Word: assam
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...since the carnage that accompanied the breakaway of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971 had the subcontinent seen such ghastly scenes of horror. After four years of festering protest and a month of mounting violence, India's oil-rich state of Assam exploded in a paroxysm of communal and religious hatred. In the turbulence touched off by opposition to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's decision to hold state elections, some 3,000 people were believed to have been killed, and Indian officials said that 100,000 others had been left homeless by rampaging arsonists who burned entire villages...
...outbreak of tribal warfare caught authorities by surprise, although resentment had been building for a long time against Bengali settlers who had immigrated to Assam from the Indian state of West Bengal and Bangladesh. In the turmoil surrounding the election, dissidents practically shut down the state. They forced shops, banks and government offices in the capital to close as part of an 18-day "noncooperation movement." Mobs stormed police stations, blew up bridges, assassinated one candidate, and blocked roads with huge boulders as a warning that anyone who dared pass risked death...
...power in 1980. It fared particularly badly last month in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, which had supported the Congress Party since India became independent in 1947. More elections were scheduled in the Union Territory of Delhi last weekend and in the troubled northeastern state of Assam next week. Whatever the outcome of these contests, Mrs. Gandhi will have to work hard to rebuild her party in time for the 1985 national elections, when she hopes to win an unprecedented fifth term as Prime Minister...
Nowhere is regionalism more explosive than in Assam, where voters are angry about the wave of nearly 4 million refugees who have entered that state illegally from Bangladesh in the past decade. What makes the Assamese especially bitter is that the refugees, who are grateful to have been given sanctuary in India and thus are overwhelmingly pro-Gandhi, are being allowed by the government to vote in next week's elections. As a result, all the opposition parties in Assam, including the Marxists, are boycotting the elections, thereby assuring a Congress Party victory. To halt a surge of election...
...problems. For the first five months after her election, she was preoccupied with consolidating the power of her Congress Party (I) (standing for Indira), calling for elections in nine states and defeating the opposition in all but one. Five of India's 22 states remain in opposition hands; Assam is ruled directly by New Delhi because the state was unable to form a government...