Il­le­gal mi­gra­tion has gravely al­tered the so­cio-eco­nomic and cul­tural fab­ric of the Tripura so­cio-po­lit­i­cal land­scape. Cul­tural dom­i­nance by Ben­galis is lead­ing to po­lit­i­cal in­sta­bil­ity and cre­at­ing an iden­tity cri­sis amongst the abo­rig­i­nal peo­ples. Fac­ing near ex­tinc­tion, as the in­dige­nous Twiprasa Borok peo­ple’s pop­u­la­tion de­creases from 93 per cent in 1947 to 19 per cent in 2020, del­e­gates, ac­tivists and vol­un­teers of the Tripura Peo­ple’s Front led by its fire­brand leader Ms Patal Kanya Ja­ma­tia re­cently gath­ered at Jan­tar Man­tar Delhi to voice their con­cerns and protest il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion from Bangladesh across the Tripura-Bangladesh bor­der. The spir­ited protest shout­ing slo­gans in­clud­ing, “Our Land Our Right” saw the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Sikh, Tamil and civil rights ac­tivists sup­port­ing their cause. WSN ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh re­ports and analy­ses the im­pact of the protest.

March­ing through the streets around Jan­tar Man­tar in tra­di­tional colour­ful Twiprasa dresses, hold­ing Red, White and Blue colour plac­ards ex­tolling their rights and protes­ta­tions, shout­ing slo­gans “Our Land Our Right”, “Bangladeshi in­fil­tra­tors Go back”, “Im­ple­ment NRC in Tripura”, the Borok peo­ples of Tripura held a spir­ited demon­stra­tion to ex­press anx­i­ety and con­cern about their sur­vival il­le­gal against il­le­gal im­mi­grants Ben­gali dom­i­nance, which has grossly im­pacted their so­cial life, po­lit­i­cal reach and eco­nomic sta­tus.

Ru­ing the fact that noth­ing has hap­pened since 2014 when the Tripura Peo­ple’s Front has started pe­ti­tion­ing In­dian and Tripura au­thor­i­ties, this so­cio-po­lit­i­cal move­ment sub­mit­ted a mem­o­ran­dum to the Pres­i­dent of In­dia -Ram Nath Kovind, de­mand­ing Pres­i­den­t’s rule in Tripura ahead of the as­sem­bly elec­tions sched­uled 18 months from now. 

Speak­ing to her peo­ple in their mother tongue -Kok­borok, which is now sec­ond-lan­guage in their own home­land, TPF leader Patal Kanya Ja­ma­tia said, “We are a proud in­dige­nous Twiprasa Borok peo­ple, who were liv­ing with their dis­tinct iden­tity in a nat­ural ecosys­tem with a holis­tic lifestyle in har­mony and peace for cen­turies are now strug­gling for sur­vival as the de­mo­graph­ics of their home­land has been se­ri­ously ham­pered with il­le­gal Bangladeshi in­fil­tra­tion. In 1947 we were 93 per cent of the to­tal pop­u­la­tion and now are a mere 19 per cent.”

Speak­ing ex­clu­sively to The World Sikh News, Patal Kanya said, “Our main worry to­day is that the sit­u­a­tion is steadily lead­ing to rest­less­ness amongst the in­dige­nous pop­u­la­tion and is likely to de­gen­er­ate into strife be­tween the two sec­tions of so­ci­ety in the state of Tripura.”

Talk­ing about a so­lu­tion to the im­passe, she told WSN that, “Im­me­di­ate in­ter­ven­tion of the Union gov­ern­ment to stop il­le­gal par­tic­i­pa­tion of all out­siders in all Tripura Elec­tions and ini­ti­a­tion of con­crete and time-bound steps to set up an ef­fec­tive mech­a­nism for de­tect­ing and de­port­ing lakhs of mi­grants liv­ing il­le­gally in Tripura will the be­gin­ning of the con­fi­dence-build­ing process. Noth­ing short of that will suf­fice for our peo­ple.”

“As democ­racy is all about num­bers, our very de­mo­c­ra­tic func­tion­ing is in peril. Out of the 60 As­sem­bly con­stituen­cies, 40 con­stituen­cies are for il­le­gal im­mi­grants and only 20 con­stituen­cies for the Sched­uled Tribes reser­va­tion. Even in the 20 re­served seats, only in 8 seats, the in­dige­nous pop­u­la­tion are more than the out­siders,” said Ms Patal Kanya Ja­ma­tia.

Ap­peal­ing to civil so­ci­ety across the coun­try, Patal Kanya af­firmed that “for free and fair elec­tions, Tripura Peo­ple’s Front de­mands that the elec­toral rolls of Tripura for all elec­tions from the lo­cal bod­ies to the As­sem­bly con­stituen­cies must be re­vised through NRC im­ple­men­ta­tion and re­moval of il­le­gal Bangladeshi im­mi­grants.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst, com­men­ta­tor and civil rights ac­tivist Dr Ku­mar San­jay Singh of Delhi Uni­ver­sity ex­pressed sol­i­dar­ity with the in­dige­nous peo­ple of Tripura and un­der­lined the need for bet­ter and ef­fec­tive co­or­di­na­tion and co­op­er­a­tion amongst the re­gional and lin­guis­tic move­ments of the North East.  

Speak­ing to WSN, Ku­mar San­jay Singh said, “De­mo­graphic im­bal­ance can to­tally de­stroy the cul­ture of any in­dige­nous peo­ple and their holis­tic ecol­ogy. The Borok peo­ple are at the re­ceiv­ing end to­day and de­serve the sup­port of civil so­ci­ety and other strug­gling na­tion­al­i­ties.”

The mem­o­ran­dum to the Pres­i­dent of In­dia by the TPF points out that, “To this day, there is un­abated in­fil­tra­tion from across the Tripura-Bangladesh bor­der. For sin­is­ter de­mo­graphic rea­sons and to sup­press the rights of the in­dige­nous peo­ples of Tripura, the Union gov­ern­ment and the Tripura gov­ern­ments have col­lided to pro­vide cit­i­zen­ship pa­pers, Aad­har iden­tity cards, Ra­tion cards, Voter cards and all other doc­u­men­ta­tion to en­able them to be­come cit­i­zens. The ob­tain­ing of the right to vote has se­ri­ous long-range ram­i­fi­ca­tions to the Trip­wasa Borok Peo­ple’s ex­is­tence and sur­vival.”

Dur­ing my trip to Tripura two years ago, I learnt that the sit­u­a­tion in Tripura is in­deed so ironic that first-gen­er­a­tion and sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion for­eign­ers have be­come Mem­bers of the State As­sem­bly, Min­is­ters in Tripura and at the Union level and even the Chief Min­is­ter of the state. Or­di­nary vil­lagers whom I spoke to pointed out the pre­sent Chief Min­is­ter of the state has Bangladeshi ori­gins.  The Bangladeshi im­mi­grants have also joined the po­lice and para­mil­i­tary forces, who in­vari­ably act to the detri­ment of the orig­i­nal lo­cal pop­u­la­tion as they do not iden­tify with the lo­cal peo­ples. The roads of Agar­tala are dot­ted with Ben­gali bill­boards. 

Dur­ing my visit to the in­te­ri­ors of the vil­lages, I ex­pe­ri­enced strong re­sis­tance amongst the in­dige­nous peo­ples and a de­ter­mi­na­tion to win back their rights. 

De­mo­graphic im­bal­ance can to­tally de­stroy the cul­ture of any in­dige­nous peo­ple and their holis­tic ecol­ogy. The Borok peo­ple are at the re­ceiv­ing end to­day and de­serve the sup­port of civil so­ci­ety and other strug­gling na­tion­al­i­ties.”

Dr Ku­mar San­jay Singh, Civil rights ac­tivist, po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor

Ac­tivist-ed­i­tor Par­m­jeet Singh of Sikh Siyasat, join­ing the protest with a 5-mem­ber del­e­ga­tion from Pun­jab, em­pha­sized the com­mit­ment of the Sikhs to stand with the op­pressed and mar­gin­alised peo­ple en­dorsed the right of the Twiprasa Borok peo­ple to up­hold their right to life, cul­ture, lan­guage, dis­tinct iden­tity and their moth­er­land. He went to the ex­tent of say­ing, 

“No law or con­sti­tu­tion of any coun­try can take away these ba­sic rights which is a birthright. I salute the Borok peo­ple for their drive and com­mit­ment. There can­not be a uni­form so­lu­tion for a di­ver­si­fied sub-con­ti­nent and so­lu­tion lies in the de­vo­lu­tion of power and rights to the re­gional peo­ple,” he added. 

Tamil Na­tional Move­ment leader -Ma­ni­asaran, join­ing the protest through Zoom shared with the au­di­ence, “We stand with the in­dige­nous peo­ple and the Tripura Peo­ple’s Front. Tamils in the South are also be­ing gov­erned by those who are not na­tive Tamils.”

Tamil na­tion­al­ity party -Naam Tami­lar Katchi rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jeeva Dawn­ing, rep­re­sent­ing the party promised sup­port to the Tripura Peo­ple’s Front.  He promised that Tamils will con­tinue to main­tain live li­ai­son with the in­dige­nous peo­ple of Tripura and sup­port them.  

“The crux of the mat­ter is that the gov­ern­ment of In­dia, through acts of com­mis­sion and omis­sion, has al­lowed the wounds on the in­dige­nous Trip­wasa Borok peo­ple to fes­ter and grow and now it has be­come a huge Franken­stein mon­ster that re­quires im­me­di­ate han­dling and in­ter­ven­tion, oth­er­wise it will be­come un­man­age­able lead­ing to strife, strug­gle and pain to all sec­tions of so­ci­ety.”

Patal Kanya Ja­ma­tia, Pres­i­dent, Tripura Peo­ples Front

“We have also to bear in mind that there are broth­ers and sis­ters in other parts of the coun­try who are also en­gaged in a strug­gle for their rights and it is our col­lec­tive duty to high­light their prob­lems and sup­port them also,” added Dawn­ing Jeeva.

Delhi-based ac­tivist Gurmeet Singh scored the im­por­tance of pa­tience for suc­cess. He em­pha­sized the need to work for elec­toral gains by work­ing on the ground at the vil­lage and block lev­els. Prais­ing the hard-work­ing Tripura Peo­ple’s Front leader Patal Kanya Ja­ma­tia and the spirit of the par­tic­i­pants at the protest, who came all the way from across Tripura, Gurmeet Singh ex­horted the party to de­velop younger lead­ers and reach out to the world for the rights of the in­dige­nous peo­ples. 

De­ter­mined yet dis­traught at the sup­pres­sion of her peo­ple, Patal Kanya said, “Though our in­dige­nous Twiprasa Borok so­ci­ety was self-suf­fi­cient, now there are con­flicts with out­siders over scarce re­sources and eco­nomic op­por­tu­ni­ties.  Our orig­i­nal habi­tat of forests is un­der strain, the in­dige­nous Borok peo­ple are alien­ated and it has led to en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion and ex­ploita­tion of for­est re­sources.”

“No law or con­sti­tu­tion of any coun­try can take away these ba­sic rights which is a birthright. “

Par­m­jeet Singh, ed­i­tor Sikh Siyasat, po­lit­i­cal and en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist

Ms Patal Kanya and her en­tire team and vol­un­teers ex­pressed deep grat­i­tude to all Sikh, Tamil and civil rights ac­tivists who came for­ward to sup­port the cause of the in­dige­nous Twiprasa Borok peo­ple of Tripura. She ex­pressed par­tic­u­lar thanks to the Sikh com­mu­nity for ar­rang­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion and Lan­gar for vol­un­teers from Tripura. 

One of the few women lead­ers from the North­east, Ms Patal Ja­ma­tia, wor­ried about the fact that her peo­ple are sec­ond class cit­i­zens in their own home­land, con­cluded by warn­ing,  “The crux of the mat­ter is that the gov­ern­ment of In­dia, through acts of com­mis­sion and omis­sion, has al­lowed the wounds on the in­dige­nous Trip­wasa Borok peo­ple to fes­ter and grow and now it has be­come a huge Franken­stein mon­ster that re­quires im­me­di­ate han­dling and in­ter­ven­tion, oth­er­wise it will be­come un­man­age­able lead­ing to strife, strug­gle and pain to all sec­tions of so­ci­ety.”