Tripura Assembly Polls: Tracing the demand for a separate state

Following independence, Tripura saw an influx from undivided Bengal, accentuating ethnic and religious diversity but also setting off a 'nativist vs outsider' conversation

Tripura heads to polls on February 16 and the issue of 'Greater Tipraland', i.e. a separate state to be carved out for the indigenous people living in the Northeastern Indian state, has come to the forefront again. Tipra Motha, a front of regional parties in the state, is championing the voice of the tribes and has decided to contest the polls alone, rejecting offers from the BJP and the Congress-CPI(M) combine, since they refused to guarantee in writing that their demand for a separate state would be met.

A separate state by any other name...

Before tracing the demands of a separate state for Tripuris, a little context into the transition of northeastern states from before 1947 to an independent India clarifies what some in Tripura are seeking. Under the British rule, the people of the state and its day-to-day administration of Tripura was entrusted to the royal family of the princely state, thus seeing least interference from the mainland. However, following independence, Tripura witnessed many from the Indian mainland coming to the state, especially from undivided Bengal, accentuating ethnic and religious diversity but also creating a 'nativist-outsider' dynamic in the state.

The Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) was formed in 1979, to protect the social, economic and cultural interests of the state's tribal population.

The demand for a separate Tripura state was preceded by a demand for secession from India, and fringe groups resorted to picking up arms and unleashing violence in their pursuit of the same. Subir Bhaumik, in Ethnicity, Ideology and Religion: Separatist Movements in India’s Northeast, notes the Tripura National Volunteers (TNV), which was active in the 1980s, was among the first insurgent groups to fight for an 'independent Tripura', but then came to an agreement with Delhi in 1988. Two splinter groups emerged: the All Tripura Tribal Force (ATTF), established in 1990, and the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), formed in 1992.

Several people were displaced in the reign of terror that followed between 1992 and 2012.

However, there is no demand to secede from India now. That has been replaced by the demand for a separate state, aggravated by the issue of the migration of Bengalis to Tripura over time.

Read | Tripura polls: Greater Tipraland vs greater autonomy for tribals draw battlelines

What explains the influx of migrants in the state?

Pradyot Manikya DebBarman, the Tipra Motha chief, explained that the new Tipraland state would be for the indigenous tribes who have been reduced to an ethnic minority in their own state due to the influx of Bengali migrants.

As Bhaumik notes, "In the pre-British era, the population flow into what is now northeast India almost wholly originated from the east. Being closer to the highlands of Burma and southwestern China than to the power centres of the Indian mainland, this region was exposed to a constant flow of tribes and nationalities belonging to the Tibeto-Burman or the Mon-Khmer stock". However, the population flow changed with the British coming in. They brought peasants and agricultural labourers, teachers and clerks from neighbouring Bengal and Bihar to Assam. The tide soon reached Tripura, where the Manikya kings — Pradyot's ancestors — offered Bengali farmers 'jungle-avadi' or forest clearance leases in order to popularise settled agriculture that, in turn, would increase the revenue. The Partition also led to a rise in the flow of refugees and migrants from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Tripura’s demography qualitatively changed in two decades, with Bengalis becoming a clear majority.

Yet another wave of migrants took refuge in Tripura during the Bangladesh liberation war of 1971. Congress too, helped newly arrived Bengali migrants settle in tribal-compact parts of the state to skew the voter base to help them rather than CPI, which was then in power.

While Tripura has long agitated against this Bengali domination, the tribes have not quite been able to come together to present a united front. Bhaumik explores this in his writing, noting, "In Tripura, the Mizos in the northern Jampui hills demand a regional council within the Tribal Areas Autonomous Council of Tripura to preserve their 'distinct identity'...The Reangs in Tripura resent attempts by the Tripuris to impose the Kokborok language on them. And they look back at the brutal suppression of Reang rebellions by the Tripuri kings as 'evidence of ethnic domination that cannot be accepted anymore.' These intratribal tensions have weakened efforts to promote a compact 'Borok' or tribal identity against perceived Bengali domination."

Now, with Tipra Motha speaking for the indigenous, the demand has come under a single banner.

Tipra Motha not the first to demand statehood

DebBarman's party, however, is not the first to raise the demand for a separate state. The Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT), formed in 2000, first raised the demand. The aforementioned study provides a brief insight into the state's politics in the past. "The IPFT enjoyed the backing of the separatist National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT). The NLFT’s rhetoric is secessionist but its leaders said they are open to negotiations on an 'appropriate power-sharing arrangement for maximum possible tribal control in the state assembly, the autonomous district council and on the state’s resources.' The IPFT has now been renamed the Indigenous Nationalist Front of Tripura, with two more tribal parties joining it. One of them is the Tripura Upajati Juba Samity (TUJS), the first exclusively tribal party in the state, and the Tribal National Volunteers (TNV), which led a bloody insurgent movement targeting Bengali settlers and the security forces between 1978 and 1988."

IPFT was revived in 2009 again.

While IPFT raised the issue of Tipraland in 2018, ahead of the polls, it dropped the demand when the BJP-ruled Centre announced a committee would be set up to look into the problems faced by Tripura tribals. However, the issue being sidelined has led to friction between the former poll partners.

DebBarma, when raising the call for a 'Greater Tipraland' has gone beyond the IPFT's vision. First, Tipra Motha is a party on the rise, which won 18 of 28 seats in the TTADC in 2021, while IPFT's power in the state is waning. Second, Tipra Motha's vision of a separate state is not limited to the TTAADC boundaries. It extends to all Tripuri people, living in parts of Mizoram, Assam, and even neighbouring Bangladesh, and as Ernst Renan points out in What is a Nation? "geography makes a nation no more than race does."