Khemu Singh was 17 years old when he took up arms in 1967.
Sonam Gyentsen Wangdi was not even born when her father Inspector Sonam Wangdi was murdered.
Jharen Roy grew up hearing stories of how his family’s grain stores were looted and how they were driven out of their village.
Six decades later, and almost three months after the government declared India free from Left Wing Extremism (LWE), the origins and human cost of the movement are etched in the lives of the three men. They never met, yet each inherited the rebellion in different ways.
All three incidents took place in the town of Naxalbari in West Bengal, about three hours away from the Darjeeling hills and the birthplace of left-wing extremism. Today, apart from nine red sandstone statues of Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, Charu Majumdar and other leftist icons, there is little to suggest that this unassuming town gave birth to one of the country’s longest-running insurgencies. A café nearby is open late into the night, catering to young patrons – many of whom may not know that Naxalism takes its name from Naxalbari.
Yet here, in the summer of 1967, a peasant revolt changed the course of Indian history. The rebellion that began in one corner of India would spread across state borders, inspiring generations of armed revolutionaries and, at its peak, ravaging 106 districts (2006 data; about one-fifth of the districts at that time) by the end of the year.
For Khemu Singh, now 76, the rebellion remains a memory of idealism and collective action.
Living quietly in Naxalbari, the former rebel looks no different from any other elderly resident – but in 1967 he was among the young farmers who helped start the movement. Singh, who worked closely with the movement’s founding leaders, Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal, recalls a time when farmers angry at exploitative zamindars (landlords) believed that revolution was within reach.
He said, “Long before the violence started, leaders like Kanu Da and Charu Da had started visiting villages. The landlords were oppressive. People like Kanu Da were an inspiration. Their speeches lit a fire within us. Police action started on May 24, 1967 but incidents of villagers cornering landlords and looting their food started in March. We would hold a red flag, roam around the village and call for inquilab.” Will raise slogans.” Long live. If the police tried to enter, one shout was enough to gather hundreds of villagers. All died except Shanti Munda (who lives nearby), they joined the movement. It was a different summer.
Many villagers still recall stories of Singh’s visit to China in the 1970s for arms training, a piece of local folklore which he dismisses as an urban legend.
He claims that it was Kanu Sanyal and others who traveled to China twice and even met Mao Zedong while he spent several years underground and in prison before returning home in the early 1980s. “I was once almost killed in a police encounter. An IB officer intervened and saved my life. Kanu da often used to say that Mao had told him that the movement would be successful in India. I returned home in 1982 when the Left Front government came to power and dropped the Naxalite cases.”
Singh said the rebellion was a collective effort of poor farmers against powerful landlords, who soon realized that the balance of power had changed. He remembers how some landlords even handed over their licensed weapons before leaving their homes. “In our village, we found 11 such weapons. We used them to drive away other landowners, loot their warehouses, and distribute grain equally to everyone. Our village was the first and real free zone. The news spread like wildfire.”
While Singh remembers the impending revolution, Jharen Roy inherited memories of fear.
Inside a fading house near Naxalbari’s market square, the 64-year-old man talks about stories passed down through generations. His grandfather, Kundun Roy, was among the first zamindars targeted during the rebellion. His home was attacked, grain stores were looted twice and family members were attacked. “I was very young then and had only heard horror stories. Farmers had murdered many landlords here. My kaka (uncle) Jitendra Nath Roy was murdered. They threw his body in a river.”
Roy has heard stories of how Naxalites forced wealthy landowners to give up their homes and large tracts of land. Many of the elderly residents we meet at Roy’s tea shop in the city tell us how wealthy the family once was.
“We had to live in a rented house in Siliguri. My father told us that Naxalites would raid the house for grains. Many times, even when the demand for cash was met, Naxalites would come and attack. They even took away a double barrel gun from our house,” he said, blaming grassroots cadres who did not follow the peaceful way of socialism.
He said, “Kanu da and others were true in their belief of empowering farmers, but it was the grassroots cadres who committed atrocities. If the leaders sent them just to get cash, the grassroots cadres would come and take away your ducks and chickens too.”
Yet the violence that uprooted his family did not turn Roy away from socialism. If anything, it deepened his belief that the movement had strayed from its core ideals. Today, Roy is one of the few committed socialists who have moved beyond the Left. A member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), he also recently contested the assembly elections from Naxalbari, but lost badly. Naxalbari elected BJP candidate by giving 166905 votes, Jharen got only 8585 votes.
For Sonam Gyentsen Wangdi, the 1967 rebellion has always been personal.
Wangdi, a senior bureaucrat who worked as a journalist in New Delhi for some time in the early 1990s, never met his father – Inspector Sonam Wangdi. On May 23, 1967, the inspector was killed by farmers in Naxalbari, making him the first police casualty of the Naxalite movement. At that time Wangdi was still in his mother’s womb.
According to the citation accompanying the Presidential Gallantry Award, awarded posthumously in 1968, the officer chose to calmly address the crowd rather than retreat. He was hit by four arrows and died from his injuries.
Growing up, Wangdi learned about his father’s heroism through family stories and newspaper reports; The road outside his house was named after him. His 86-year-old mother Ladom Bhutia now struggles to remember those events. “It is painful and I don’t want to remember it,” she said softly at her home in Darjeeling town.
He still receives pension and monetary allowance attached to the gallantry award. The citation said that a mob of 300/400 people armed with bows and arrows had gathered to commit violence. To stop the bloodshed, Inspector Sonam Wangdi moved towards the crowd to pacify them. He was unarmed. “His honest attempt to avoid bloodshed cost him his life,” it said.
The killing of the police officer remains one of the defining moments of the rebellion.
As for his son, it is a story preserved in an official quote. For Singh, it was a reminder of the day the movement crossed a line.
“I remember it clearly,” Singh said. “A farmers’ meeting was being held in Lalghati village. In the adjacent Borojorujot village, women had blocked the road and were protesting. Someone came running towards Lalghati and spread rumors that the police were attacking women protesters. After this, the armed mob went to Borojorujot and fired arrows. This killed Sonam Wangdi on the spot. Till then, the villagers were only able to fight the landlords. They were targeting. This was the first time that an officer was killed. After that everything changed.”
The next day, police fired on villagers near Borojorujot, killing 11, in what became one of the movement’s earliest and most significant confrontations. Ultimately thousands of civilians, security personnel and Maoist cadres would lose their lives; According to government data, nearly 14,000 people, including security forces, have been killed in Naxal-related violence since 2006. The action continued till March 30, 2026 when the government finally declared India Naxal-free.
Looking back, Singh believes that the movement lost its way.
“The cause of the guerrilla Maoists in Bastar was valid,” he said. “But they abandoned the people and relied only on guns. How can you win a people’s war when people lose faith in you?”
Roy comes to a similar conclusion from the opposite side of the conflict. “The ideals may have been right,” he said, “but the violence destroyed everything.”
And Wangdi, whose family paid the ultimate personal price, calls for reconciliation, not revenge.
“People on both sides have lost a lot in this insurgency,” he said. “I don’t wish harm to anyone. I forgive them. The movement is over. Let there be peace.”
India is now Naxal free. In Naxalbari, a group of red sandstone statues of leftist symbols stand by the roadside, one of the only visible reminders of a blood-soaked history. As cars pass the statues and young people gather at a nearby café late in the evening, the city that gave Naxalism its name is moving forward.
