Assam tabled two Nellie reports. Why this Japanese scholar believes none address question of justice

Last month, two reports were tabled in the Assam Assembly on the Nellie massacre – one of the largest mass killings in post-independent India.

Both the reports arrived at different conclusions.

The Tewary Commission, which had been set up by the Congress state government, said that the Indira Gandhi government’s decision to hold Assembly elections in Assam at the peak of an anti-foreigners’ movement was not to blame for the violence in 1983.

In February that year, 1,800 Bengali Muslims were massacred in Assam’s Morigaon district days after Assembly elections were held under President’s rule. No one has been punished for the killings in all these years.

A different narrative was put forward by a second commission formed by Mukti Jujaru Sanmilan and organisations spearheading the Assam movement, which mobilised people against so-called illegal migrants. The Justice (retired) TU Mehta Commission ascribed the violence squarely on the imposition of the elections against the wishes of the people.

The Himanta Biswa Sarma government’s decision to table the “unofficial” Mehta Commission findings has revived the narrative about the anxiety over “illegal immigrants” ahead of the Assembly election.

But, as the Japanese scholar Makiko Kimura pointed out, neither report addresses the question of justice for the dead.

Kimura wrote The Nellie Massacre of 1983: Agency of Rioters (2013), one of the few,...

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