Asansol: The Bam (Left) took the name of Ram on Monday, with CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury likening the communists' emblematic hammer and sickle to Ram's twin sons Luv and Kush.

But if any Ram bhakt were tempted to celebrate a Marxist's equating of communist and Hindu icons as a gharwapsi, the slant Yechury gave to his remarks would have stopped them in their tracks.

The hammer and sickle are the Luv and Kush who would stop the "horse" of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah, Yechury told a rally in Burnpur, alluding to the twins' mythical feat of defeating Ram in battle.

"Modi and Shah always talk about a development yagnya (fire ritual) in the country. In the Ramayan, Luv and Kush had blocked Ram's ashvamedh horse," Yechury said.

"Here, the hammer and the sickle would be the Luv and Kush who would block the horse of Modi and Shah."

The Ashwamedh is a fabled tradition of kings sending their army out of the kingdom, with a horse leading them. Any place the animal traverses counts as the king's sovereign territory unless someone stops the animal and defeats the army.

Luv and Kush, born during their mother's exile from Ayodhya, stopped Ram's horse and defeated him and his army, unaware that he was their father.

Communists in India tend to avoid referring to religion or mythology, let alone comparing themselves to religious figures. The hammer-and-sickle emblem, designed by Russian artist Yevgeny Kamzolkin in 1917 under Lenin's stewardship, is as sacred to communists as Ram is to the Sangh parivar.

"If Modi and Shah find out that the CPM general secretary has drawn such parallels, they will probably be elated," a CPM state secretariat member said.

Yechury was talking of the BJP's "setback" in Gujarat and the "rise" of the Congress.

"The Gujarat election results have proved that people have begun turning away from the BJP. Although the BJP has won, its vote share has fallen (from the 2014 general election)," the CPM chief said.

A few Bengal CPM leaders, though, suggested the party had no realistic chance of doing a Luv-Kush to the BJP's Ram juggernaut unless it tied up with the Congress.

But Yechury remained non-committal on a subject that has over the past decade split the party bitterly down the middle.

"Only time will tell. Nothing can be ruled out or ascertained now," he told a news conference after the rally.