‘Nellie massacre was result of land dispute’: Former bureaucrat Jatin Hazarika

The Nellie massacre of 1983 that left over 3,000 people dead was the result of a land dispute between indigenous tribals and immigrant Muslims, according to a memoir written by a former bureaucrat who had worked with six CMs of Assam.

“Though this (Nellie) incident was immediately linked with the anti-election agitation (which was part of the anti-migrants agitation led by AASU), it was in fact the result of a land dispute between local tribal people and immigrant Muslims,” Jatin Hazarika, who served as home secretary of Assam in the 1980s, writes in Shadow Behind the Throne: My Tryst with the Assam Administration.

Referring to Tiwary panel findings into the massacre, he says that land grabbing and encroachments on reserves and wastelands were also responsible for social tensions.