History of Tripura

About Tripura

Introduction

Tripura is a North East Indian State.It is one of the seven sisters family.The third smallest state in the country,It covers 10,491 km2(4,051 sq mt)and is borderd by Bangla desh to the north and west and Indian states of Assam and Mizoram in the east.As of 2011,the state had 3,671,032 residents,constituting 0.3%of the country's population.Indigenous communities known in Indian as scheduled tribes, drom about 30% of Tripura's population.The Kokborok-speaking Tripuri people are the major group among 19 tribes and many subtribes .Bengali people from the ethno-linguistic majority.
The names Tripura is a Sanskrit word,meaning 'three cities'.The Sanskrit name is link to Tripura Sundari,the presiding deity of the Tripua Sundari temple at Udaipur,one of the 51 Shakti Peethas and to the legendary tryant king Tripur,who reigned in the region.Tripur was the 39th descendant of Druhyu,who belonged to the lineage of Yayati , a king of the Lunar Dynasty.
The area of modern Tripura was ruled for several centuries by the Tripuri dynasty.It was a princely state during British rule, and joined the newly independent India in 1949.Ethenic strife between the indigenous people and Bengali population led to tension and scattered violence since its integration into the country,but the establishment of an autonomous tribal administrative agency and other strategies have led to peace.

History of Tripura

The history of Tripura is very old.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 Mahabharat,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.An ancient name of Tripura is Kirat Desh(The land of Kirat),probably referring to the Kirata kingdoms or the more generic term Kirata; however it is unclear if the extent of modern Tripura is coterminous with Kirat Desh.The region was under the rule of the Twipra kingdom for centuries,although when thios dates from is not documented .The Rajmala,a chronicle of Tripura 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 bounderies of the kingdom changed over the centuries.At vaeious times ,the borders reached south to the jungles of the Sunderbans on the Bay of Bengal; east to Burma ; and north to the boundery of the Kamrupa Kingdom in Assam.There were several Muslim invasions of the region from the 13th century onward,which culminated in Mughal dominance of the plains of the kingdom in 1733,although their rule never extendd to hill regions.The Mughals had influence over the appoinment of the Tripuri kings.Tripura became a princely state during British rule in India.The king had an ested 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.Udaipur ,in the south of Tripura ,was the capital of the kingdom,until the king Krishna Manikya 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.
After the independence of India in 1947,Tippera district-the estate in the plains of British India-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 9th 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.The geographic partition that coinsided with the independence of India resulted in major econimic and infrastructural setbacks for the state,as road transport between the state and the major cities of Indian had to follow a more circuitous route.The road distance between Kolkata and Agartala before the partition was less than 350 km and incressed to 1.700 km as the route now avoided East Pakistan.The geo-political isolation was aggravated by an absence of rail transport.
Some part of the state were shelled by the pPakistan Army during Indo-Pakistan war of 1971.Following the war ,the Indian government reorganised the North East region to ensure effective control of the international borders.
Three new state cames into existence on 21 January 1972 : Meghalaya,Manipur and Tripura.Since partition of India,many hindu Bengalis migrated to Tripura as refugees from East Pakistan settlement by Bengalis increased at the time of the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971.Before independence most of the population were indigenous now they became minority .Ethenic strife between the tribes and the predominantly immigrant Bengali community led to scattered violence and an insurgency spanning decades .This gradually abated following the establishment of a tribal autonomous district council and the use of strategic counter-insurgency operations, aided by the overall socio-economic progress of the state.