Remembering my Naxalite Uncle

Manu Kant

Many firsts are tied tothe memory of my maternal uncle–Ved Prakash Gupta, who in the 1980s earned the sobriquet “Bathinda da BahadurBania” from Khalistanis. It was with him that I had my first hunting experience in the desert on the outskirts of Bathinda, a place that no longer exists. Of course, it wasn’t lion hunting, but something more plebeian–a wild rat hunt. I also had my first taste of rat meat, cooked immediately after the hunt. And it was my uncle who first taught me to shoot a revolver, all at the tender age of thirteen or fourteen–a big deal for a middle-class lad from the ‘City Beautiful’!

My uncle was a genius. He had built a workshop in the backyard of his house, where constructing a bicycle from scratch was child’s play. In that ‘secret’ workshop, he actually made much more dangerous things–pistols, crude bombs, and high-intensity Diwali firecrackers. He could also single-handedly renovate his house without the help of masons, plumbers, carpenters, or electricians.

His reputation suffered a severe jolt when he was suspected of planting a bomb in the town’s cinema house. Fortunately, no one was hurt or killed. To this day, it remains a mystery how he escaped police attention. Interestingly, my great uncle BalwantGargi expressed his disapproval to my mother, saying, “It was a wicked thing to do.”

Yet, for me, my uncle remained a hero. Every Diwali, I would wait with bated breath for the arrival of his messenger from Bathinda. Each year, two ‘pipas’ would be delivered to our house in Chandigarh–one tin filled with ‘attapinnis’ and the other with high-intensity Diwali firecrackers. These ‘biggies’ were the highlight of our Diwali celebrations. At midnight, we would start “detonating” them, once the entire neighbourhood had fallen silent.

The turning point in his life came when Indira Gandhi declared Emergency on 25th June 1975. My mamaji was arrested, and the threat of his liquidation in police custody was real. To prevent this, influential contacts from the CPI and CPI(M) known to our family were mobilised to ensure his safety. After two years in jail, he was finally released in 1977 when Indira Gandhi called off the Emergency.

Thus ended my uncle’s brief stint as a Naxalite. His two-year incarceration, however, brought rewards. The Akali government awarded him a ‘TamraPatra’ in recognition of his suffering during the Emergency and announced reserved seats in medical colleges across Punjab for the children of ‘victims’ of the Emergency. As a result, both his son and daughter were admitted to medical college.

Much wiser after his ordeal, my uncle took up human rights work. He became a relentless critic of low-ranking, corrupt Punjab government officials, exposing them in newspapers and pushing for their suspension or dismissal over minor and major misdemeanours. When asked why he abandoned the ‘Maoist revolution,’ he would simply say, “Beta, the modern state is too strong to be defeated.”

As he grew older, my uncle visited Chandigarh less frequently and settled into a comfortable, petty-bourgeois life in a posh house built by his son, who by then had become a renowned doctor. His mornings were spent poring over newspapers with tea and cigarettes–his one indulgence that he never gave up. Evenings were spent with his grandchildren. The last I heard, before he passed away, he had begun reading Indian epics like the Mahabharata and Ramayana, alongside the Vedas.

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Frontier
Vol 58, No. 13, Sep 21 - 27, 2025