I remember the summer of 1983 in Sopore more vividly than many other seasons of my childhood. Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly elections were nearing. I was returning from school, and Iqbal Park near the town centre was dense with people, and electric with anticipation.
Sopore was never immune to rhetoric and fiery speeches. It had heard speeches for decades, but that afternoon I sensed something different.
A young lawyer, Muzaffar Hussain Baig, stood on stage, not yet the prominent political face he would one day become, holding up centre-spread magazine for everyone to see. They were from Sunday and India Today splashed with photographs of bodies scattered across Assam’s paddy fields, small children in shirts still buttoned, women lying where they had run, cradles amid trampled rice stems.
The massacre at Nellie, barely three months old, had travelled 3,000 kilometres and arrived in Kashmir as a political metaphor and warning. The crowd, first silent, then uneasy, began to shift like something had cracked open, recognising a tragedy elsewhere as a mirror of own vulnerability.
What began as Baig’s provocation soon became a valley-wide refrain. Jamaat-e-Islami leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani immediately adopted the Nellie photographs as a political symbol, raising a slogan that would dominate rally grounds.
"Yena Yete Banawni Assam?" (What if this place becomes another Assam?)
Within weeks, the slogan moved beyond Jamaat ranks. The National Conference took it up as well. Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah sharpened it directly at Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the Congress, accusing New Delhi of indifference to Muslim life, whether in the Brahmaputra plains or in the Kashmir Valley. Nellie entered Kashmir not as news, but as a battleground.
Four decades later, that massacre has returned as a state record.
The Assam government recently tabled the Tewary Commission Report on the 1983 Assam Disturbances. The report submitted in May 1984 by retired IAS officer T.P. Tewary is no longer speculation or folklore. It is now public. It is yellowed, brittle at the edges, typed on softening paper, but its contents lacerate with gory tales.
The findings are horrifying:
"A total of 2,072 persons were killed in a span of little more than four hours." — Tewary Report, Vol. I, p. 312
Survivors have long insisted that the number was higher. It was 10,000 by local memory, with hundreds never counted because whole households disappeared and no one remained to record their deaths. But even within the limits of official enumeration, 2,072 people died between sunrise and late morning on February 18, 1983. Most were Bengali-origin Muslims who had lived in those villages for generations.
The report identifies 14 affected clusters across Nagaon district, including Alisinga, Khulapathar, Basundhari, Bugduba Beel, Bugduba Habi, Borjola, Butuni, Dongabori, Indurmari, Mati Parbat, Muladhari, Silbheta, Borburi, and Nellie itself, the name that would become shorthand for unfathomable violence.
When I later visited those villages as a journalist, years after that Sopore evening, survivors described a morning of sound and smoke.
"Whistles first," an old woman in Alisinga told me. "Then torchlight blinked from the riverside. Then they came." The report confirms it.
"Attackers approached from multiple directions, armed with daos, spears, firearms, and inflammables. Escape routes were blocked." — Tewary Report, Vol. II, p. 144
This was not frenzy. It was planned and premeditated.
Nellie Stopped Breathing
Just before daybreak, fog still hugging paddy fields, coordinated mobs encircled Muslim hamlets. They carried daos, spears, bamboo poles, kerosene tins, and homemade guns. They raided from riverside, from Barhampur road, through banana groves, along embankments. The report describes "whistle signals" marking advance and retreat, and "house markings observed before attack" (p. 157).
Women were dragged out. Infants were slashed. Entire huts were locked and set alight. Witness statements included in the report speak of pregnant women disembowelled, children shot in paddy strips when they tried to flee, and babies thrown into ponds.
"In some villages, no survivor above age 10 remained alive." — Tewary Report, Appendix C, Statistical Table 4
Bodies lay like grain after harvest. The river ran red.
Police deployment was insufficient despite prior intelligence warnings. Election officials knew the region was volatile. Requests for reinforcements were recorded. Detentions were made, but not enough to neutralise the mob build-up. On the day of the killings, police posts remained unmanned or overwhelmed.
By the time security forces reached Nellie, villages were ash fields, bodies piled near riverbanks, and survivors sat stunned, speechless, clutching what was left, mostly children too young to explain what they had seen.
Government convoys transported corpses on tractors and bamboo stretchers. Lists of the missing were drawn. Compensation announcements were made. Relief camps were formed.
The Tewary Commission avoids direct indictment of political office-bearers, but it leaves little room for ambiguity. It lists the perpetrators as:
Organised Assamese nationalist groups participating in anti-foreigner agitation
Local leadership is involved in route planning and mobilisation
Villagers aligned with the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and All Assam Gana Parishad (AAGP) campaigns
Units operating with knowledge of State paralysis
Mob formations resembling military division — scouts, signallers, torch-units, chokepoint guards
"The formation of attacking groups suggests advance preparation and structured deployment." — Tewary Report, Vol. I, p. 221
The State filed 688 FIRs. Hundreds of names were recorded. 2,091 witnesses deposed, including women who lost every member of their family. Yet no one was ever convicted.
After the Assam Accord of 1985, almost all cases were quietly withdrawn to facilitate peace. The report states bluntly:
"The withdrawal of criminal proceedings under political compulsion extinguished the possibility of legal closure." — Tewary Report, Conclusion, p. 406
Justice was abandoned not for lack of evidence, but for convenience.
Villages rebuilt roofs. Assam moved ahead. The massacre remained only in photographs and in the slogans that children like me heard in Sopore: Yena Yete Banawni Assam?
With the report finally tabled, Assam must confront its own document —not recollection, but official testimony of a planned slaughter.
Structural reasons Behind Nellie
The Commission lists five main reasons as the trigger. These include:
1. Demographic resentment: Migration encouraged under British rule created deep anxiety about land and voting power. Bengali Muslims became targets of existential fear.
"Perception of demographic invasion transformed political discourse into survival rhetoric." — p. 93
2. Land, identity, and scarcity: Agricultural competition sharpened boundaries between “indigenous” and “settler.” Identity hardened into exclusion.
3. The 1983 election: Polling continued despite agitation and warnings. The ballot became a pretext for blood.
"Conduct of elections without adequate security infrastructure precipitated the incident." — p. 178
4. Misinformation as an accelerant: Rumours spread that Bengali Muslims planned to seize Assamese land and voting power, which was a lie with lethal consequences.
5. Total State absence: Warnings were ignored. Deployment was insufficient, and response was delayed.
"State machinery failed physically and morally." — p. 259
From Nellie to Kashmir
When Baig raised those photos in Sopore, when Geelani turned them into a slogan, when Farooq Abdullah hurled them back at the Congress, Nellie was not just news. It was a metaphor. It was a valley warning itself.
Assam was not far away. It was a possibility.
The 1983 assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir deepened the political divide along religious lines. In the aftermath of the Nellie massacre, Indira Gandhi campaigned forcefully in the Jammu region, warning of an alleged “Muslim influx” that could alter its demographic balance. She repeatedly referred to the Resettlement Bill passed by the National Conference, which allowed those who had migrated to Pakistan before 1954 to return and reclaim property.
The strategy worked. Congress swept the Hindu-dominated constituencies, winning 26 seats, while the National Conference secured 46, largely from Muslim-majority areas. The result marked a turning point. The 1983 election became a template for the political polarisation that would define Jammu and Kashmir in the decades that followed.
The massacre shaped campaigning. It shaped memory. It shaped distrust. Four decades later, Nellie returns as a confession by the state.
The report does something rare in Indian statecraft. It tells the truth long after the truth became inconvenient.
Had those responsible for the massacre of Nellie been punished, the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom would not have happened, and if justice had been delivered quickly to those responsible for the anti-Sikh massacre, the 2002 Gujarat riots would not have taken place.
(This news article has been updated with a change in the headline and some corrections in the text.)
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