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The Bru migrants from Mizoram have written to the Tripura government seeking to recognise them by their community name ‘Bru’ instead of ‘Reang’ in the register of ordinary residents (ROR), electoral rolls and other documents while enlisting for permanent resettlement in the state.
In a letter to Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb, sent through the local sub-divisional magistrate, Bruno Msha, general secretary of Mizoram Bru Displaced Peoples Forum (MBDPF) said that “writing of the tribe ‘Reang/Riang’ is quite inconvenient” for the Bru community because “90 per cent of Bru people have Mizo name”.
He also said some of the migrant Brus had changed their Mizo names to their original Bru names when they fled Mizoram and reached Tripura in different phases across 1997, 1998 and the last phase of ethnic tensions in 2009.
“Accordingly, names in their old documents and newly developed documents have become mismatched [sic] and irrelevant for any purposes. Under these circumstances, a good number of families have been excluded from the final list of population surveys conducted by the Government of Mizoram in 2016 and 2019 and by the Government of Tripura in 2000, 2005 (when the enumeration was done for repatriation) and in 2020 due to mismatch of their names in the documents”, Bruno said in his letter adding that many migrant Brus are being compelled to run from pillar to post to get their names corrected in various documents through affidavits in local courts for getting approval in the population survey.
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Reasoning to back up his claim, the Bru migrant leader said that the name of a person or a thing is a noun in grammatical form but argued the same could not be equated for Brus since ‘tribe’ is applicable only to officially designated groups of people under the Constitution of India.
“Of course, we are from the ‘Bru’ community, which belongs to ‘Reang / Riang’ Schedule Tribe under the Tiprasa (Tripuri tribals) family. So, we do not have any problem to write ‘Reang / Riang’ in Schedule Tribe Certificate only but not in the name of person”, he wrote and requested the CM’s intervention to ensure that the concerned departments do not mandate the title ‘Reang or Riang’ in the name of a person in the ROR, electoral rolls, and permanent residence certificates.
Twenty-three years after ethnic clashes in Mizoram forced 37,000 people of the Bru (or Reang) community to flee their homes to neighbouring Tripura, an agreement was signed in January 2020 to allow 32,000 of them remaining in the camps after nine phases of repatriation to permanently settle in Tripura. The four-corner agreement was signed between the Centre, state governments of Tripura and Mizoram and the Bru migrants.
As part of the Rs-600-crore package announced to resettle the Brus at 15 locations across six districts, a 22-hectare colony was diverted from forest land at Kahamtaipara.
Citing grounds of further future issues, the migrant leader also urged the government to approve only one name of resettlement location at ‘Khahamthaipara’ resettlement colony.
