In Bastar, the Chhattisgarh Police and the Indian Air Force are said to be preparing for air attacks “in retaliation” for Maoist strikes on helicopters. According to an Indian Express report, there have been choppers over Bijapur, engaged in strafing exercises. But Chief Minister Raman Singh denies any such plan and the IAF has repeatedly said it will never resort to air strikes on its “own people”.


Yet the air force has opened fire on its own people before. In Aizawl in 1966, during an offensive that was to end an insurgency but gave rise to another two decades of violence. Nearly half a century ago, the incident was wrapped in the same secrecy and doublespeak, until it died out of the public discourse. It is only in the 2000s that writers and journalists have started to talk about the planes over Aizawl. Former insurgents, once imprisoned and tortured by the army, have also come out with their accounts of the unrest in the Mizo Hills and the crackdown that followed. But memories of the air raid are undercut by official history, and some aspects of Aizawl 1966 are still cloudy.


 When the bamboo flowered


In 1959, the bamboo bloomed in the Mizo Hills, drawing out armies of rats. As the infestation spread into the surrounding crop land, a famine broke out. The Mizos have a name for it, Mautam, or bamboo death, which occurs when the plant flowers, once in 48 years. The Mautam of 1959 brought more than just rats to the surface.


After Independence, the Mizo hills had become a reluctant part of Assam, though governed by their own district council and placed under the Sixth Schedule. The Mizo Union, the first political party representing Mizo interests, opted to merge the Hills with the Indian Union, with the caveat that they could opt out of it in ten years, if they chose. But soon afterwards, Assamese politicians began to speak of removing special provisions for the Mizos.


In The Mizo Uprising, JV Hluna and Rini Tochhawng describe how poor governance by the district council and the lack of basic services sharpened the urge for self-determination. In 1959, the government was shown up as callous and incompetent once more, and the Mizo Anti-Famine Organisation was formed. It morphed into the Mizo National Front, led by Pu Laldenga and demanding a sovereign Mizo state. Denied by the Indian government, it turned violent.


 Storming the bastions


On the night of February 28, 1966, the MNF launched Operation Jericho, simultaneous attacks on Assam Rifles garrisons in Aizawl and Lunglei. They hoisted the MNF flag at the Assam Rifles headquarters in Aizawl. Some insurgents also looted the Aizawl treasury, making off with the sum of Rs 350. The next day, rebel troops also took Vairengte, Kolasib, Champhei and a few other villages. Hluna and Tochhawng point out that it early reverses had scaled down the MNF’s plans. It was a deplate, ragged band of rebels that finally made it to Aizawl.


Both the government and the army were taken by surprise, but the reprisal was swift and quite thorough. On March 2, the government declared it a disturbed area, on March 5, the IAF flew into Aizawl. Toofanis, or French Dassault Ouragan fighters, and Hunters were seen flying over the town, opening fire on key buildings and installations. On March 6, the MNF was declared unlawful and by evening the Indian army had arrived at Aizawl. The rebels were forced to retreat into the jungles of Burma and what was then East Pakistan.


What bombs?


In the days that followed the attack, there were questions that the government and the army could not or would not answer. Assam assembly debates in the wake of the uprising show a House demanding information and a government refusing to give any. A month after the attack, MLA Stanley  Nichols Roy, who had toured the strife-torn region, stood up in the assembly with these words of indictment:




“However, Sir, a stage came apparently from all the evidence we gathered that over and beyond a certain amount of force required, excessive force was used. That came about, we believe, on the 5th and 6th of March, when the Air Force was brought into play and was used for straffing [sic] and machine gunning, and as far as we can understand, bombing Aijal town.”



But the diagnosis of excessive force relies on the number of rebel troops in the first place. Assam Chief Minister Bimala Chaliha reportedly said about 10,000 attacked Aizawl and Lunglei alone, while the Centre said there were 800-1,300 rebels across all scenes of attack. Nirmal Nibedon, in his book on the Mizo uprising, says, “True, they had 20,000 volunteers and many more in the north, but only an infinitesimal fraction of this would actually be engaged in Operation Jericho.”


And what exactly was the air force doing there? A Hindustan Standard report from March 9, 1966, quoted Prime Minister Indira Gandhi saying they had been sent in to airdrop men and supplies. According to army records, they were sent in to escort army troops. Earlier attempts to fly in troops had failed, the army said. The choppers had been unable to land because of firing from the MNF.


This version is contested.  According to Hluna and Tochhawng, the flight of the planes over Aizawl and surrounding villages was not coordinated with any helicopter activity. And according to hundreds of people on the ground, the only “supplies” dropped by the planes were shells.


Had the airforce bombed Aizawl at all? According to the army, there was only strafing. But survivors remember otherwise. This is what one witness has to say:




“A powerful fighter (F 104 Phantom Z) had reached the Aizawl skies and was hovering above us. After a turn above it began pelting those places it believed housed volunteers with bombs and other ammunition, with absolutely no restraint...At that time, Aizawl was no longer a town - it was just a big fire. With flames and smoke, with corpses on the streets, it had become a battleground like other places in the world.”



How to win a battle and lose a war

How many people died in the uprising of 1966, how many people were displaced in the immediate aftermath? Those figures are probably lost to history. But this much is known, the departing fighter jets made way for an angry, brutal army, which ruled by force for the next two decades. Suddenly, an entire people were treated as a hostile population.

The end of the Mizo insurgency saw the creation of Mizoram as a separate state, with Laldenga as its first chief minister. But that took 20 years in coming. In the meanwhile, hundreds of Mizo youth claimed they had joined the insurgency because of the bombing of 1966.


Does the government really want a repeat in Bastar?