Addressing Tripura’s indigeneity concerns – Hindustan Times

The tripartite accord in Tripura is a face-saver for the Tipra Motha, whose chief Pradyot Kishore Manikya Debbarma has been on a starvation strike. The Centre, the state authorities and Tipra Motha have agreed to represent a joint working committee to resolve numerous contentious points, together with land rights, identification, language, and tradition. Following the settlement, Debbarma has withdrawn his strike. Although he has not clarified if the celebration will be part of the NDA, it’s clear that the BJP, which holds each Lok Sabha seats from the state, can now breathe simple earlier than the final elections.

Debbarma, a scion of the Tripura royal household and a former state Congress chief, launched the Tipra Motha claiming that mainstream political events had compromised the pursuits of the native inhabitants. The concept of Better Tipraland, a geography imagined to be inhabited by native tribes as soon as upon a time, was the utopia he projected — one the place the rights of the tribals can be protected. Such an concept of indigeneity ignores the passage of time and the difficult historical past of the area. That mentioned, indigenous communities have change into a minority in Tripura, the place the largely immigrant Bengali inhabitants has come to dominate political, financial and cultural life. The Left, which dominated Tripura for practically 4 many years, subsumed considerations about tribal identification and company inside its class politics, which additionally led to the rise of a short-lived insurgency.

Id politics revolving round questions of ethnicity, language and religion has been central to the Northeast. Options have been discovered inside the framework of the Structure with various levels of success. Tripura’s considerations about ethnicity and cultural identification too may be addressed, certainly, however with out glorifying indigeneity to the extent of exclusivity.