Word: assam
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...religions, tribes, languages and circumstances. Fully 83% of India's population is Hindu; 11% is Muslim, 2.6% is Christian, and the remaining 3.4% is divided among Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and others. Over the past year there have been riots or incipient rebellions in places as scattered as Assam in the northeast, Kashmir and Punjab in the north, and Maharashtra in the west. Only a month ago rioting broke out between Hindus and Muslims in the shantytowns around Bombay, leaving 258 dead. The Assamese are upset about the influx of refugees from West Bengal and neighboring Bangladesh. Every tribe...
Deep scars remain. More than 3,000 people died last year when a wave of killing surged over the northeastern state of Assam. Last week Sikh gunmen killed 35 people, many of them Hindus, in separate incidents, bringing to more than 200 the number of victims in the northwestern state of Punjab over the past four months. Government officials are concerned because such violence is on the rise. Said a senior civil servant in New Delhi last week: "Communal clashes are almost becoming a form of alternate government in our country, and what makes it worse is that they strike...
...20th century has been one of enormous tribal slaughter, much of it distant from the world's eyes. As many as 200,000 Tutsi and Hutu tribesmen massacred one another during tribal warfare in Burundi in the early 1970s, for example. Some 3,000 Bengalis were murdered in Assam, India, last February. More than 100,000 Iranians and Iraqis have been killed in their war, which is now three years old. And each slaughter enforces upon the survivors in the tribe the imperative to take revenge...
...dare we expect an Indian inquiry into last week's killing of 1,000 people in Assam...
...Bengalis made enormous contributions to the development of Assam's oil wealth, industry and administration. But the native Assamese came to fear that their language and culture would be submerged by the Bengalis. Moreover, many of the Bengalis are Muslims, while the native Assamese are either Hindus or animists. As a result, the population is now 25% Muslim, a high percentage for an Indian state...