People's Democracy

AS is known, Tripura is facing a spurt in onslaught by outlawed extremist outfits in cruel forms like mass killings, selective annihilation of front-ranking CPI(M) and Upajati Ganamukti Parishad (GMP) workers, abduction of innocent persons from infants to the aged for ransom, extortion of money from impoverished villagers including tribal jhumias (shifting cultivators), and ruthless torture on the villagers who dare to defy their diktat. It was at such a time that the people of Tripura were wonder struck to see the INPT president Bijoy Kumar Hrangkhawl openly speaking in favour of these banned outfits, that too on an international forum, in a foreign land.

At the 20th session of the Working Group on Indigenous Population, held at Geneva on July 22-26, Hrangkhawl’s written speech said: "The younger generation could not compromise with the increasing incidents of negligence and treachery upon the Borok people, the indigenous people of Tripura. Thus the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) and the All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) came forward to fill the gap, demanding fundamental, constitutional and human rights of the Borok people of Tripura. Their demand is right to self-determination, which is a born right of every man and woman. They are not secessionist at all, as Tripura was never an integral part of India from time immemorial till India achieved independence."

As an argument against Tripura’s merger with India, Hrangkhawl said the Bengali intelligentsia pressured Maharani Kanchanprabha for this merger and, accordingly, a merger agreement was signed on October 15, 1949.

Terming the present and earlier constitutionally elected governments of Tripura as ‘foreigners rule,’ Hrangkhawl’s speech bemoaned: "it is clear that violating all norms including the UN charter of human rights and fundamental rights of the Indian constitution, foreigners are ruling our dear motherland and we the indigenous people are deprived of fundamental rights like (the) right to self-determination."

The concluding part of his speech appealed to the international opinion: "The partition of India and merger of Tripura with India caused great miseries to Borok nation. So it requires discussion in the international forum to formulate minimum human rights for the Borok nation for survival."

Enthused with Hrangkhawl’s Geneva speech, within a fortnight, on August 10, eight terrorist organisations of the north-east issued a joint statement captioned "Boycott India’s Independence Day celebrations and observe strike on August 15." (They included Tripura People’s Democratic Front, political wing of the outlawed ATTF.) The statement said: "We are observing the boycott against the backdrop of India’s desperate effort at international level to equate our struggle for right to national self-determination with terrorism, just as they are doing against the legitimate struggle of the Kashmiri people."

Reinforcing the boycott call, an NLFT release on August 12 disapproved Tripura’s accession to India: "It is needless to say that the merger was forced upon the kingdom of Tripura and against the will of the Boroks."

As a leader of the erstwhile Tripura Upajati Juba Samiti (TUJS), Hrangkhawl got notoriety as a leader of the ‘Tripur Sena,’ a regimented group of TUJS. He raised it in 1979 to counter the first Left Front government through violent means. In December 1980, he renamed his killer brigade as Tripura National Volunteers (TNV). The outfit fomented ethnic passions and triggered a tribal-non-tribal riot in the state in 1980. The TNV also killed several hundred innocent people from 1980 till the assembly elections in February 1988. In 1987, this TNV supremo entered a secret deal with the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi to dislodge the Left Front government.

Let us look back to some aspects of Rajiv-Hrangkhawl secret pact of 1987.

From his Bangladesh base, Hrangkhawl wrote to Rajiv Gandhi on October 27, 1987, proposing a negotiation: "For national and greater interests I have felt that immediately we should sit together and solve our problems…. If delayed and neglected, then it would be on your responsibility to explain the reason."

He ended his letter setting two conditions:

(1) Immediately dissolve the CPI(M)-led ministry of Tripura, and

2. Declare a ceasefire on both sides.

The then Mizoram chief minister and Congress leader Lalthanhawla handed this letter over to Rajiv Gandhi. After parleying with the prime minister and the home minister, Lalthanhawla mediated in the deal as Rajiv Gandhi’s envoy and replied to Hrangkhawl:

"New Delhi is not in a position to take immediate initiative because elections to the legislative assembly of Tripura has been announced for February 2 and the time at the disposal of New Delhi is too short now. On top of this, our party is not in power in Tripura, which make the situation more difficult for the centre.

"It is therefore felt that the atmosphere is not ripe for starting a dialogue till the election is over. However, I can assure you, from what I could gather from my discussion with Sh Rajiv Gandhi and Sh Buta Singh, that they are keen for a peaceful settlement of the problem and that they will take initiative for starting a dialogue after the election, whether we come to power or not."

From the above, it appears that Bijoy Hrangkhawl, who was so eager to have a negotiation as early as possible, was asked by Shri Rajiv Gandhi to rest till the election was over. Moreover, while the Left Front government had given a standing call to the extremist outfits to come for negotiations any time anywhere, the centre thought that it was difficult to hold negotiations with the TNV as the Congress was not in power in the state.

Yet, keeping in his pocket Hrangkhawl’s letter, Rajiv Gandhi made a stormy tour to Tripura on November 28, 1987, launching a tirade against the Left Front government. He said the LF had failed to combat the extremist carnage. This turned out to be an oblique signal to the TNV’s den in Bangladesh.

Complying with this signal, the TNV intensified savage killings of innocent people in the state. Then, within a week before the poll day, it most brutally butchered more than a hundred Bengali men, women and children in several places, mostly in rural areas, so as to turn the poll-eve atmosphere in favour of the Congress. Soon the Congress-TUJS coalition stole its way into power by grossly falsifying the verdict, when even winners were declared defeated after ‘recounting.’ Now Hrangkhawl and several hundred of his men signed a ‘surrender deal’ with the Rajiv government on August 12, 1988. The supremo of an "Independent Tripura" contented himself with the chairmanship of Tripura Rehabilitation and Plantation Corporation, a state undertaking.

Hrangkhawl subsequently floated an overground party with the old brand name of TNV. But, in 1989, apparently at his behest, some of his followers drifted from open political activity to form another extremist outfit --- the NLFT. The Congress was their closest ally in 1993 assembly polls. However, in view of the fluid situation at the centre and its own decadence, the Congress was unable to find an ally in the state. In the 1996 Lok Sabha polls, the extremists scrapped ties with the Congress. But they allied with the Congress in 1998 again. In 1999, TNV and some breakaway groups of the TUJS and its frontal organisations formed the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT), remote controlled by the NLFT from its Bangladesh hideout.

With the help of this "invisible allied force" (as some of the local media term them), IPFT, open political wing of the outlawed NLFT, usurped power in the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC, or ADC in short). In fact, the NLFT guns made the polls a total farce in a majority of the ADC constituencies. It was then that the Congress, with an eye to the assembly polls slated for early next year, decided to align with the IPFT. On the other hand, having lost its value as a hunter dog against the GMP and CPI(M), the TUJS disgracefully merged with the IPFT. Thus was liquidated a 35 years old party that all along claimed to be a champion of tribal interests.

Apart from the Left Front and its constituent parties, all sections of the people, print and electronic media, and political parties including a section of the Congress leaders like former chief minister Samir Ranjan Barman heavily condemned Hrangkhawl’s seditious speech in Geneva. Barman said "this attitude and deliberation is contrary to the communal harmony and national stability. Secondly, such comments are tantamount to declaration of war against Indian constitution and the rules and regulations enforced in the country." But, in order to shield the INPT, he said these were Hrangkhawl’s personal views and hoped that the INPT, where there are so many moderate leaders belonging to the erstwhile TUJS, would not officially share such views. To his disappointment, however, the INPT unitedly stood by its president. It divulged that the speech was drafted by Shyamacharan Tripura, a so-called moderate leader of former TUJS, and approved by the INPT.

But conspicuously, the Congress is keeping mum. Apparently, it is able neither to digest the speech nor to break its ties with its so-called ‘valued’ ally. To date, it has not reacted on such a serious matter that shook the entire state.

This silence on part of the Congress is a shameful admission of its crime of hobnobbing with the anti-national forces, to the detriment of our communal harmony, ethnic amity, political stability and above all to our sovereignty and national integrity. It did so covertly in 1987 and is now doing it overtly. Least concerned for democratic norms, moral values and accountability, its only concern is to capture power by hook or by crook.

Why does the Congress condemn any extremist carnage in the state? Why does it not agree with the state government’s demand for more security forces for combating extremists? Why is it not opposing the INPT demand for withdrawal of Tripura State Rifles from the extremist-infested areas? Why does it not share the LF demand for barbed wire fencing along the Tripura-Bangladesh international border? Why does it not demand a dismantling of the extremist bases inside Bangladesh? All this is now crystal clear.

But doesn’t the Congress realise that the people of Tripura won’t fail to give its silence and its nexus with the anti-national forces a fitting reply?