The Agony of Assam

By Marguerite Johnson

An election explodes in violence and creates problems for Indira Gandhi

Not since the carnage that accompanied the breakaway of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971 had the subcontinent seen such ghastly scenes of horror. After four years of festering protest and a month of mounting violence, India's oil-rich state of Assam exploded in a paroxysm of communal and religious hatred. In the turbulence touched off by opposition to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's decision to hold state elections, some 3,000 people were believed to have been killed, and Indian officials said that 100,000 others had been left homeless by rampaging arsonists who burned entire villages. As Mrs. Gandhi rushed in three battalions of army troops to bring order to the troubled state, 30,000 people were reported fleeing, many on foot, to the safety of neighboring states.

The worst violence apparently took place near the town of Nellie, in a rice-growing area 34 miles northeast of Gauhati. There, Lalung tribesmen wielding machetes, bamboo spears and poisoned arrows massacred more than 1,000 Muslim Bengalis. The warriors swarmed through 17 villages along a stretch of the Brahmaputra River. They herded all those who were unable to flee, mostly women and children, toward a larger ambush party waiting by the river, where the Bengalis were brutally slaughtered. In one village, the bodies of children were arranged in two rows in the sunbaked rice fields while survivors dug mass graves in which to bury them.

The outbreak of tribal warfare caught authorities by surprise, although resentment had been building for a long time against Bengali settlers who had immigrated to Assam from the Indian state of West Bengal and Bangladesh. In the turmoil surrounding the election, dissidents practically shut down the state. They forced shops, banks and government offices in the capital to close as part of an 18-day "noncooperation movement." Mobs stormed police stations, blew up bridges, assassinated one candidate, and blocked roads with huge boulders as a warning that anyone who dared pass risked death.

After a tour of the state last week, Prime Minister Gandhi returned to speak before a hushed session of Parliament. "I've seen the agony of Assam," she said. "My heart is filled with sorrow for all those who died." She defended her decision to hold the elections and made a strong appeal for unity to those who had criticized it. "The importance of the country's integrity and independence is higher than any movement, or any of us," she said. "To permit a few their way is to see the country torn apart bit by bit."

Under India's constitution, Mrs. Gandhi had no recourse but to hold elections. After Assamese dissidents brought down the state government, New Delhi imposed direct rule over the state last March. But the constitutional limit on such a "President's rule" is one year, and the March 19 deadline was fast nearing. Mrs. Gandhi said she approached the political opposition for support in passing a constitutional amendment that would extend the deadline but did not receive it. The opposition's cooperation would have been necessary because Mrs. Gandhi's own ruling Congress (I) Party does not have the two-thirds majority in the upper house of Parliament needed to pass amendments.

The government has shown unusual patience in dealing with the Assamese. Spurred on by a militant student group, the dissidents began agitating in 1979 for the expulsion of all "foreigners" from the state. By that they meant the Bengalis, who began coming to the state when the entire region was part of British India and who now make up about 8 million of the state's estimated 20 million population. For two years, the agitators succeeded in virtually paralyzing all official and economic activity in Assam. They forced closure of Assam's oilfields, which supply one-third of India's petroleum needs. The action cost the government nearly $1.5 billion in additional oil imports in 1979 and 1980, and eventually forced it to send in army troops to take over the oilfields. When national elections were held in 1980, the students prevented balloting in twelve of the state's 14 constituencies. The following year the dissidents prevented the national government from taking a census that was intended to help address some of their grievances.

In an effort to defuse the situation and find a resolution to the crisis, New Delhi engaged in negotiations with the student leaders for nearly three years. The government and the students agreed tentatively that anyone who settled in Assam before 1961 could stay. They also agreed to consider that anyone who came after 1971 would be repatriated to other parts of India, a decision that would affect almost 1 million people. But the students were adamant that those who had arrived between 1961 and 1971 be either denied the right to vote or forced to leave, an enormous exercise that could involve 3 million people. Prime Minister Gandhi was equally adamant that all immigrants who arrived before 1971 and had proof of their Indian citizenship had every legal right to live, work and vote in Assam. As she told Parliament, "I asked the students, 'Where are we going to send these people? Where in India? To what country outside India?' " Hopelessly deadlocked, the talks, which were being held in New Delhi, broke down in early January. When the student leaders arrived back in Assam, they were arrested.

Although the leaders were released last week as a conciliatory gesture, it seems unlikely that their movement will soon simmer down. Thus far the dissidents have not called for independence for Assam, but separatism is never very far from the surface. One group even boasts its own flag, a green map of Assam with a mailed fist in the center. Except for a narrow passage, the state is separated from India by Bangladesh. Since ancient times, its ethnic and cultural ties have always been closer to Burma and Tibet than to the rest of India. In tribute to their proud and independent past, the students have taken to calling their movement "the 18th war of independence," a reference to the 17 wars fought by Assam's legendary King Lachit Borphukan, who in the 1600s was the only ruler in the region to repulse Mogul invaders.

Even then, the territory was an exotic ethnic mix that included Indo-Aryan Assamese, Assamese-speaking Hindus in the Brahmaputra valley, dozens of hill tribes of Mongoloid stock, and indigenous plains tribes. Then came successive waves of Bengalis, both Hindus and Muslims, who were first brought in by the British to run the tea plantations and the civil service of the British raj. Bengali immigration intensified during partition in 1947 and again after the creation of Bangladesh. Although its population is one of the fastest growing on the subcontinent, Assam has only 254 people per sq. km. West Bengal, by contrast, has 614, one of the highest population densities in the world.

The Bengalis made enormous contributions to the development of Assam's oil wealth, industry and administration. But the native Assamese came to fear that their language and culture would be submerged by the Bengalis. Moreover, many of the Bengalis are Muslims, while the native Assamese are either Hindus or animists. As a result, the population is now 25% Muslim, a high percentage for an Indian state.

As Parliament considered ways of dealing with what Indian President Giani Zail Singh called "the virus of communalism," the ballots were finally tabulated late last week. The Congress (I) Party won a clear majority, taking 90 out of the 108 seats in the state legislature and four of the five seats for Parliament. That came as no surprise, since the small Communist Party (Marxist) was the only other party contesting the election. Officials said that voting had been heavy (70%) in the Bengali districts, where there was no violence, but that 18 state and seven parliamentary contests had had to be nullified. It was not a victory that anyone could take satisfaction from -- and hardly a happy note on which to welcome the 80 heads of state who will arrive in New Delhi next week for the summit conference of nonaligned nations. -- By Marguerite Johnson. Reported by Dean Brelis/New Delhi

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