‘History will not dissolve resentments and suspicions. Selective history will, in fact, harden them,’ Gandhi writes in his celebrated study, Understanding the Muslim Mind.8 Speaking of Hindu-Muslim conflicts, he says further, ‘Yet a frank and non-partisan look at the past can at least tell us of the blocks to Hindu-Muslim partnerships and tell us, too, of what went wrong, and why, in the efforts to remove them. If it informs us of times when the other side, too, was large-hearted, and of other times when our side also was small-minded, that awareness may make us, who-ever we are, less prickly. History will then have served the cause of national, and subcontinental, understanding.’9

These are noble thoughts, remarks, which make us feel the need to reach out to the other side as well. To try and delve into the minds of people who involve themselves in a frenzy of hurt, anger and bloodshed that may seem inconceivable to others.

Gandhi has dwelt on this in another extraordinary book, Revenge and Reconciliation, which captures the pain and tumult of South Asia. Here he bemoans the fact that not enough attention is given ‘to the history and continuing culture of settling scores, or to the fact that over time triumphs and defeats … have led not to stable treaties or settlements but to oaths of revenge and preparations for new rounds of battle.’10

This book does not pretend to be a bridge-builder between communities. But it seeks to take an honest look, naturally burdened by the limitations of the writer himself, at what has gone wrong and continues to go wrong in Assam, especially among old and new settlers, in the light of land scarcity and population pressures in neighbouring Bangladesh.

We will look at ways at which these can perhaps be addressed and even tackled. This is necessary because the events at Nellie show how terribly things can go wrong when the political, economic and social foundation of a host community comes to breaking point—or is shown to be close to that.

Chapter Five

‘Where Are the Bodies?’

On 20 February 1983, I travelled with four other journalists to Nellie. We represented different newspapers and news agencies: there was Najmal Hasan of Reuters (later killed in a mine explosion in the Iran-Iraq conflict), Satish Jacob of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Anand Sahay of the Times of India and Sabita Goswami of Blitz, the sensationalist weekly from Bombay.

We were a team, covering those bad times together. And the previous night we had gathered around the teleprinter at the Press Trust of India in Guwahati which rapped out the bare facts of a massacre in Nellie, some fifty kilometres from the city. Initial reports spoke of scores dead and many injured. We decided to drive out there first thing in the morning.