Opinion R K Debbarma writes | Tripura election: Politics comes full circle
R K Debbarma writes: Election results in the state recall the consequences of Left Front's complicated relationship with regional, especially indigenous, politics -- how this has created space for the BJP to step in and harness the politics of tribal identity
Bharatiya Janata Party supporters celebrate the party's victory in Tripura. (Photo: PTI) 
Immediately after the death of Bir Bikram Manikya in 1947, the royal family of Tripura had fled to Shillong: The Queen-regent, an heir-minor to the throne, and their ministers in tow. Before his death, Bir Bikram had tried and failed to counter the Left in the state. Now his grandson, Pradyot Debbarma, is back in the thick of politics in the state – fuelled by social media, and energised by young voters – euphorically spearheading the movement to “save his people”. This curious turn of events, rather a double return – a return of the king and a return to the kingdom – not only exposes the limits of identity politics but also offers historical insights into the rise of BJP and decline of the Left Front in Tripura.
The Left Front under Manik Sarkar had expended its energies towards destroying the ideological basis of identity politics, but the BJP breathed new lease of life into the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT), and their alliance defeated the Left Front in the 2018 election. However, the rise of Tipra Motha and its swelling support base put the BJP-IPFT alliance in jitters just before the 2023 election. This time the BJP went into the election cautiously confident of holding on to its seats – even as its alliance partner, IPFT, self-destructed into oblivion. Tipra Motha has not only turned the separate statehood demand against the BJP-IPFT, but the demand has become the sole issue for the majority of the tribal voters. No wonder, then, despite the massive war chest and state machinery at its disposal, the BJP had to recruit the firebrand, P K Jamatia, who made her political career by championing a separate state.
In the last two elections held in Tripura – the assembly election (2018) and the district council election (2021) – two regional parties demanding a separate state reaped electoral dividends. The IPFT, which had been demanding separate Tipraland, played a crucial role in the 2018 assembly election. IPFT allied with the BJP and ended 25 years of CPM rule in the state. The BJP-IPFT alliance won 42 seats; CPM retained 16 seats. IPFT won 8 of the 9 reserved seats it contested. Moreover, its support base was a major factor in the BJP winning nine reserved seats for Scheduled Tribes. In 2021, the Tripura Indigenous Progressive Regional Alliance (Tipra Motha), with the demand for Greater Tipraland, catapulted itself to power in the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC). Tipra Motha trounced the BJP-IPFT alliance and decimated the Left Front. Interestingly, Tipra Motha was formed just before the election by Pradyut Debbarman. The Motha won 18 seats and the BJP-IPFT alliance won nine seats. This demand for separation not only exposes the Left’s history of militarisation and the dispossession of indigenous communities, but it also signals a messianic-eschatological turn that militates against transformative politics: The reincarnation of a “king” into the body politics in Tripura.
Debbarma is the grandson of the last Manikya ruler of Tripura who tried to crush the burgeoning power of the communist organisation, Jana Siksha Samity (JSS). After Bir Bikram died in 1947, JSS was poised to wrest political power in Tripura. The Manikya family fled to Shillong, and in the ensuing political liminality, the Instrument of Accession to India was quickly signed by the Queen Regent. The full brunt of state machinery, serendipitously passed into Congress control, was brought to bear against JSS. Its leaders went underground and founded the first communist party, Tripur Jatiyo Gana Mukti Parishad. The party later merged with the undivided Communist Party of India, rechristened itself as Gana Mukti Parishad, and became a tribal wing within CPM. CPM under Manik Sarkar not only tried to dismantle the Manikya past but carried out an all-out war to snub out the politics of difference from the political landscape. The Manikya past and identity politics, both came back to haunt the Left Front in 2018 and 2013. A dialectic of the Left and identity politics can be the starting point for understanding the return of the king, and the call for separation.
The year 2021 was not the first time the Left Front has been bettered in the TTAADC by a regional party. Indigenous Peoples Front of Twipra (BJP’s alliance partner IPFT is an avatar of this party) had defeated the Left Front in the 2000 election. This election took place against the backdrop of terrible violence and heightened ethnic tensions. The banned National Liberation Front of Twipra (NLFT) carried out intimidation and violence against tribal cadres and leaders of the CPM and non-tribal population living in remote areas of the state. In retaliation, tribal villages were burnt to the ground, allegedly by the United Bengali Liberation Front (UBLFT), with the support of the police and Tripura State Rifles (TSR). It was obvious that IPFT had won on the back of a violent campaign by NLFT.
In hindsight, it was also the defeat that marked a shift in the Left Front’s policy towards any assertion of indigeneity and identity by the tribals. Manik Sarkar, who had taken over the reins of the CPM and the government in the state – he had become CM two years earlier in 1998 – put the party on a prolonged collision course with indigenous identity assertions.
In fact, the defeat in 2000 is when and where it all began: The Left Front government began to rename historical monuments in Agartala, rejecting the popular demand that Kokborok should be written in Roman script. In fact. in 2001, its tribal cadres stormed into Doordarshan Kendra and forced them to use Bengali script for Kokborok programmes. Ironically, many of these leaders now form the rank and file of the Tipra Motha. Sarkar also raised three new Tripura State Rifles (TSR) battalions in 2000, and added two more battalions in 2003 and 2006. Countering the ideological basis of Tripuri identity politics had been one of the most important agendas of the government under Sarkar. The Left Front government adopted two strategies: One, to crush the tribal insurgency to the point of militarising the state. Two, to reinvest in the narrative of Tripura’s historical and immutable connection to Bengal by renaming places and historical sites.
While tribal insurgency has been crushed to a large extent, the second strategy has been counterproductive. It led to the rise of the IPFT and other socio-cultural organisations such as the Movement for Kokborok. These movements sowed the seeds for mobilising tribals around the themes of political and economic dispossession, as well as dispossession from historical memory. Tipra Motha is a product of these counter-movements against Left Front policies.
In Tripura, the Left Front has had a complicated relationship with regional politics – especially indigenous or tribal identity politics. This is true of the Left in India and elsewhere. In India, while the Left has been suspicious of identity politics in general, the rise of the far right and the further weakening of class politics occasioned a reckoning with identity politics. This is where the BJP has stepped in to harness identity politics.
The writer is chairperson, Unit for Research and Development, TISS Guwahati
This article first appeared in the print edition on March 3, 2023, under the title, ‘Coming full circle in Tripura’
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