Gaddar (born as and also known as Gummadi Vittal Rao), is a pseudonym of a revolutionary Telugu balladeer and vocal Naxalite activist from the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. The name Gaddar was adopted as a tribute to the pre-independence Gadar party which opposed British colonial rule in Punjab during 1910s.
He was born in 1949 in Toopran village of Medak district. He comes from a poor dalit family and his parents Seshaiah and Lachumamma worked as labourers to earn a living. After completing PUC (then equivalent of 12th class) from a government junior college in Hyderabad he joined the Osmania University Engineering College to pursue a Bachelors degree in engineering but dropped out after the first year to earn a living.
Gaddar married a woman named Vimala. He has two sons, called Sureedu and Chandrudu as well as a daughter called Vennela.
Gaddar married a woman named Vimala. He has two sons, called Sureedu and Chandrudu as well as a daughter called Vennela.
Even while he was singing of revolution in the villages, Gaddar took a banking recruitment exam and got the post of a clerk at Canara Bank in 1975. He quit his bank job in 1984 and concentrated on Jana Natya Mandali. After he voiced his protest against the killing of several Dalits by upper caste landlords in Karamchedu village in Prakasam district in July 1985, the police raided Gaddar's house. He went underground.
With his revolutionary songs catching the imagination of the masses, Gaddar became a legend. Hundreds of thousands of printed copies and thousands of cassettes of his songs have been distributed and sold over the last two decades.
On April 6, 1997 there was an assassination bid on Gaddar. While two of the three bullets the assailants fired into him were removed, one was left untouched because of medical complications. The near-fatal attack, which the balladeer believes was engineered by the police, did not deter Gaddar from being a champion of the downtrodden.
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