Shekhar Gupta’s recent article in the First Person/Second Draft series in ThePrint, on the Nellie massacre of 18-19 February 1983, took me back to my young days as a Flight Lieutenant posted at Gauhati and having been part of the assembly election process, albeit in a small way. And as we approach the commemoration of four decades of those hideous days of Assam elections, and ‘Nellie’ in particular, I am reminded of some peculiar happenings that I witnessed, doing tasks of the Election Commission and the civil administration in our Chetak helicopter.
We (my wife, daughter and I) reached Gauhati on posting from a peaceful Jammu in May 1982 and were immediately witness to the civil disobedience movement that was ongoing against the ‘foreigners’ – euphemism for Bengali settlers in the Assam Valley. While we service personnel were not, in any way, involved in any government activity vis-à-vis the agitation, our daily life was certainly affected.
‘Indians go back’
Due to the frequent rail and road blockades, essential items were in short supply and the Indian Air Force (IAF) had to resort to bringing in vegetables, rice, sugar and salt in aircraft for air force stations in the Northeast. Power-cuts were normal occurrences, night bandhs (curfew) were frequent and one was witness to the hideous sight of hundreds of people carrying mashals (flaming torch) moving on the pitch-dark road outside our air force campus shouting “Indians go back, go back go back.” Yes, that was the ‘environment’ in which elections were ordered, and held. Some days, while flying, we would see smoke rising from villages and the news filtered in that the Nellie massacre had happened on 18-19 February, about which Shekhar Gupta has narrated in his article.
Local government officials had refused to conduct elections and so government officials from across the country were flown in to supervise polling booths. I remember receiving a group that had descended from an Avro aircraft at our tarmac. As I noted down their names and addresses, one of the disoriented arrivals asked me, “Sir, where are we?” At another time, on landing at a helipad close to Goalpara, I saw a police constable wearing the insignia of Madhya Pradesh’s Special Armed Force. Being from Bhopal myself, I started talking to him; he opened up and said that he had been moved to Punjab (which had started simmering as well in 1983) from his base in Madhya Pradesh and then to Assam at short notices; and then with a sad face he added he had no idea of when he would go back.
It’s not that only lowly placed officials had a sad face. The elections happened between 14 and 20 February 1983 and on 26 February we were tasked to carry three persons, who had to meet the Governor, from Gauhati to Shillong and back. When they arrived at the tarmac, I recognised Hiteswar Saikia, the elected leader of the Congress party which had won the violence-marred elections; the other two had arrived from Delhi that morning. The Chetak helicopter has one cushioned seat in front and four metal ones at the back. Who would sit in the front VIP seat appeared to be a no-brainer as one of the Delhiites just went and occupied it with an air of authority. We landed at Shillong and the three pushed off in a cavalcade of cars. On their return from the meeting, the question of who would sit in front arose. After much ‘you please sir,’ ‘nahin aap bathiye,’ the Delhiites told Saikia with a very subservient look, “Sir, you are now CM-designate, you please sit!” And so it was and we started for Gauhati; the role-reversal was astonishing.
Also read: Bloodstained road to Nellie: Trail of destruction I saw after the 1983 massacre in Assam
A reluctant Chief Minister?
But the story starts now. After take-off, we encountered bad weather and returned to Shillong. It was pouring cats and dogs and the passengers dived into a white Ambassador car that took them to the VIP cottage 50 metres away; the two Delhiites moved in to the cottage but Saikia refused to do so. For the next 45 minutes, while the Delhi residents snacked on tea and pakoras, Saikia sat alone in the car, a forlorn brooding figure – perhaps mulling over what lay ahead for him and his state. The election had registered only 32% voting due to the boycott calls and threat of violence and his party had won 52% of those votes; that practically made him a chief minister with only a 16% franchise. Credit to him, he pulled the state back from the abyss though Assam was to see still more violence before recovering.
There was one more ‘Assamese’ I remember distinctly. The violence continued unabated and on 10 March we landed at Mangaldai, another place of massive bloodshed. As we were waiting for Chief Minister Saikia to come, a smart-looking Sikh police officer walked up and started talking. Naturally, we enquired whether the situation would improve. He looked around to ensure that no one was listening and said that just that morning, they had recovered a document that pointed to the formation of the United Liberation Front of Assam; “it’s only going to get worse,” he said, and walked off. His name tab read KPS Gill, about whom the country would hear much more in the coming years as the police chief who broke the back of the militancy in Punjab.
Did we meet Shekhar Gupta in Assam, as he was on the prowl too there? No, we didn’t but it is to the credit of the print media that the horrors of Nellie, Mangaldai and other places were highlighted. Many political machinations must have taken place and the Assam Accord was signed on 15 August 1985, which started the process of putting the state back on the path of reconciliation; it was indeed a long haul even then. In our multicultural, multilingual and multi-religious polity, it is imperative that we have a free and vibrant press; the alternative would be quite a bleak prospect to even think about.
One looks forward to more of Shekhar Gupta’s First Person/Second Drafts to revive old memories. Keep them coming, sir!
The author is a retired Air Vice Marshal who delves in matters of national security and air power issues. He tweets @BahadurManmohan. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)