Exodus to India's Northeast Continues For A Third Day

Indian leaders appealed for calm on Friday as natives of northeastern India now living in southern cities left in droves for a third day over fears that violence in the northeastern state of Assam would spread south.

Starting Wednesday night, thousands of northeast natives — students, call-center workers, security guards — crowded railway stations in Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, and Chennai, desperate for trains home. Special trains were pressed into service, and the regular services to Guwahati ran packed to many times their capacity.

The panic was triggered by text messages and doctored images circulating online, warning of attacks on Northeasterners in retaliation for the July ethnic clashes in Assam's Kokrajhar district between Bodos and Bengali-speaking Muslims. No such attacks had occurred — but the rumors, amplified by social media, were enough.

Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde appealed to the fleeing workers to stay, promising their safety. Sonia Gandhi met a delegation of Northeastern students in Delhi to reassure them. In Karnataka, the state government set up helplines and deployed police at stations and in neighborhoods with large Northeastern populations.

The exodus exposed an uncomfortable truth: tens of thousands of young people from the Northeast — who power the service economies of India's southern metros — felt so insecure that a whisper campaign could send them fleeing. The government responded by ordering a 15-day cap on bulk text messages and blocking websites accused of fanning the flames.

The trains kept coming, and the crowds kept boarding.