Here is part 10 of life story of senior advocate Ramesh Gupta, in his own words…..


In the year 1986, I left the brick kiln workers union due to my disagreements with Bapuram Pakhade. At that time Pakhade was amongst the big and influential leaders of Dalit Panthers.

One of the members of the Dalit Panthers, Ramdas Athawale (now Union minister of social justice and empowerment) used to come to the chamber, where we did the union work. We worked together for around two years while working for the union.

When MLA Swami Agnivesh joined our union, he introduced me to a Thailand based association named Asian Cultural Forum on Development Foundation.

I joined it as a member and in the year 1981, I participated in an exchange program. We have to visit Hong Kong, Japan and Pakistan in 90 days as part of the program.

We were 10 people from Delhi and we had our orientation in Hong Kong first. From India itself, we had Swami ji, Kamala Bhasin, Kailash Satyarthi, Mr. Chauhan from Gujarat and socialist Surender Chakrapani. Subsequently we visited Thailand, Japan and Sri Lanka as our visa for Pakistan wasn't sanctioned.

Visiting these countries gave me an insight about the international culture and lifestyle.

After leaving the union, Swami Agnivesh asked me to join him but I declined the offer. Swami's associate, Kailash Satyarthi, also left him due to some internal matters of their party.

I suggested to Satyarthi Ji that he could work somewhere else. There was another social cause which was named ' Bachpan Bachao Aandolan'. I soon became its president……….

To be continued……

(After a small break I will return soon with more nuggets from my life)