Verse Against Violence: A Comparative Study of Miya Protest Poetry and Assamese Literary Responses to the Nellie Massacre

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The Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 was not a discrete political event that ended with independence; as Vazira Zamindar argues, it remains an ongoing process that continues to shape South Asian political life. Its aftermath profoundly affected Assam—understood here not as a homogeneous “North-East,” but as a region marked by overlapping struggles over religion, language, and belonging. The post-Partition drive to construct a viable, homogeneous Assamese nationality intensified tensions between ethnic Assamese, indigenous tribal communities, and Bengali Muslim residents. Dutta (2012) characterises post-Partition violence in Assam as continuous, sporadic, and unresolved rather than as a single event. The 1983 Nellie massacre, in which over two thousand Bengali Muslims were killed across fourteen villages in Nagaon district, exemplifies this enduring violence and has been described as India’s first organised political massacre. This paper comparatively examines literary responses to Nellie in Miya protest poetry—by Hafiz Ahmad, Kabir Ahmad, and the Char-Chapori Sahitya Parishad—and in Assamese writing, notably Diganta Sharma’s work. It asks how each corpus frames communal responsibility, victimhood, and belonging during and after the massacre. Drawing on fiction, oral testimonies, and academic literature, the study addresses the relative scarcity of scholarship on Nellie. It further argues that these literary responses functioned as vehicles for identity formation, delineating who could be recognised as “Assamese” and who was constructed as an outsider.