India: The Agony of Assam

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.