names from the state’s voter list – including 27 lakh deemed as voters in the grey list of the Election Commission but not allowed to vote – a big political shift has occurred in the state. The BJP has been swept to power at the back of this specially curated voter list, winning 208 seats out of 294. It is the first time that the party has been voted to power in one of India’s largest states. The only time its ideological predecessor, so to speak, V.D. Savarkar’s Hindu Mahasabha held power over United Bengal was in coalition with the Muslim League.In 1941, chief minister AK Fazlul Haque had Syama Prasad Mookerjee in his cabinet as finance minister in the state. This is the time when the Hindu Mahasabha, VD Savarkar’s party, held office along with the Muslim League in Bengal, the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Sindh. This was made possible as the Congress was in the throes of the Quit India movement and had voluntarily stayed away from government formation under colonial rule.§In Tamil Nadu, the opening up of the political field beyond the long-standing Dravidian binary may force every major player to rethink old assumptions. If the Congress sees an opportunity to escape the constraints of being a permanent junior partner, others will take note too. Regional parties elsewhere will watch closely, because what happens in Chennai could influence bargaining power in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra and beyond. A successful breach in one state can become a template, or at least a warning, for coalitions elsewhere.West Bengal, meanwhile, may be entering a phase where the old certainties of anti-incumbency, identity politics, and opposition fragmentation no longer work in familiar ways. But a large mandate does not erase the social and political currents that produced it, and it does not guarantee stability. If anything, it intensifies scrutiny.Even if 2026 is not 1967, the impact of this moment will be felt far beyond the immediate electoral result. Not just in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, but across India, the effect is likely to unfold over time, reshaping alliances, unsettling inherited equations, and forcing parties to recalibrate their instincts. The BJP may appear to be the winner in the short term, but history rarely moves in straight lines. A decisive-looking verdict can still become the beginning of a longer and more complicated political churn.What matters now is not to mistake this for inevitable finality, but to watch how the pieces move, how allies reposition themselves, how rivals respond, and how new openings are created in spaces that once seemed permanently closed. More than the end, as many doomsdayers feel, this may well be the start of something new: a political rearrangement whose consequences will only become clear in the years ahead.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.