Forty-two years after one of India’s most horrific communal incidents, the wounds of Nellie have been reopened with the release of two long-suppressed reports on the massacre that took place in a village about 40 km from Guwahati in February 1983. Nearly 2000 Bengali-speaking Muslim immigrants, mostly women and children, were slaughtered in the incident that took place over a matter of hours and remains one of independent India and Assam’s darkest chapters. It occurred at the height of the statewide agitation led by the All Assam Students Union, the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad, and other groups who were calling for a boycott of the elections after the Centre rejected their demand to scrutinise electoral rolls and exclude ‘foreigners’. The state was then under President’s rule.
The Assam government appointed the Tiwary Commission, headed by Justice Tribhuvan Prasad Tiwary, retired judge of the Gauhati High Court, under the Commission of Inquiry Act, 1983, to examine the disturbances, identify administrative lapses, and recommend preventive measures. The Mehta Commission, chaired by Justice TU Mehta, former Chief Justice of the Himachal High Court, on the other hand, was constituted in 1984 by the Assam Rajyik Freedom Fighters Association as a civil society-led judicial inquiry amid anger over the government’s refusal to release the Tiwary report and its alleged failure to order an impartial probe. Neither of these reports was disseminated to the public. It is only now that the Himanta Biswa Sarma government has decided to make the reports public by distributing copies in the Assembly. While the Tiwary commission said calling of early elections was not the key reason for the massacre, instead citing long-held grievances of demographic change and large-scale influx from neighbouring Bangladesh as the trigger for the communal violence, the Mehta committee blamed the holding of elections without revising the electoral rolls and large-scale state repression for the Nellie outrage.
Chief Minister Sarma’s justification for releasing the reports nearly 43 years later, saying that history should not be suppressed, has been met with scepticism by the Opposition, which sees an agenda ahead of Assembly elections next year. The move is also being viewed as a diversionary tactic to shift the narrative from the Zubeen Garg death controversy, which is increasingly becoming a headache for the state government. The two reports, with their focus on ‘illegal foreigners’ and ‘demographic change’, will certainly serve in polarising the electorate ahead of elections. Even as the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls is underway in Assam amidst allegations of unchecked illegal immigration, the BJP government is hoping to cash in on the fears of the Hindu majority and unify them against what is seen as an Opposition that facilitated the entry of foreigners and initiated demographic change.
