Human Rights and Development:Tripura.
By:Devid Debbarma, Category: General, Posted on:2012-07-06 22:39:37

I am neither a human rights activist, nor an academician, but I would like to focus on certain human rights issues related with militancy in Tripur state. There is a tragedy of militants in Tripura State. Before addressing militancy let me focus briefly about the history of the Tripura. The glorious ancient Princely Tripura has been added to the Political India only after 1949 with a signing instrument of accession which was aiming at to preserve good relationship with the emerging Indian republic as well as to take full advantages of a federal economy. In lieu of this, the aborigines` indigenous peoples who ruled and enjoyed majority in the state had abruptly reduced to slandering minority at 31% a single decade of early fifties and thereby marginalized due to unending colossus infiltration of foreign nationals in the state of Tripura from neighboring country the erstwhile Pakistan now Bangladesh resulting which the population explosion had jeopardized the socio-economic life of the entire populations of the Tripura State. Ever since the merger and after an elapsed of more than 6 (six) decades of independence and exercise of decadal development initiative, the density of the indigenous tribal population has not been improved up to the desired expectation not to say the parity of the socio- economic condition of the rest of the nation. We cannot ignore the fact of uneven economic development of Tripura. Besides, I don`t know how far we all know about the existence of different insurgent groups in the N.E region including other part of the country at the very moment. While searching in the website I found there are numerous insurgent groups in the North East India alone. We know about ULFA, we Know about NDFB, we have seen UNLF, NLFT, and ATTF and so on. Most of these insurgent groups are engaged in armed conflicts with Indian government and some of the groups called for a separate state, others for autonomy, while some extreme groups are demanding nothing but complete independence. In this backdrop, I am going to address mainly on the human tragedy of indigenous peoples of Tripura as a whole. Many people have died due to militancy. If you see the encyclopedia since 1949 more than 1 lac innocent people had been killed in N.E India alone. As a member of the Student organization(TSF), I have to use to visits many tribal villages and met with the next to kin of the victims, I asked one day a boy aged about 6 or 7 ,who killed your father? The innocent boy replied me, Indian army killed my father. I asked other one who killed your mother who said militant killed. Or some of them said my father, brother, sister killed in between the crossfire of militant and Indian Army, Security Forces, TSR, etc. Resulting which there could be thousands of thousands orphans and widows in N.E. This is one major issue which I would like to mention here as a member of the TSF of this land of law which needs to be addressed the human tragedy at the state and centre both. Indeed the human rights condition in Tripura is not up to the standard. We have seen the persecution of the indigenous peoples of Tripura which has started from the majority of illegal immigrants and it is still going on. We don`t like to see such violation of human rights in Tripura. Because we as a citizens of India consider India as the greater secular democracy in the world. We have so many things to learn but when I watch film like Mother of Manipur, I felt grieved at heart. Such violation of human rights and torture on the women reminded me of 1980 Tripura riots. We have seen during the 1980s riots and afterwards how many the so called security forces raped and tortured women, murder of innocent indigenous youth of Tripura by way of imposition of AFSPA especially in the indigenous population areas in the name of tackling Extremism years together. We don`t like to see repetition of such crimes against the humanity in Tripura or anywhere else. So, we must not feel shy to address these issues. As a member of TSF, this is my humble request to leaders particularly those who are advocating for human rights. As I said there are historical and political reasons, as well as economic reasons too behind the rise of militancy in the Tripura including other part of the country. Since we cant not change the history we have to accept the history reality but that does not mean separate ethnic identities should be abolished. If one said that we have to forget our ethnic identities in this global family. Why one should abandon his or her ethnic identity? After Bangladesh liberation when Bangabandhu Sheik Mujib did such blunder, whom the Bangladeshi consider as father of the nation. When he went to the Chittagong hill tracts for the first time, he told hill peoples to forget their ethnic identities. Bangabadhu said, in Bangladeshi we are all Bengalis. But the hill peoples did not like such notion. They protested, they said we are not Bengalis, as a citizen of Bangladesh we may be Bangladeshis but we have separate ethnic identities. And I am quite sure people of Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura, Assam, Mizoram, and Meghalaya and so on are definitely proud of their separate ethnic identities as the Bengalis peoples proud of Bengali identity. So, if we claim that we live in democracy, what democracy means? If we fail to respect diverse opinion and diverse identity, how we can respect democracy?

In this milieu, it is my considered opinion that in order to improve the density of down trodden indigenous tribal population of Tripura State including other N.E region, it is imperative to assign top most priorities to bestowal of empowerment of political ,economy ,etc by the state and center as well.

(The author is the Publicity Secretary of TSF)




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