The uprising swept large parts of the country and those who took up arms came to be known as Naxalites after North Bengal’s Naxalbari where the first spark was lit.

Mention the uprising and the effect is electric. “Where were the men? They were all in jail. We patrolled the villages, undertook missions. We would often gherao the police, snatch their rifles and not let them enter our homes”, says Munda.

She still lives in her ancestral village, around 10 km from Naxalbari. Her mud and asbestos hutment stands as a testament to the decades of neglect in ground zero of India’s left revolution. “The exploitation over land still persists. The government has replaced landlords.” The region remains disparately poor with fragmented land holdings and a crippling shortage of drinking water.

Her friends and comrades in many protest marches was Lila Mazoomdar, the wife of Charu Mazoomdar, the son of a wealthy landlord around whom the movement coalesced. They lived in an hour’s drive away in Siliguri a town in foothills of Darjeeling.

For son Abhijit, Lila was a freedom fighter in her own right. “My mother’s life was very difficult. Despite the hurdles, she never once blamed my father or the movement”, he says, sitting in their ancestral house, the last remnant of a feudal family Charu was born in.

Charu went underground in 1969 and as the killing escalated in Calcutta and countryside, criticism of Charu’s annihilation line mounted. He was released in 1972. He died of a heart attack 12 days later. Police organized in secrecy, no outsiders were allowed and paramilitary forces ringed the funeral pyre. “They did not let my mother take the body to Siliguri and forced Hindu rituals on us”, says Abhijit.

Another rebel of time Simiti Karmakar worked in the trenches of north Bengal to keep together a fast-collapsing movement. “We often walked miles through slush to meet comrades. We would keep vigil during the day as the men slept. We saved many lives. “Decades later, old timers lament the failure of the revolution. Many blame Naxalite campaign of annihilation for it.

Fifty years later, Maxalbari is restive again. A local youth was allegedly picked up by border security guards on what villagers suspect are trumped up charges of drug dealing. The villagers are angry—the next time a BSF person enters the village, they vow to thrash him. But they appear unsure and a mention of the scary consequences is enough to expose their desperation.

The Naxalbari uprising is history. Principal characters such as Charu Mazoomdar, Kanu Sanyal and Jangal Santhal are dead. The residents find no one to rally around.

The memories are faint, but the scars run deep. Exactly 50 years ago, police inspector Sonam Wangdi was killed in Naxalbari in a peasant uprising that quickly signed large swathes of India, killing hundreds.

Wangdi was the first casualty of what has come to be known as Naxal movement. But for Lhadom Wandi, the policeman’s widow, all the deaths were in vain. “The Naxal movement cannot be justified as only innocent persons got killed… my husband was unarmed, his death was a huge loss”.

What stings the 81-year-old most is how her husband’s death was reduced to footnote in Naxalbari history. For four decades, she just got Rs. 1,300 as his monthly pension, which was hiked Rs. 3000 recently.

To avoid painful memories, Lhadom, a doctor by profession, left the sprawling house in Siliguri and settled in Darjeeling with her two children. Sonam won the President’s police medal but was quickly forgotten, even in his town where a small road is named after him.

After 50 years, Naxalbari is abuzz again. Hundreds of Left leaders and activists are pouring into this north Bengal town to commemorate half a century of the peasants’ uprising that got its name from here. But they have all one question: When exactly the Naxalbari day?

This vexed question has even split the local leadership. One faction of CPI(ML) says its May 25, the day 11 peasants and tribals were killed in police firing. The other says May 24 is more appropriate day--- when a policeman died during peasant rebellion.(IPA Service)