ABSTRACT
Marxism is considered as opposed to ethnic nationalism and nationalism per se. This chapter analyses the rise and growth of this movement and how the communists established their leadership and control over this ethnic movement, built on it and ultimately appropriated it by converting the Gana Mukti Parishad (GMP) into one of its mass organizations. There lay behind the birth of the GMP a massive tribal regional discontent in Tripura. On October 9, 1948, in an ambush led by the British Inspector Mihir Choudhury, the Tripura police killed seven tribals and two Bengali Muslims at Golaghati near Agartala. Armed resistance necessitated the formation of a militant organization of the GMP. The GMP began armed resistance after the Golaghati incident. August 1950 marked a dividing line in the history of the GMP-led armed struggle in Tripura. The GMP communism of Tripura was a movement, although predominantly locally determined and shaped, which subsequently received powerful external influence.
