ABSTRACT
The present Tripura, in her past before 1949, was once a powerful kingdom ruled by 186 Maharajas. According to the Rajmala, the Tripura Kingdom was established by Druhya in the Tribeg region. Tripura’s territory started contracting in the 16th century, and finally has been reduced to the present state. Tripura merged with the Indian dominion on 15 October 1949. The end of monarchy and the beginning of democracy coincided with the unabated influx of the refugees from East Pakistan to Tripura who became the majority wherein the Tripuris were reduced to minority in size and power. The strained relationship between the refugees and the host which started as early as the 1940s were strengthened through the manifestation of several democratic and armed groups in the 1960s and 1970s, and by the 1980s, it snowballed into full-fledged riots which resurfaced again in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Although the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) was constituted under the Seventh and Sixth schedule in 1982 and 1985 respectively, the grievances of the tribes could not be addressed as evident from the demand for more power. Rejection of more autonomy has led to demand for a separate state of Tipraland since 2009 by the Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT), a regional party. After the IPFT formed a coalition government with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2018, the plan to upgrade the TTAADC into Territorial Council has been going on. As long as marginalisation of the tribes continues in various forms, these types of protests will come up, and conflict is inevitable.
