Place:Tripura, India

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Tripura is a state in northeastern India. The third-smallest state in the country, it covers and is bordered by Bangladesh to the north, south, and west, and the Indian states of Assam and Mizoram to the east. In 2011 the state had 3,671,032 residents, constituting 0.3% of the country's population.

The area of modern Tripura — ruled for several centuries by the Manikya Dynasty — was part of an independent princely state under the protectorate of the British Empire. The independent Tripuri Kingdom (also known as Hill Tippera) joined the newly independent India in 1949.

Tripura lies in a geographically isolated location in India, as only one major highway, National Highway 8, connects it with the rest of the country. Five mountain ranges — Boromura, Atharamura, Longtharai, Shakhan and Jampui Hills — run north to south, with intervening valleys; Agartala, the capital, is located on a plain to the west. The state has a tropical savanna climate, and receives seasonal heavy rains from the south west monsoon. Forests cover more than half of the area, in which bamboo and cane tracts are common. Tripura has the highest number of primate species found in any Indian state. Due to its geographical isolation, economic progress in the state is hindered. Poverty and unemployment continue to plague Tripura, which has a limited infrastructure. Most residents are involved in agriculture and allied activities, although the service sector is the largest contributor to the state's gross domestic product.

According to the 2011 census, Tripura is one of the most literate states in India, with a literacy rate of 87.75%. Mainstream Indian cultural elements coexist with traditional practices of the ethnic groups, such as various dances to celebrate religious occasions, weddings and festivities; the use of locally crafted musical instruments and clothes; and the worship of regional deities. The sculptures at the archaeological sites Unakoti, Pilak and Devtamura provide historical evidence of artistic fusion between organised and indigenous religions.

History

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Although there is no evidence of lower or middle Paleolithic settlements in Tripura, Upper Paleolithic tools made of fossil wood have been found in the Haora and Khowai valleys. The Indian epic, the Mahabharata; ancient religious texts, the Puranas; and the Edicts of Ashoka – stone pillar inscriptions of the emperor Ashoka dating from the third century BCE – all mention Tripura.^[1] An ancient name of Tripura (as mentioned in the Mahabharata) is Kirat Desh (English: "The land of Kirat"), probably referring to the Kirata Kingdoms or the more generic term Kirata. However, it is unclear whether the extent of modern Tripura is coterminous with Kirat Desh. The region was under the rule of the Twipra Kingdom for centuries, although when this dates from is not documented. The Rajmala, a chronicle of Tripuri kings which was first written in the 15th century, provides a list of 179 kings, from antiquity up to Krishna Kishore Manikya (1830–1850), but the reliability of the Rajmala has been doubted.

The boundaries of the kingdom changed over the centuries. At various times, the borders reached south to the jungles of the Sundarbans on the Bay of Bengal; east to Burma; and north to the boundary of the Kamarupa kingdom in Assam.^[2] There were several Muslim invasions of the region from the 13th century onward,^[2] which culminated in Mughal dominance of the plains of the kingdom in 1733,^[2] although their rule never extended to the hill regions.^[2] The Mughals had influence over the appointment of the Tripuri kings.^[2]

Tripura became a princely state during British rule in India. The kings had an estate in British India, known as Tippera district or Chakla Roshnabad (now the Comilla district of Bangladesh), in addition to the independent area known as Hill Tippera, the present-day state.^[2] Udaipur, in the south of Tripura, was the capital of the kingdom, until the king Krishna Manikya moved the capital to Old Agartala in the 18th century. It was moved to the new city of Agartala in the 19th century. Bir Chandra Manikya (1862–1896) modelled his administration on the pattern of British India, and enacted reforms including the formation of Agartala Municipal Corporation.

Post-independence (1947-present)

Following the independence of India in 1947, Tippera district – the estate in the plains of British India – Comilla became a part of East Pakistan, and Hill Tippera remained under a regency council until 1949. The Maharani Regent of Tripura signed the Tripura Merger Agreement on 9 September 1949, as a result of which Tripura became a Part C state of India. It became a Union Territory, without a legislature, in November 1956 and an elected ministry was installed in July 1963.^[3] It was conferred full statehood in 1971 by the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971. The geographic partition that coincided with the independence of India resulted in major economic and infrastructural setbacks for the state, as road transport between the state and the major cities of India had to follow a more circuitous route. The road distance between Kolkata and Agartala before the partition was less than , and increased to , as the route now avoided East Pakistan (although from June 2015 a bus service started from Agartala to Kolkata via Dhaka; this has been named the "Bangla Corridor"). The geopolitical isolation was aggravated by an absence of rail transport.

Since the partition of India, many Bengali Hindus have migrated to Tripura as refugees fleeing religious persecution in Muslim-majority East Pakistan, especially after 1949.^[3] Settlement by Hindu Bengalis increased during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. Parts of the state were shelled by the Pakistan Army during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. Following the war, the Indian government reorganised the North East region to ensure effective control of the international borders – three new states came into existence on 21 January 1972: Meghalaya, Manipur, and Tripura.^[4] Before independence, most of the population was indigenous.^[3] Ethnic strife between the Tripuri tribe and the predominantly immigrant Bengali community led to scattered violence, and an insurgency spanning decades, including occasional massacres such as the 1980 Mandai massacre. This gradually abated following the establishment of a tribal autonomous district council and the use of strategic counter-insurgency operations. Tripura remains peaceful, as of 2016. In retaliation of the communal violence against the Hindu minority in neighboring Bangladesh, mosques in several areas in Tripura were attacked from 19 to 26 October 2021.

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