The Nellie Massacre of 1983: Agency of Rioters / Makiko Kimura

1. Introduction;
2. How to interrupt "Riots": Theories on collective violence and the question of agency in contemporary south asia;
3. Locating the antiforeigner movement in the context of assamese nationalism;
4. Election boycott and the Nellie incident;
5. Agency of the rioters: A study of decision making in the nellie massacre;
6. Memories of the massacre;
7. Conclusion.

The Nellie incident, involving the massacre of about 2,00 Muslim villagers, took place during the antiforeigner movement in Assam, in order to drive out illegal Bangladeshi and Nepali immigrants. Unlikely the communal "riots" in the other parts of India from 1980's to 2000s, this was an incident which tok place in rural areas. The attackers were part of the indigenous tribal population, and Assamese Hindus of lower strata.
The Nellie Massacre of 1983 is an attempt to search for clues from the narratives of attackers and survivors of the incident, which are fragmented and sometimes contradictory to each other. The key focus of the book is on the local decision-making processes of the riot agents in deciding to use collective violence against another group/community/ethnicity especially in the context or rural India.
By using the case study of the Nellie Massacre, the author attempts to argue that rioters had their own agency and decision-making power, and were not mere puppets of ideology and structural causes. Instead, they interpreted the circumstances in their own way and decided to riot.