A lifetime is much too short to forget.

On February 18, 1983, in the genocidal massacre organised in Nellie just 40 kilometres from Guwahati, at least 2,191 Muslim settlers of Bengali origin were slaughtered, leaving 370 children orphaned and their homes in 16 villages destroyed.

It is instructive that it took an unconscionable 42 years for the report of the judicial commission appointed to investigate this massacre to finally be tabled in the Assam state assembly. This protracted delay is not random: it is integral to a conscious state project to erase memories and deny accountability for the pitiless crimes of the mass slaughter of 1983.

When news reached me of the belated tabling of the judicial commission report in the state assembly of one of free India's most brutal but forgotten massacres, it brought back memories of my travel to Nellie on the 25th anniversary of the massacre in 2008. I searched for the notes I had taken of what the survivors had told me then. I had also recorded these in an essay that I wrote for The Hindu shortly after.

In 2008, to commemorate 25 years of the tragic massacre, the survivors of Nellie had invited me to sit with them in their distant, impoverished corner of the country, as they recalled the agony of the events that had unfolded a quarter-century earlier.

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We had gathered in the soft sunshine of early winter in a large open courtyard. A large crowd quickly gathered: older men with checked lungis and beards could easily be distinguished as the people of East-Bengali Muslim origin. The women and younger men were dressed like anyone from an Assamese village. There were the initial courtesies of traditional welcome, as they offered us customary white Assamese scarves with exquisite red embroidery.

Then, they spoke. And as they did, it was evident to me that no wounds had healed. How could they have, when the families of the survivors had long given up any hope of justice in their lifetime?

Their words retained an urgency – as though they had only very recently suffered the unspeakable cruelties that they were testifying to, not 25 years earlier. The bodies of many present on that day were twisted, bowed and bent by the injuries they suffered from the assaults by machetes and daggers. Some pulled up their clothes, exposing the frightening scars of attacks suffered a generation earlier.

Hearing their testimonies, all of us who had gathered to listen – officials, academics, social workers and others – were gutted and shamed by the enormity and indeed the immediacy of their suffering.

Senior officials of the state government, who accompanied me, had gently dissuaded me from that visit, questioning the wisdom of reopening wounds of painful events from such a distant past. People have moved on long ago, they assured me. What purpose, then, would our visit to Nellie serve? It would only revive memories that have long been buried. The same advice was offered by many non-official friends who worked in development organisations in the state. They said that the visit would stir up issues that were too bitterly contested in the region.

But the survivors persisted in their resolve – they wanted to be heard. It was impossible for me to refuse them. I have for long felt convinced that the rest of us have the right to “move on” after a massacre only when the survivors are able to heal and move on.

Hazara Khatun, with scars on her face of a dagger attack that she survived in 1983, sat on the ground before us and pointed at her empty lap. "I was cradling my child here," she said in a low voice. "They chopped him in two, down the middle."

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A widow, Alekjaan Biwi, was far less calm. Her body revealed the insufficient mending from the attacks of 25 years ago, and we all saw that she had lost her psychological equilibrium. Eleven members of her family were slaughtered in the massacre, and she acted out for us how the mob had attacked them, how she had cowered and hidden herself, how she was discovered, attacked and left wounded, and how she survived even though scarred and broken, in body and soul, for life.

"I have no one in the world," she concluded quietly.

In his early thirties, Mohammed Monoruddin began to cry inconsolably as soon as he sat before us. "My brothers, sisters were all killed, hacked into pieces," he said, as he recalled that day:

"I was seven years old then. I saw my parents slaughtered in front of me. I saw another woman being killed and her child snatched from her hands and thrown into fire. I wept in terror all day. The CRPF [Central Reserve Police Force] came in the evening and rescued me. Later, we came to know that our house had been torched. Nothing was left. All our belongings and stores of rice were gone in the fire. My elder brother, who was in Nagaon, raised me. But I feel so lonely."

Many others spoke of their profound loneliness. Noon Nahar Begum was 10 years old, and when the killings began, she tried to run away but was caught and badly wounded by her attackers. She had to be hospitalised for two months, and her mother and four siblings were murdered. "They were butchered here in the place where we are standing today," she said, adding, "I have found no peace of mind for the last 25 years. I need justice for my peace. Justice is important because it was such a terrible crime. I feel lonely and miss my family…"

Babool Ahmad, a tailor today, was two years old when he lost his parents in the massacre. He was brought up by his grandparents, whereas his sisters were raised in an SOS Children's Village.

And so the stories flowed, like a deluge of muddied waters of grief – long unaddressed and denied – gushing out from a breached dam.

The forgotten massacre in Nellie in 1983 established a bloody trail of open state complicity in repeated traumatic bouts of ethnic cleansing and massacres, both in Assam and in the rest of India. It was followed by similar state-enabled massacres, in Delhi in 1984, Bhagalpur in 1989, Mumbai in 1993, which climaxed in Gujarat in 2002.

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The government gave the survivors of Nellie as little as Rs 5,000 compensation for each death, which contrasts, for instance, against the Rs 7 to 10 lakh for the survivors of the Sikh carnage, allocated a year later, in 1984. Even that was a pittance, compared to what a humane democratic state must feel bound to offer as reparation for those who have suffered the devastation of a massacre.

Six hundred and eighty-eight criminal cases were filed in connection with the Nellie organised massacre and, of these, 310 cases were charge-sheeted. The remaining 378 cases were closed due to police claims of "lack of evidence". But all 310 charge-sheeted cases were also dropped by the Asom Gana Parishad government as part of the Assam Accord.

Therefore, not a single person has even had to face trial for the gruesome massacre. This is the worst record of failures of criminal justice in any incident of communal carnage after Independence.

The record of justice for the lives extinguished in other major communal massacres – Delhi, Bhagalpur, Mumbai, Gujarat, Kandhamal and Muzaffarnagar – and caste massacres – Kilvenmani, Dehuli, Karamchedu, Tsunduru and Khairlinji – has also been dismal.

Some lives are clearly deemed by the state of little worth compared to others.
But even in this disgraceful roll-call of shameful impunity for hate massacres, Nellie is the worst. I repeat: not a single person has been punished, or even faced trial for one of the most gruesome communal massacres that free India has witnessed.

Recalling again today the tears and cries of the survivors of the Nellie massacre, I wonder when the day will come when our rage and our compassion compel our police and courts to secure justice to the survivors of each of these mass tragedies?

When, indeed, will we realise that we can be safe only by standing – and caring – together?

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