After the great Calcutta killings in 1946, the Nellie killings in 1983. Nothing so gruesome has disgraced India since the post-partition riots. This has sent shock waves through the length and breadth of the country. The Indian people have witnessed a lot of violence in this century. But just as Calcutta is indelibly imprinted on their minds, so will Nellie be. Like the Calcutta massacre, the butchery in Nellie is a case apart. The Calcutta killings led to partition and the holocaust that followed. More than anything else, this explosion of communal frenzy and madness convinced the Congress leadership, with the sole exception of Gandhiji, that partition had become unavoidable. Hopefully, Nellie will not set in motion a similar chain of events leading to another disaster. But how can one be sure in the face of the kind of incomprehension and incompetence that the country has been witnessing on the part of those who are in charge of its affairs?
The Nellie tragedy is an outcome of the Union government’s decision to impose elections on Assam. In all probability it would not have taken place if the authorities had not pressed ahead with the ill-conceived move even after daily clashes involving heavy losses of life had made it abundantly clear that the poll would not settle any issue and, indeed, that it would greatly aggravate the situation. It was this realization which had persuaded us on February 11 to modify our previous support for the poll and to call for an urgent review of the decision. What had become evident to us by the first week of February should have been far clearer to the authorities with access to detailed intelligence reports from all parts of Assam. But they went ahead with the elections. The results are there for all to see. Nellie floodlights the horror in Assam.
The Union home minister has reaffirmed the official stand that the government ordered the elections because it had no option in view of the lack of “unanimity among the opposition parties regarding extension of President’s rule through an amendment of the Constitution.” This is at best a half-truth which Mr. PC Sethi should have spared the country. The fact is that the government was half-hearted in its advocacy of the necessary constitutional amendment. Indeed, it dropped the proposal last November after the Janata, the BJP and the Lok Dal had agreed to support the necessary amendment to the Constitution. Why? Surely not because it had any reason, however flimsy, to believe that it was in a position to organize a reasonably fair and free poll. It must have known that a majority of the Assamese-speaking inhabitants of the Brahmaputra valley would boycott it and do all in their power to frustrate it.
This leaves two possible explanations for its subsequent decision to order the elections. First, it did not want to set up a precedent whereby a determined minority could frustrate the democratic process. Secondly, it felt that the Congress (I) could come to power in Gauhati on the strength of the support of the ethnic minorities. The first explanation is weak, for if (God forbid) an Assam-like situation develops, say in Punjab, it is inconceivable that New Delhi would attempt to organize a poll there. So that leaves the second explanation in the field. To put it mildly, it does not speak well of those who engage in such calculations. Mr. CM Stephen’s statement in Parliament on Monday indicates that such calculations were in fact made. He is quoted by UNI as having said that “if the elections had not been held … the life and property of millions of minorities and tribals would also have been in danger.”
So instead of expiation we get half-truths (Sethi) and fantastic nonsense (Stephen). This makes it extremely difficult to believe that the government will see reason even at this late stage. But it must not pile folly upon folly and willfully assist the forces of chaos, anarchy and disintegration that are abroad in the whole of the north-east. It must recognise that the “elections” have been a farce, that a legislature “elected” in this manner will lack legitimacy and that a “government” produced by such a “legislature” will be an insult to the Assamese-speaking people. It must, therefore, annul the “poll” and enact the necessary constitutional provisions which can enable it to keep the state under President’s rule for so long as it takes to find satisfactory solutions (there can be no one solution) to its many problems. There can be little doubt that most opposition parties will go along with the government on such a move.
This is not to absolve the AASU and the AAGSP of their share of the responsibility for today’s horrific climate. But that can, in the circumstances, merely render unfair a call for the resignation of those who have enacted the folly of holding “elections” in Assam. It cannot exonerate them of the charges of chicanery, incompetence or worse.