Tripura celebrates Christmas with prayers and festivities; annual fair at Mariamnagar Church begins

After the midnight mass, Bishop Lumen Monteiro of Agartala Diocese of the Latin Catholic Church urged people to inculcate a feeling of brotherhood on the occasion of Christmas. “It is a great occasion for all of us to come together and pray for the welfare of our brethren, our leaders, and common people at large. We have prayed so that everyone in society may have fellow feeling, love and brotherhood with each other,” he told reporters.

Tripura also has churches of other Christian denominations, mostly of the Baptist Church. However, people different communities, including Hindus, were seen at the Mariamnagar Church, the major destination for any Christian celebrations in the state.

On Christmas eve, the Mariamnagar Church — also called Shantir Rani Catholic Church in West Tripura’s Mariamnagar village — was illuminated with lights and sparkling stars to make way for the celebrations and prayers at the stroke of midnight. The Mariamnagar Church, which organises a two-day fair at its premises, also had food stalls for those visiting.

Portuguese in Tripura

Erected in the 1930s, the Mariamnagar Church was the first parish in the state that was built for a small Christian Portuguese community.

Portuguese history in India begins in 1498 with the arrival of Vasco Da Gama’s fleet off the Kozhikode coast in Kerala. On the eastern coastline, Portuguese military posts and settlements grew in West Bengal. But their settlements in the Northeast had more to do with adventurers and mercenaries than trade. Some scholars say Portuguese settlements in Assam started with people brought by German adventurer William Rein Herr. Others say many of the Northeast settlements were set up by the Portuguese mercenaries hired to fight battles in the then East Bengal by local kings and chieftains.

Dr David Reid Syiemlieh, an academic who studied the Portuguese settlements in Northeast India, has written that Tripura’s king Amar Manikya Bahadur engaged a group of Portuguese missionaries in his army at Chittagong and Noakhali (now in Bangladesh) to fight the Mughals. They later settled at Rangamati, the then capital of princely Tripura, which was later renamed Udaipur.

After Maharaja Krishna Manikya shifted his capital to Agartala in 1760, these Portuguese settlers were resettled near the new capital city. Some of them served in the king’s army, while others worked as cultivators. They were given tax-free land at a place, which has since then come to be known as ‘Mariamnagar’ or the ‘Land of Mary’.

Rally against Western culture

Meanwhile, various Hindu religious groups, social organisations, and a few Hindu monks celebrated Tulsi Pujan Divas on Wednesday to worship the Tulsi plant. Tulsi plants were distributed near the Agartala Press Club.

Right-wing groups such as the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal also conducted the pancha-prabartan jagaran yatra and ‘Swastho Upayogi dour’ in West Tripura district to encourage the state’s youth to opt for Indian thoughts and culture and stay away from the Western culture.

“The younger generation today is seen immersed in mobile phone games. They should raise their voices against drugs. In order to save the generation from following the Western culture, we are organising these programmes,” Tutan Saha, a VHP leader told reporters.

Saha said VHP would organise block, district and state-level competitions for sports events. “We are going to organise the state-level events at Umakanta School ground on January 25,” he said.