08-10-2005, 10:56 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-Bharatvarsh+Aug 9 2005, 05:00 PM-->QUOTE(Bharatvarsh @ Aug 9 2005, 05:00 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin--> "1983 - Neille 1000+ killed"
Was the nellie riot an ethnic conflict or religious one, from what I know it was a backlash against Bengali speaking people in Assam (who happened to be Muslim), is this true. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Link
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>River of death </b>
Twenty-one years ago, 3,300 people were killed in a single day in an unknown village in Assam. Of the 688 legal cases that resulted, chargesheets were filed in 310. <b>All cases were dropped later </b>
SAMUDRA GUPTA KASHYAPÂ Â Â Â Â
GUWAHATI: ABDUL Mannan, a 60-year old farmer, doesnât want to talk about what happened in his village Muladhari under the Nellie police outpost 21 years ago. ââI do not want to reopen this chapter and discuss who were the killers,ââ says Mannan.ââReporters come here only during the elections and ask us strange questions.ââ
The residents of Muladhari, Silbheti, Borpolah, Mati-parbat and Dungbari â all remembered collectively as ââNellieââ â are equally reticent.
<b>In February 1983, 3,300 people were killed in a single day. </b>It happened shortly after an election was held in the state, an election opposed by the All-Assam Studentsâ Union (AASU) that was spearheading a movement against illegal migration from Bangladesh.
Over 500 AASU volunteers were killed while resisting the elections. Voter turnout was so low that year that some Congress candidates, like current Assam health minister Bhumidhar Barman from Barkhetri, won with just over a hundred votes.
Polling was held on February 14, 2003. On February 18, villages under the Nellie police outpost, home to people of Bangladeshi origin, became the scene of a horrific massacre. Assamese tribals, armed with daos (machete) and spears attacked the ââimmigrantââ Muslim villagers. When the madness ended, over 3,000 lay dead, most of them women and children.
THOUGH no official reason has been given for the worst-ever massacre in independent India, people with access to the never-published Tewari Commission report ascribe two reasons to it. One that the Bangladeshi migrants had voted despite an AASU boycott and that angered the locals. The other was the ethnic populationâs longstanding fear of being outnumbered by migrants.
According to official records, the six or seven hour attack on Nellie began at 10 am and left at least 1,800 persons dead. Records in the Jagiroad police station put the number of killed in the riots at Dungbari, Muladhari, Borpolah, Silbheti and Mati-parbat at 2,191. But the figures are said to be higher, 3,300 according to some estimates. About 1,668 people were arrested in connection with the mass murder.
WHILE the <b>Tewari Commission </b>submitted its 600-page report to the Assam government in May 1984, <b>the then Congress government, headed by Hiteswar Saikia, decided against making it public</b>. The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) government that came to power in December 1985 too kept it under wraps.
But records at the Jagiroad police station say that while 688 cases had been filed in connection with the Nellie killings, the police submitted chargesheets only in 310. The remaining 378 cases were closed after a final report said there was no evidence. But these too were dropped later.
Says B K Gohain, home commissioner, Assam: ââAll the Nellie cases were dropped during Prafulla Kumar Mahantaâs time. The chapter is closed.ââ
CASE FILE
LOST IN TIME
⢠The Nellie massacre took place on February 18, 1983, three days after an election
⢠<b>The Tewari Commission submitted its report in May 1984 but it was never made public</b>
⢠<b>In November 2004, a Japanese scholar was stopped from giving a talk on the Nellie massacre in Guwahati </b>
ABDUL Khaleque, vice-president of the Jagiroad Block Congress Committee, however, says every family in the half-a-dozen affected villages received two bundles of tin sheets and Rs 2,000 in cash as part of the rehabilitation package announced by the then Congress government. ââBut as far as I know, the AGP, on coming to power in 1985, directed the police to withdraw all the cases,ââ says Khaleque.
Says president of the United Minoritiesâ Front (UMF), Hafiz Rashid Choudhury: ââThe cases never came to the court because there was nobody to pursue them. The Congress goes to Nellie only the eve of elections to woo the voters. It is also a mystery that the Tewari Commission report was never made public.ââ
A conspiracy of silence is obvious. For its own reasons, every party wants to forget Nellie. Little wonder then that, in Guwahati in November, Japanese scholar Makiko Kimura was stopped by the Assam government from giving a talk called ââMemories of a massacre: Competing narratives of the Nellie incidentââ.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Abstract of Makiko Kimuraâs paper on Nellie</b>
The aim of this paper is to analyse three competing narratives of the cause of the Nellie massacre of 1983: the views of the victims, the attackers and the movement leaders. The well-known Nellie incident took place during the anti-foreigners movement led by the AASU and the AAGSP from 1979 to 1985. The incident was directly triggered by the central governments decision to hold the state legislative assembly election, which invited a boycott by the movement leaders. As a result of the confrontations between the people who supported and opposed the implementation of the election, there were numerous violent incidents among communities during election period in the early part of 1983. The worst incident was the Nellie massacre, in which more than 1000 people were killed in one-day attack.
Until now, it has been said that the land deprivation by the Muslim migrants from East Bengal region is the cause of the large-scale killing. The plains tribe called the Tiwas traditionally inhabited in the Nellie area, but after the British occupation they were marginalised. The top leaders of the Assam movement denied their involvement in the massacre, and implicitly suggested that it was initiated by the Tiwas. However, interviews with Muslim migrants and Tiwas in this area reveal that both of them consider the movement and the election as a prime cause of the massacre, and, these groups denied that there are disputes over land between them.
It can be said that the interpretations of collective violence (such as a large-scale killing, riot or massacre) are open to various narratives by people who directly or indirectly experience them. And from these various narratives, people choose one interpretation that suits them most, or choose the one that is least harmful to them. And in this process, they also select the facts from their memories. However, the three interpretations do not receive the same attention in India or in Assam. The interpretation of the movement leaders became the consensus in Assamese society. I argue that the interpretation favoured by those in power and by the media became the most widely accepted interpretation. «
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
link
Here's K P S Gill on Nellie:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><i>In private conversations you have spoken about your childhood memories of Partition. And, of course, you dealt with the communal violence in Assam in 1983. Some of what you have experienced in Ahmedabad must have brought those memories back to you. </i>
When I was 12, we used to live in the Model Town area of Lahore. I still have vivid memories of my mother giving me two swords and telling me to use them if we were attacked. One was for me to kill my younger sister with, and the other to fight for as long as I could. It was an awful time.
So was Assam in 1983. But Assam also taught me that the worst situations can be solved through firm police action. I remember one riot, fought along a battlefront of several kilometres, where the former Director-General of the Border Security Force, E.N. Rammohan, kept firing at a mob with little effect. Finally, the Commissioner, Vijendra Jafa, also pitched in, with an enormous gun meant for shooting elephants. <b>A lot of people died in the fire, but it was nothing compared with the several hundreds who were killed in Nellie, when riots were not prevented. </b>
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Was the nellie riot an ethnic conflict or religious one, from what I know it was a backlash against Bengali speaking people in Assam (who happened to be Muslim), is this true. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Link
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>River of death </b>
Twenty-one years ago, 3,300 people were killed in a single day in an unknown village in Assam. Of the 688 legal cases that resulted, chargesheets were filed in 310. <b>All cases were dropped later </b>
SAMUDRA GUPTA KASHYAPÂ Â Â Â Â
GUWAHATI: ABDUL Mannan, a 60-year old farmer, doesnât want to talk about what happened in his village Muladhari under the Nellie police outpost 21 years ago. ââI do not want to reopen this chapter and discuss who were the killers,ââ says Mannan.ââReporters come here only during the elections and ask us strange questions.ââ
The residents of Muladhari, Silbheti, Borpolah, Mati-parbat and Dungbari â all remembered collectively as ââNellieââ â are equally reticent.
<b>In February 1983, 3,300 people were killed in a single day. </b>It happened shortly after an election was held in the state, an election opposed by the All-Assam Studentsâ Union (AASU) that was spearheading a movement against illegal migration from Bangladesh.
Over 500 AASU volunteers were killed while resisting the elections. Voter turnout was so low that year that some Congress candidates, like current Assam health minister Bhumidhar Barman from Barkhetri, won with just over a hundred votes.
Polling was held on February 14, 2003. On February 18, villages under the Nellie police outpost, home to people of Bangladeshi origin, became the scene of a horrific massacre. Assamese tribals, armed with daos (machete) and spears attacked the ââimmigrantââ Muslim villagers. When the madness ended, over 3,000 lay dead, most of them women and children.
THOUGH no official reason has been given for the worst-ever massacre in independent India, people with access to the never-published Tewari Commission report ascribe two reasons to it. One that the Bangladeshi migrants had voted despite an AASU boycott and that angered the locals. The other was the ethnic populationâs longstanding fear of being outnumbered by migrants.
According to official records, the six or seven hour attack on Nellie began at 10 am and left at least 1,800 persons dead. Records in the Jagiroad police station put the number of killed in the riots at Dungbari, Muladhari, Borpolah, Silbheti and Mati-parbat at 2,191. But the figures are said to be higher, 3,300 according to some estimates. About 1,668 people were arrested in connection with the mass murder.
WHILE the <b>Tewari Commission </b>submitted its 600-page report to the Assam government in May 1984, <b>the then Congress government, headed by Hiteswar Saikia, decided against making it public</b>. The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) government that came to power in December 1985 too kept it under wraps.
But records at the Jagiroad police station say that while 688 cases had been filed in connection with the Nellie killings, the police submitted chargesheets only in 310. The remaining 378 cases were closed after a final report said there was no evidence. But these too were dropped later.
Says B K Gohain, home commissioner, Assam: ââAll the Nellie cases were dropped during Prafulla Kumar Mahantaâs time. The chapter is closed.ââ
CASE FILE
LOST IN TIME
⢠The Nellie massacre took place on February 18, 1983, three days after an election
⢠<b>The Tewari Commission submitted its report in May 1984 but it was never made public</b>
⢠<b>In November 2004, a Japanese scholar was stopped from giving a talk on the Nellie massacre in Guwahati </b>
ABDUL Khaleque, vice-president of the Jagiroad Block Congress Committee, however, says every family in the half-a-dozen affected villages received two bundles of tin sheets and Rs 2,000 in cash as part of the rehabilitation package announced by the then Congress government. ââBut as far as I know, the AGP, on coming to power in 1985, directed the police to withdraw all the cases,ââ says Khaleque.
Says president of the United Minoritiesâ Front (UMF), Hafiz Rashid Choudhury: ââThe cases never came to the court because there was nobody to pursue them. The Congress goes to Nellie only the eve of elections to woo the voters. It is also a mystery that the Tewari Commission report was never made public.ââ
A conspiracy of silence is obvious. For its own reasons, every party wants to forget Nellie. Little wonder then that, in Guwahati in November, Japanese scholar Makiko Kimura was stopped by the Assam government from giving a talk called ââMemories of a massacre: Competing narratives of the Nellie incidentââ.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Abstract of Makiko Kimuraâs paper on Nellie</b>
The aim of this paper is to analyse three competing narratives of the cause of the Nellie massacre of 1983: the views of the victims, the attackers and the movement leaders. The well-known Nellie incident took place during the anti-foreigners movement led by the AASU and the AAGSP from 1979 to 1985. The incident was directly triggered by the central governments decision to hold the state legislative assembly election, which invited a boycott by the movement leaders. As a result of the confrontations between the people who supported and opposed the implementation of the election, there were numerous violent incidents among communities during election period in the early part of 1983. The worst incident was the Nellie massacre, in which more than 1000 people were killed in one-day attack.
Until now, it has been said that the land deprivation by the Muslim migrants from East Bengal region is the cause of the large-scale killing. The plains tribe called the Tiwas traditionally inhabited in the Nellie area, but after the British occupation they were marginalised. The top leaders of the Assam movement denied their involvement in the massacre, and implicitly suggested that it was initiated by the Tiwas. However, interviews with Muslim migrants and Tiwas in this area reveal that both of them consider the movement and the election as a prime cause of the massacre, and, these groups denied that there are disputes over land between them.
It can be said that the interpretations of collective violence (such as a large-scale killing, riot or massacre) are open to various narratives by people who directly or indirectly experience them. And from these various narratives, people choose one interpretation that suits them most, or choose the one that is least harmful to them. And in this process, they also select the facts from their memories. However, the three interpretations do not receive the same attention in India or in Assam. The interpretation of the movement leaders became the consensus in Assamese society. I argue that the interpretation favoured by those in power and by the media became the most widely accepted interpretation. «
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
link
Here's K P S Gill on Nellie:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><i>In private conversations you have spoken about your childhood memories of Partition. And, of course, you dealt with the communal violence in Assam in 1983. Some of what you have experienced in Ahmedabad must have brought those memories back to you. </i>
When I was 12, we used to live in the Model Town area of Lahore. I still have vivid memories of my mother giving me two swords and telling me to use them if we were attacked. One was for me to kill my younger sister with, and the other to fight for as long as I could. It was an awful time.
So was Assam in 1983. But Assam also taught me that the worst situations can be solved through firm police action. I remember one riot, fought along a battlefront of several kilometres, where the former Director-General of the Border Security Force, E.N. Rammohan, kept firing at a mob with little effect. Finally, the Commissioner, Vijendra Jafa, also pitched in, with an enormous gun meant for shooting elephants. <b>A lot of people died in the fire, but it was nothing compared with the several hundreds who were killed in Nellie, when riots were not prevented. </b>
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->