Congress Plays Dangerous Game In Tripura

Prakash Karat

THE extremist violence continues unabated in Tripura. Groups like the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) and All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF), both banned organisations, indulge in mindless terrorism, shooting down innocent people, kidnapping for extortions and generally creating tensions between the tribal and Bengali communities. The NLFT is the bigger and more active terrorist outfit. A special target of their attack are the CPI(M) cadres and supporters as well as leaders of the Gana Mukti Parishad which is the most popular and deep-rooted organisation among the tribal people.

A COVER FOR NLFT TERRORISTS

This violence is taking place at a time when the assembly elections are to take place within six months time, as the life of the present assembly will be over in March 2003. The Left Front government of Tripura has been in office in its current stint since 1993 and won the election in 1998 too.

Keeping in mind the assembly elections, the Congress party has entered an alliance with the Indigenous National People's Front (INPT) which is a new version of the NLFT-backed Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT).  The IPFT was set up three years ago as a front for the NLFT. It was able to capture the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council by rigging the elections with the help of the NLFT. The latter terrorised the voters into staying away from the polls.

The INPT is now an amalgamated outfit which comprises the IPFT, the Tripura National Volunteers (TNV) and the Tripura Upajati Juba Samiti (TUJS). The TNV, headed by Bijoy Hrankhal, was the one which initiated violent attacks on non-tribals since 1980. In the 1980s, the Congress party, then in power at the centre, came to an agreement with the TNV and used it to fight the CPI(M) and the Left Front government. The TUJS, which till recently was an ally of the Congress, has got considerably weakened and it  also joined the extremist bandwagon. 

CONGRESS YET TOLEARN A LESSON

The Congress has obviously refused to learn from its past dalliance with the separatist and extremist groups in Tripura. Lacking a base among the tribal people, it has always made fighting the CPI(M) as its topmost priority and did not hesitate in the past to encourage and have tacit alliances with the extremist groups. Now it has decided on an open political and electoral alliance with such forces.

The Tripura Pradesh Congress president, alongwith INPT leader Bijoy Hrankhal, met the Congress president Mrs Sonia Gandhi in June 2002. It was decided that the Congress would have an alliance with the INPT.

Since it came to office in the Autonomous District Council, the record of non-performance and loot of public funds has thoroughly exposed the INPT.   Its only prop and support is the NLFT which has a bloody and heinous record of brutal killings and torture. In the recent period, June and July, the NLFT stepped up the killings of CPI(M) and GMP cadres and supporters.  They are specially targetting the women activists and women family members. The most inhuman aspect is the kidnapping of young children, even babies. Among the women comrades killed are Rina Debbarma in Jirania Khola (Sadar subdivision) and Khanjani Debbarma, wife of a CPI(M) branch secretary. One of the victims of the NLFT gangs is a one and a half years old baby, daughter of a CPI(M) leader in West Nalichhara, who was kidnapped. The NLFT gang has demanded that the father go to the forest to meet them, which means certain death. Others killed include policemen belonging to the Tripura State Rifles, CISF and the BSF.

The Congress deliberately ignores these killings. It refuses to acknowledge the parentage of  the INPT as the NLFT. The Tripura Pradesh Congress went even further and blamed the CPI(M) for getting people killed by the extremists, by stating that the Left Front government is unable to check the extremist attacks. It is playing a cynical game of patronising the front of the NLFT and then attacking the Left Front government for failing to tackle the terror unleashed by the NLFT.

QUESTIONS TO BE ANSWERED

Congress leaders in Tripura are sharing the platform with INPT leaders in public meetings and conducting joint political activities. The NLFT must be gleeful at having acquired such an ‘illustrious’ ally. One is reminded of a similar episode when the underground TNV was encouraged and supported by the Congress. The letters written by the then Congress chief minister of Mizoram, Lalthanhawla, to the TNV leader are available, showing how the Congress used the TNV to destablise the Left Front government in the late 1980s. 

The national leadership of the Congress has much to answer for. Does it not know that the NLFT is instrumental in putting together the INPT as it is presently constituted? Does it recognise that the NLFT is the prime source of terrorist violence in Tripura and that it is operating from camps in Bangladesh bordering India? Can the fact that the Congress has no base among the tribal people in the state make its leadership sanction such an opportunist and dangerous electoral alliance? These are questions to be answered by the top leadership as the electoral alliance between the Congress and the INPT has the approval of the high command.

The policy adopted by the Congress in the past to isolate the CPI(M) and do everything to dislodge the Left Front government resulted in terrible violence and  hardship for the people of Tripura. People have not forgotten the bloody reign of terror between 1988 and 1993 under the Congress-TUJS government. It caused havoc in the tribal areas and created inter-ethnic tensions.

In the past ten years, much of this legacy has been erased. The Left Front government’s efforts to tackle the extremist depredations is yielding results. It will be a tragedy for Tripura, for the north-east and national unity if the Congress seeks to disrupt this process once again, for narrow electoral gains. 

At a time the BJP-RSS combine is unfolding its vicious agenda which has resulted in the Gujarat carnage and in daily onslaughts on the people's livelihood, as the major opposition party the Congress should be concentrating its energies in that direction. As a party representing the class interests which the CPI(M) opposes, it is understandable if the Congress takes on the CPI(M) and the Left politically in Tripura. But joining hands with the forces who murder the innocent and spread chauvinism and separatism is something which cannot be justified at any cost. It will prove self-destructive for the Congress. The CPI(M) and the Left will resolutely fight this unprincipled gang-up.