GUWAHATI: Successive govts in Assam allowed the state’s “land and identity crisis” to fester for four decades while they kept under wraps a report that had flagged it as a ticking time bomb that led to the 1983 Nellie massacre, among other disturbances.The Tribhuvan Prasad Tewary Commission, tasked by the then Congress govt to investigate the Jan-April 1983 cycle of violence accompanying the anti-foreigner movement of the time, made multiple recommendations on curbing illegal immigration, regulating land transfer, evicting infiltrators, defining “Assamese” identity, and safeguarding it.The first AGP ministry tabled the report in the assembly in 1987, but its contents were never revealed, much less discussed for implementation. The BJP-led govt made the report public this week, 41 years after it was signed, sealed and delivered.Contrary to decades of narratives framing the disturbances of 1983 as communal, the Tewary report notes that any such interpretation would be “a very superficial view”. It also points out that “all sections of society suffered as a result of the senseless violence” and that the victims “were not confined to one religious, ethnic or linguistic group”.“Many perceptive witnesses have gone into this historical aspect and interpreted the disturbances as clashes of economic interests. In many cases, they arose out of land disputes,” the former judge writes, describing illegal occupation of land by immigrants as “one of the greatest irritants” for the Assamese people.“Land has been the main attraction for illegal immigrants,” the report says, seeking to drive home the point that fears of the indigenous population being overrun were “not imaginary”.The report cites census figures and testimonies of responsible witnesses, including erstwhile British administrators and census commissioners “who did not suffer either from pride or prejudice, nor had any personal or group interest in the matter”.Tewary notes in the 1984 report that “ejectment of encroachment stopped in 1979”. He mentions that infiltrator detection and encroacher removal are “inseparably linked”, suggesting that both must be carried out by a multi-disciplinary task force led by magistrates and backed by armed police rather than leaving the task to junior officials.The report warns that immovable property should not be transferred into the hands of non-Assamese, recommending “reasonable restrictions” even on Indian citizens from outside the state. “While defining who is an Assamese for this purpose, a reference to the National Register of Citizens or a minimum period of domicile in Assam or/and such other conditions, as might be found reasonable, may be examined.”On immigrants, the report distinguishes between two categories – refugees fleeing persecution in erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), and those who migrated primarily in search of land and economic opportunities.“Those who have been victims of persecution deserve all sympathy and support which has been the consistent national policy. Some of them have already been admitted as Indian citizens and granted citizenship certificates. The remaining should be deemed to be the citizens of India,” the report says.This distinction between migrants from Bangladesh is similar to what was outlined later in CAA.
