Why Pradyot Kishore Manikya’s tribal homeland cry is against Tripura's royal traditions

The ‘Malancha Niwas’ is not just a mansion besides the Governor House here but a repository of collective memory that made Tripura’s Manikya rulers a bridge between indigenous tribespeople and Bengali settlers in the state.

It is the place where Rabindranath Tagore stayed when he visited Agartala, underscoring the excellent personal relations the Nobel laureate enjoyed with four successive Kings of Tripura.

Tagore loved Tripura because his mother tongue Bengali was the official language of the princely state when English was the official language of his native Bengal. The poet advised the kings of Tripura on everything from culture to agriculture and nudged the Manikya rulers to provide ‘jungle avadi’ leases to Bengali peasants to clear land and start settled wet-rice cultivation that ultimately boosted royal revenues. Then they started welcoming educated Bengalis to modernise administration and set up an infrastructure of healthcare and education and other services.

But though Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore welcomed Bengalis and even rushed his troops to protect the victims of riots in East Bengal in 1939, he promulgated the Tribal Reserve to protect lands and livelihoods of indigenous tribespeople in the hill tracts of his kingdom in the early 1940s. That, many say, is the precursor to the current Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council.

This fine balancing of interests of both the tribespeople and Bengali settlers marked the high point of monarchic governance in Tripura and marked it out as the land of fair rulers amidst majoritarian-driven kingdoms that survived British rule.

The royal possessions of Chakla-Roshanabad in East Bengal’s Comilla region, where the Tripura kings were subjects of British and paid taxes to the Crown, accounted for two-thirds of the royal revenues. Tripura’s kings of yore like Bijoy Manikya had ruled over vast tracts of East Bengal from time to time and had the legacy of tens of thousands of Bengali subjects.

Tripura’s Bengali legacy thus clearly goes back centuries and even in Hill Tipperah — as the present state was then called — Bengalis constituted about 40 per cent of the population before the Partition.

So, the demand for ‘Greater Tipraland’, a separate state for the tribespeople, led by Pradyot Kishore Manikya, is ridden with contradictions. According to Pradyot’s followers, the new state will be carved out of the existing state of Tripura, India’s third-smallest state. The new state will be home for indigenous communities of the region which have been reduced to a numerical minority due to the influx of displaced Bengalis from East Bengal during Partition. But Pradyot has often hinted he does not want a breakup of Tripura.

The royal scion Pradyot Kishore Manikya is currently referred as ‘Maharaja’ following his coronation on August 7, 2021. He started off in the Congress following his father Maharaja Kirit Bikram and mother Maharani Bibhu Devi, both former Congress MPs. Bibhu Devi had also been revenue minister in the Congress-Tripura Upajati Juba Samiti (TUJS) coalition government (1988-1993).

But before long it dawned on Pradyot that his royal identity would not make him a potential chief minister because all mainstream parties would seek a Bengali leader for the top job keeping in mind that Bengali settlers now constitute more than 70 per cent of the population.

When the legendary Communist party-builder Biren Dutta suggested Dasarath Deb(barma) as chief minister in 1978 after the Left Front swept to power for the first time, CPM Politburo member Pramod Dasgupta turned him down and pushed to make Nripen Chakrabarty the CM instead. This left a scar on the tribal psyche because the Communists had grown from the hills and paved the way for the emergence of successive regional parties and insurgent groups capitalising on the tribespeople’s growing sense of marginalisation.

But while other tribal parties such as TUJS or Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT) are happy to play junior partners to bigger national parties and enjoy a slice of power, Maharaja Pradyot Kishore as chairman of the Tipraha Indigenous Progressive Regional Alliance (or TIPRA Motha), is not happy playing the second fiddle to any of them.

And here lies the contradiction. The Tipra Motha has fielded 42 candidates, including 20 in seats reserved for tribals. The party’s emotive pitch for a separate tribal homeland — Tipraland — has helped it sweep the State Tribal Autonomous District Council in April 2021. It is likely Tipra Motha gets almost all the 20 seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes.

But how can a king settle for a divided, partitioned kingdom? How can the descendant of Maharaja Radhakishore or Bir Bikram seek a breakup of the kingdom riding on a furiously ethnically polarising campaign? Does it not go against the Manikya spirit of managing tribal and Bengali interests with fairness and balance?

This contradiction arising out of a grand royal tradition of fairness to all subjects and the compulsions of combustible electoral politics has clearly got the Maharaja on an uncertain and ambivalent political plank. Hence, while his tribal supporters cry hoarse for a separate tribal homeland, Pradyot Kishore privately tell his Bengali admirers that he will never allow a partition of Tripura and is only fighting for tribal rights. After all, his ancestors faced periodic revolts from smaller tribes like Reangs but never any dissidence from Bengalis.

So what is the King’s gameplan?

If his Tipra Motha manages 17 to 18 of the 20 seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes and gets much of the tribal votes in the remaining 40 seats, the inevitable division of Bengali votes in the general seats may produce a fractured mandate, in which the Motha will emerge the kingmaker. If the national parties — BJP and Congress-Left alliance — don’t get a majority, they have to look to the king to get the throne.

But if their numbers drop below that of the Motha, there is an outside chance Pradyot’s party emerges as the senior partner of any prospective coalition. And while the BJP or the Congress-Left alliance cannot think of a coalition, Motha can look to both for the best possible deal.

Which is why the shrewd royal scion is maintaining equidistance from both to keep his tribal supporters on a frenzied pitch while he tries to prepare for the game of musical chairs that seems likely if neither the BJP nor the Congress-Left alliance manage to pull off a clear majority.

The fielding of 42 candidates in the 60 seats (22 in General and 20 in Scheduled Tribes reserved seats) by Tipra Motha signifies the Maharaja’s ploy to rise above the tribal plank and play the royal card alongside the tribal card for a race to power.

As the BJP plays on Bengali fears and promises strong opposition to any proposed division of the state, the Maharaja needs some ground to retreat when it suits him.