Title: 25 Years On…Nellie Still Haunts
Author: Hemendra Narayan
Contact: hemennarayan@gmail.com
Price: Rs. 80
Year: 2008
We Indians have a very poor sense of history. We have not yet completely understood the importance of documentation and investigation. It is no surprise then that most of events and incidents of life are simply forgotten. One can argue that forgetting is one way of dealing with events but this leads to new interpretations later on with dangerous consequences. We thank British historian for finding and preserving history of India but lot of our conflicts of today – religious, linguistic, regional, caste- can be traced to the problem they created by their look at India through Western eyes.
Journalist Hemendara Narayan witnessed the Nellie massacre of February 18th, 1983. He saw the death of hundreds if not thousands killed in a matter of hours. The memory of dead and those who survived haunted him for years and after 25 years he prepared this booklet to preserve the memory for future. This booklet has his original story that he filed hours after this gruesome incident. He takes us along in the horrible journey where we find mobs of people hunting down poor inhabitants of villages in and around Nellie.
As the men make a desperate dash to safety, women, children, and elderly are killed. It is a miracle that anyone is able to survive from this brutal attack on humanity. Narayan revisits this tragedy by recalling some of the faces that he remembers surviving – a women in green sari and a little boy who get slapped by a machete wielding murderer.
After independence of India, this is the first such incidence of this nature where thousands were killed and yet no one has been punished for this crime. Survivors never got justice; many continue to live in camps and only got Rs. 5000 in compensation.
This booklet has official documents and memorandum from the Lalungs- those who killed Bengali speaking Muslims- thus providing us with everyone’s version of the event including the government. Muslim voices can be heard only in the news reports, as none of their memoranda or statements has been included.
Book could have been made more useful by adding more documents, photographs, and interviews with survivors and attackers to reconstruct the event. Still, this is a good attempt in keeping the memories of Nelli alive so that we have accurate records for future.
Also read TwoCircles.net series on Nellie :
Very painful and shocking. After 20 years Gujarat also will become another history and someone will tell that story to the next generation.
Nellie is a heart wrenching story.
Yet, it was only a massacre. Gujarat went further ahead. Women were raped and with their families, burned alive.
The fact that the murderers and perpetrators still roam free is a blot on us as a nation and shame on the sense of conscience of the politicians.
Unless the contentious issue of illegal immigration is addressed, we will never be able to solve the problem. We have to keep zero tolerance against riots, but at the same time aggressively address the underlying causes. When people lose faith in the government, they take the law into their own hands.
Across Mumbai and Delhi now the newest level of immigration is from the Bangladeshis. To get better acceptance in the community they even change their names into Hindu ones. They work predominantly as sweepers, domestic help and are exploited by local govt, sweepers who outsource their work to them and do not pay them for their work. They are also harassed by cops who know that this is a vulnerable community due to the double whammy of being minorities and illegal immigrants. Due to zero education opportunities, these sections have no sense of family planning or educating their kids. This will gradually emerge as a big burden later on. The demographics in the state of Assam at least has been severely impacted, but still some political parties in pursuance of vote banks deliberately block any attempts to stop illegal immigration. While illegal immigration is recognized as a major problem in the US where it’s far lesser, the deceit of political parties in India is astounding.
India is already an over populated country and it will be difficult to manage this extra pressure. When local populations get increasingly disenchanted, we will get many more separatist movements.
Sudie,
What you have said may hold true for Nellie. It does not hold true for post Babri masjid riots or the Gujarat riots.
As events in Karnataka and Orissa testify, the saffron brigade is getting increasingly brutal. What is sad is that many educated people find nothing wrong with it.
Let us understand that rioting is as much an act of terror as gunning down people.
Just because of small fringe element being involved in such acts we cannot label all hindu religion parties as terrorists. Hinduism as gleaned from the vedas/shaastras/puranas does not support these acts…! It supports only a genuine struggle against oppression! Just like the green brigade or the white brigade the saffron brigade has some bad elements in them. But this is only a lunatic fringe and they are insignificant.