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The insurgency in Tripura was an armed conflict which took place in the state of Tripura between India and several separatist rebel organisations. It was a part of the wider insurgency in Northeast India and was fueled by Tripuris.
Tripura, literally meaning "land adjoining water", is located in the extreme southwest corner of the Northeast. Following India's independence in 1947, Tripura acceded to the Indian Union in 1948 as a "C" category state. It became a Union Territory in November 1956 and attained full statehood on 21 January 1972.
Tripura's demography underwent a major change as a result of illegal migrants and refugees from former East Bengal and subsequently from Bangladesh. Tripuris were pushed to the hills and the politics and administration in the state became dominated by the Bengali-speaking and immigrants.
It was the particular reason which had created national consciousness among the local populations. The continuous neglect on the immigration issue had led to a direct confrontation between Indian nationalism and the newly created Tripuri nationalism. The parallel rise of nationalism in the other states of the Northeast India had further complicated the situation more, resulting in a deadly armed conflict between India and rebel groups thus, creating the insurgency on ethnic lines as a Tribal versus Bengali conflict.
The first militant outfit to form was Tripura National Volunteers (TNV). It was active until 1988. However, most prominent ones were National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) and All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF).
These groups had various demands. NLFT wanted to establish an independent Tripura and ATTF wanted to finalise the Tripura merger agreement. However, all of them wished to remove Bangladeshis immigrants who had entered Tripura after 1950 despite their ideological differences.
Anti-Bengali sentiments of Tripuri rebel groups had given birth to the United Bengali Liberation Front. The group wanted to protect Bengalis in Tripura from militants. This group was supported by the Bengali Dominated Communist Party which supplied arms and infrastructure.
Internal conflicts among them had divided NLFT into NLFT(B) led by Biswamohan Debbarma and NLFT(N) led by Nayanbasi Jamatia. ATTF which was a right wing organisation of NLFT had become its own militant organisation led by Ranjit Debbarma.
Those groups had received the major blow when Biswamohan Debbarma, Nayanbasi Jamatia and Ranjit Debbarma were all arrested in their hideout camps in Bangladesh. It is estimated that some of those armed cadres are still present at their hideout camps at Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh.
From the end of 2020, a resurgence has occurred led by the NLFT with incidents of kidnapping workers and killing of a trader marking the emergence of insurgency in the state again.
The National Liberation Front of Tripura is a banned Tripuri nationalist terrorist organisation based in Tripura, India. It has an estimated 550 to 850 members.
The Indigenous Nationalist Party of Twipra was a political party in the Indian state of Tripura. Bijoy Kumar Hrangkhawl was the President of the party. It merged with the Tipraha Indigenous Progressive Alliance (TIPRA) party on 11 June 2021.
Kokborok (or Tripuri) is a Tibeto-Burman language of the Indian state of Tripura and neighbouring areas of Bangladesh.
The Insurgency in Northeast India involves multiple separatist militant groups operating in some of India's northeastern states, which are connected to the rest of India by the Siliguri Corridor, a strip of land as narrow as 14.29 miles (23.00 km) wide.
The Tripura Baptist Christian Union (TBCU) is a Baptist Christian denomination in Tripura, India. It has its head office in Agartala, the state capital. The TBCU is affiliated to the Asia Pacific Baptist Federation (APBF) and the Baptist World Alliance (BWA). It is also a member church in the North East India Christian Council (NEICC), a regional church body of the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI).
The Tripuri, are a Tibeto-Burman-speaking ethnic group of Northeast Indian state of Tripura. They are the descendants of the inhabitants of the Twipra/Tripura Kingdom in North-East India and Bangladesh. The Tripuri people through the Manikya dynasty ruled the Kingdom of Tripura for many years until the kingdom joined the Indian Union on 15 October 1949.
Kokborok (Tiprakok/Tripuri) is the native language of Tripuri people in present Tripura state in North East of India. During the 20th century many of Royal family and its officials contributes to develop the Kokborok language in many ways.
Tripuri refer to:
In the 2008 Agartala bombings at least 4 people were killed and a 100 injured on 1 October 2008 in a series of 5 blasts set off in Agartala, capital of the Indian state of Tripura, within 45 minutes, while two unexploded bombs were defused.
The All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) was a Tripuri nationalist militant group active in India's Tripura State. It was founded on 11 July 1990, by a group of former Tripura National Volunteer members under the leadership of Ranjit Debbarma. The ATTF is considered a terrorist organisation by India. According to the South Asian Terrorism Portal, approximately 90% of the ATTF's administration are Hindu and the rest are Christians. The group was said to have been formed as the armed wing of the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) but split into its own organization. The group was headquartered in Tarabon in Bangladesh.
Tripuri Nationalism is an ideology that supports self-determination by the Tripuri people. The conflict is in essence ethnic and the Tripuri community, indigenous to the region formed the clear majority of population in the princely state of Tippera, which joined the Republic of India in 1949 as the state of Tripura.
Biswamohan Debbarma declared himself as a chairman of the National Liberation Front of Tripura of his own faction. In May 2017 in a meeting at an undisclosed location, selected Subir Debbarma alias Yamorok (45), as the new 'president' of the organization hence renamed NLFT SD which later signed a Memo of Settlement with Govt. of India on 10 August 2019. He is currently wanted by India and Interpol for crimes against life and health, and crimes involving the use of weapons/explosives.
Ranjit Debbarma is a Tiprasa politician who is a Member of the Tripura Legislative Assembly from Ramchandraghat constituency.
Tripuri Kshatriya is a Vaishnav caste group which encompasses almost all the members of the Tripuri, Reang, Jamatia and Noatia ethnic groups, most of whom live in the Indian state of Tripura. The Tripuri Royal Family belonged to the Tripuri ethnic group, from the Debbarma clan. Originally the term "Tripur Kshatriya" was used to denote the Tripuri ethnic group only, but in due time, the Maharajah included the remaining three ethnic groups as well, in an attempt to foster a sense of kinship among his people. With the influx of the Bengali immigrants from neighboring places, the Tripuris lost their majority in their own kingdom and the Maharajah's power was taken away by the Indian government. Formerly, the community was organized under the Tripura Kshatriya Samaj, which was headed by the Maharajah of Tripura himself.
The Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT) is a regional political party in Tripura, India. It is a member of the National Democratic Alliance and North-East Democratic Alliance. The party was merged into the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT) in 2001, However diverged out in 2009. The party is allied with BJP in the 2018 Tripura Legislative Assembly election and won 8 seats out of 9 contested seats. The party got 7.5% of the total votes polled. The BJP got 36 seats and with a total of 44 seats the BJP-IPFT coalition have two-thirds majority at the Legislative Assembly.
Kamalnagar massacre refers to the massacre of 14 unarmed Bengali Hindu villagers in Kamalnagar on 14 August 2003 by the All Tripura Tiger Force insurgents.
Operation Roukhala was an ethnic cleansing operation launched by the All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) for the eviction of Bengali Hindus from Tripura in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The word Roukhala in Kokborok literally means ouster or deportation or driving out. In the early stages of the movement, the ATTF and the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) separately issued quit notices to the Bengali Hindus. The ATTF named it as Operation Roukhala. Later NLFT joined the movement. According to the political leaders in Tripura, the rebels resort to abduction and murder of non-tribals in the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) area as a part of Operation Roukhala.
United Bengali Liberation Front was a militant separatist organisation in Tripura, India. It sought to protect Bengalis from Bangladesh against Tripuri militants and other tribal groups and first appeared in the year 1995, alongside the NLFT and ATTF. There was no official data about its commanders and cadres. UBLF was involved in bomb blasts, murders and Hostage Crises. Its conflict was against Indigenous Tribals and other Tribals of Neighbouring stares. The UBLF came into existence only after the ATTF was formed with the aim of decimating Bengali Hindus living in Tripura. The ATTF carried out multiple attacks against the Bengali Hindus who arrived to India after ethnic cleansing in Bangladesh. The ATTF have been credited with at least 20 attacks on Bengali speaking people. The formation of UBLF was a direct retaliation against these killings of Bengali Hindus.The UBLF was banned by the GoI later.
Discrimination against Bengalis in India comprises negative attitudes and views on Bengalis in India. Though Bengalis have lived in different parts of India for centuries, they are subject to widespread discrimination. This can be either by any other community or in any particular place, due to reasons like inhabitation, discriminating sentiments, political reasons, Government actions, anti-Bangladeshi sentiment etc. The discriminative condition of Bengalis can be traced from Khoirabari massacre, Nellie massacre, Silapathar massacre, North Kamrup massacre, Goreswar massacre, Bongal Kheda etc. This has led to emergence of Bengali sub-nationalism in India as a form of protest and formation of many pro-Bengali organisations in India.
Bikram Bahadur Jamatia is a Tripuri Indian social worker and the former Akra (Head) of the Jamatia Hoda. He played an important role in promoting an indigenous people’s ‘movement’ against the NLFT, ATTF and other small terror group in Tripura. Jamatia received the Deendayal Upadhyaya National Integration Award Award and the Kalikinkar Debbarma Award for Excellent Performance in Classical Music in 2018. In 2023, he was awarded the Padma Shri (2023), the fourth-highest civilian award in India.
