Contributed articles.

Deals with the Santal, Oraon, Bhil, and Munda people of Tripura.

The development of a state cannot be confined only to its economic arena but the socio-political, as well as cultural fields of a state, were also needed to be developed and modernized. Among the various guiding forces behind the development process of a state, migration sometimes plays a vital role in it. During the last fifty years of Manikya rule, a large number of immigrants, especially Bengali immigrants, entered into the princely, hilly state of Tripura from colonial India. These immigrations though outnumbered the aborigines of this hilly state, but it stimulated the developmental process of this Princely State which was initiated by the Manikya rulers in the last quarter of the 19th century. This book is a humble attempt to find out the relations between migration and the material development of Tripura. Furthermore, how much migration is responsible for changing the total infrastructural change of the Princely State Tripura and what were the factors that worked behind the immigrations during the last fifty years of Manikya rule are highlighted from a historical perspective.

This book is a document that tells about a community. This book tells about a civilization. For me, this book is an abidance of the growth of a particular area that is known for its culture and tradition. Not only that, this book gives me a chance to know my birth-place (Tripura). It gives me a chance to explore my place newly. Even it gives me also a chance to know about the creative features of a state which is enriched by the contributions of the people of the land.

Tripura in India’s Northeast remains the only region in the world which has sustained a strong left radical political tradition for more than a century, in a context not usually congenial for left politics. Tripura is one of the 29 States in India which has returned the Communist Party of India (Marxist) led Left Front repeatedly to power. By contrast, radical ethnic politics dot the political scenario in the rest of the region. This book examines the roots, nature, governmental performance, and theoretical and policy implications of left radicalism in Tripura. The case of Tripura is placed in comparison with her neighbours in the region, and in some cases with India’s advanced States in governance matters. Based on original archival and the very recent empirical and documentary sources on the subject, the author shows that the Left in Tripura is well-entrenched, and that it has sustained itself compared to other parts of India, despite deeply rooted ethnic tensions between the aboriginal peoples (tribes) and immigrant Bengalis. The book explains how the Left sustains itself in the social and economic contexts of persistent ethnic conflicts, which are, rarely, if ever, punctuated by incipient class conflicts in a predominantly rural society in Tripura. It argues that shorn of the Indian Marxism’s ‘theoretical’ shibboleths, the Left in Tripura, which is part of the Indian Left, has learned to accommodate non-class tribal ethnicity within their own discourse and practices of government. This study demolishes the so-called ‘durable disorder’ hypothesis in the existing knowledge on India’s Northeast. A useful contribution to the study of radical left politics in India in general and state politics in particular, this book will be of interest to researchers of modern Indian history, India’s Northeast, and South Asian Politics.