Assam violence: old wounds, new plans and peace hypocrisy On the
morning of February 18, 1983, Assam witnessed one of the
bloodiest massacres of independent India. In a horrific mob
attack, babies, women and men were hacked to death in a rural
area called Nellie, a few hours from Guwahati. Officially, the
number of dead was put at anything between 600 and 1,600. Now,
activists point out that the number killed is anything between
2,200 and 3,000. The numbers might be conflicting. What is not
is the brutality and the cold-blooded manner with which eyes
were gorged out, limbs chopped off, heads severed, bodies
punctured with spears, people killed with bows and arrows,
swords and houses set on fire. The mutilated bodies were left in
the paddy fields. Few survived and some of the ones who did,
unable to withstand the shock, even lost their speech, went into
deep trauma. If one goes through newspaper archives, the horror
is documented in photographs, the dead bodies lined up for mass
burial. One photograph that rem