Gedu Mian and the Partition of Tripura

Since Partition, Tripura has been cut off from ‘mainland India’ and today it feels like a remote backwater. But it wasn’t always this way; only seventy years ago it was a flourishing centre of arts and culture, and a leading contender for the title of artistic capital of Northeast India. This essay looks at the changes brought on by Partition in Tripura through the eyes of an elephant mahout-turned Pakistani separatist, Mohammad Abdul Barik Khan, commonly known as Gedu Mian.

Citation

The Partition history of Tripura isn’t very well known today, even within India itself, but few places were as affected. In just over a decade this “small thumb of land that juts into Bangladesh from Assam’s northeast”^[1] underwent a greater and more violent demographic shift than anywhere in the subcontinent outside of Punjab.

The effects of Partition are visible everywhere you go in the state. In October 2021, I drove south from the state capital of Agartala to the terracotta lake city of Udaipur in search of a grand Mughal Mosque. It was built by prince Shah Shuja when he fled across his Empire’s eastern frontier after losing the Mughal war of succession to his elder brother, the Emperor Aurangzeb. The Maharaja of Tripura,^[2] whose small kingdom in the Patkai hills had long resisted Mughal rule, granted Shuja refuge and protection.

Rice paddies gave way to hills cut by vast canyons and traversed by rickety bridges, and I passed through evergreen jungle that sheltered wild elephants – once the backbone of the economy but now reduced to an endangered species. Udaipur was a pretty, laid back temple-town, perched below a ridge of hills and dotted with ponds, but nobody there had heard of the mosque I was looking for: I was always pointed in the direction of a modern dargah.

It was only after an hour of searching in searing sunlight and brutal humidity that I spotted a dome looming behind a small concrete house. Shuja’s Mosque – testament to a time when Tripura was able to fend off the mightiest empire India had ever known – lay in ruins, and was being used as a store room. The family living there told me that the Muslim devotees who used to worship here fled to East Pakistan in 1947. Three decades later this family of destitute Bengali refugees had moved in, seeking shelter from genocide across the border. The Mosque built by a refugee is now home to refugees.

Since Partition, Tripura has been cut off from ‘mainland India’ and today it feels like a remote backwater. But it wasn’t always this way; only seventy years ago it was a flourishing centre of arts and culture. The exuberant Maharajas of Tripura were some of the great pioneers of photography in India: Maharaja Bir Chandra, the architect of Tripura’s modern capital Agartala, had acquired one of the first two cameras available in India, built a darkroom, and converted part of his palace into the state’s first photography gallery.^[3] His protegee Rabindranath Tagore (who briefly enjoyed a career as Tripura’s unofficial revenue advisor) became the first non-European to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, while a scion of his royal dynasty, S.D. Burman became one of the most important and influential musicians in Indian cinema. The neoclassical Ujjayanta Palace possibly inspired the palace in Hergé’s Tintin.^[4]

In 1923, when the sixteen-year-old painter and polo player Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya became the 186^th Manikya to take the throne,^[5] he embarked on a construction spree across the state. He built gardens and fountains, a floating art-deco palace on the great lake at Neermahal, and a vast Indo-Saracenic college in Agartala. New roads were constructed where previously traffic could only move down the dark rivers that cut through the densely bamboo-forested hills. By 1939 the Maharaja was enacting a series of progressive reforms, zealously drafting a modern constitution for his state “where traditional Indian culture harmonises with modern thought”^[6] that would ensure democratic elections and women’s rights in his state.^[7] He opened a series of deaf and dumb schools for disabled children in the rural areas and during the Dhaka riots of 1941, he opened the state to “at least 15,000 Bengali migrants” on the grounds of humanitarian aid.^[8]

But with the coming of World War II, Tripura society was to change forever. News rattled over the radio on December 8^th 1941 that the Japanese had attacked the American port of Pearl Harbour. By Christmas the Japanese had conquered Malaya, crossed onto Burmese soil and began a march towards Delhi. A new wave of refugees streamed into Tripura from Burma, fleeing from the Japanese, and Tripura was put on a war footing.^[9] Taxes skyrocketed and conscription was imposed but for some in Tripura, the war provided great opportunities.

Mohammad Abdul Barik Khan, commonly known as Gedu Mian, grew up on the banks of the Haora River from a hereditary family of elephant mahouts (drivers). The region around Agartala had been a great source of elephants for centuries^[10] but as the city urbanised, Gedu Mian abandoned the elephant business to find work in a car garage as a taxi driver. He married into a reasonably well-off family, and with help from his father-in-law became a small-time contractor.^[11] Eventually he even set up a private bank called Khush Mohol and began loaning money to the Maharaja Bir Bikram himself.

As the Japanese swept through Southeast Asia and began to approach the Patkai hills dividing India and Burma, the British made a last-ditch attempt to industrialise and defend the Eastern reaches of India. Money poured into the state to build new roads, armouries and military cantonments. Gedu Mian, the former elephant mahout, proved business savvy and in 1942 unexpectedly bagged a contract to build Tripura’s first ever airport. By the end of the war, he was the wealthiest non-royal in Tripura, and had moved into a grand new house in central Agartala called ‘Gedu Mian Bari’, its façade resembling the palace of the king himself. Gedu Mian and the Maharaja enjoyed a close relationship, even as many of the upper-class nobility looked down on him as ‘nouveau riche’.^[12]

But not everyone did well out of the war. The trickle of refugees was turning into a raging torrent and discontented hill communities found a voice in the magnetic tribal ascetic Ratanmoli Noatia, a Kali devotee from the nearby Chittagong Hills who raised his flag in revolt. His movement emphasised tribal solidarity against Bengali foreigners.^[13] Although quickly crushed, Noatia’s movement was symptomatic of the worsening relationship between Bengalis and indigenous communities in the state under the stress of war. Maharaja Bir Bikram, himself from the indigenous Tiprasa community, set up a forested reserve in which only tribal communities were allowed to settle, temporarily alleviating tribal concerns whilst continuing to allow Bengali refugees to settle in the state.

The war came to an end in 1945, but the refugee crisis kept on growing. By this time, the Pakistan movement had polarized neighbouring Bengal and by September 1946 a frenzy of killing that began in Calcutta spread down the dark Meghna River to the districts of British India that surrounded Tripura. Between 50,000-75,000 people, mostly Bengali Hindus, took shelter in Tripura; the newly constructed college alone accommodated four thousand destitute refugees.^[14]

The mass influx of Bengalis into Tripura was beginning to shatter the visage of harmony between Bengalis and the tribals, but the Maharaja could hardly turn the new arrivals away. These people were also, in everyday practice if not theory, his subjects. In the 18^th century, Tripura’s Bengali speaking plains had been confiscated by the British, and the Maharajas were reduced to the status of zamindar landlords there. This estate was called Chakla Roshanabad.^[15] The bizarre colonial division of Tripura and Chakla Roshanabad was never really an issue before and as late as 1931 Chakla Roshanabad was still “held to form with the [Tripura] state an indivisible Raj.”^[16] It was from this zamindari estate that refugees were now arriving.

As Maharaja Bir Bikram faced new tensions from within his dominions, he also faced challenges from outside his state. The politicians in New Delhi had made it quite clear that the princely states would be forced to ‘integrate’ their kingdoms with one of the new dominions: India or Pakistan.^[17] Tripura State was on the border and had the option to join either India or Pakistan. After briefly toying with an independent ‘Tribalistan’ in Eastern India similar to a Crown Colony plan then doing the rounds among a section of British administrators, Maharaja Bir Bikram decided to join the Hindu-majority Tripura state to India.^[18] The issue was that the neighbouring Chakla Roshanabad zamindari had a Muslim majority, and as a part of British India it was to be massed in with East Pakistan no matter the Maharaja’s decision. Virtually every single road in Tripura state passed through Chakla Roshanabad, and the Maharaja’s income there funded the princely state administration. If a border were to divide the hills from the plains, the economy would be decimated.

Before he could negotiate a solution to the problem of his accession, Maharaja Bir Bikram abruptly passed away from chronic pneumonia on May 17th, 1947. His heir was a minor, and so the king’s Bundela wife Maharani Kanchan Prabha Devi set up a regency council to make a decision on Tripura’s future. In an act of neutrality, she declared both 15^th and 16^th August – the independence days of India and Pakistan respectively – as public holidays to be celebrated in both the Manikya dominions, which still included both the princely state as well as the zamindari estate in the plains.

As August rains pelted down on the flooded streets of Agartala, the British left the Indian subcontinent and improvised borders were hastily branded onto the landscape, separating a Hindu-majority India and the newly created Muslim-majority Pakistan. East Bengal became a part of the new Pakistani state separated from the rest of Pakistan by thousands of miles of hostile Indian territory. In the words of Salman Rushdie, Pakistan became a “fantastic bird of a place, two wings without a body, sundered by the land-mass of its greatest foe, joined by nothing but God.”^[19] Separated from the mainland by the new state of East Pakistan, India’s Northeast was also transformed into a uniquely tenuous geographical oddity, only connected to the rest of India by a 10 kilometres strip of land that would become known as ‘the chicken’s neck’.

Squashed in between the two new fragile states was Tripura, now cut off from the world by two new borders.

By late October the President of the Bengal Congress Committee was writing to Sardar Patel that “There is now no regular communication between any territory of the Indian Union and the State [of Tripura]”^[20], urging the immediate creation of roads to the state from elsewhere in the country. Cut off from every single road into the state by the new borders (which sundered links even into neighbouring Assam), the Agartala Airport that Gedu Mian had built became the only link between Tripura and the rest of India.

It was in this environment that Gedu Mian became the leading voice for merging Tripura with Pakistan in the state.^[21] Mian’s bank had recently failed, but ever resourceful, he had converted the building into a motel^[22] and moved into social work and politics. He had formed a new pro-Muslim League political party – the Anjuman-e-Islamia^[23] – in 1945 and as the situation grew worse, he began canvassing support for Tripura’s merger with East Pakistan.

The details of what happened next are hazy, but according to most accounts Gedu Mian managed to persuade several of Tripura’s Hindu elite – notably the Chief Minister Satyavrata Mukherjee^[24] – to support a merger with East Pakistan rather than India.^[25] Gedu Mian also joined hands with the anti-immigration indigenous rights party ‘Cheng Crak’, led by the late King’s younger brother Durjoy Kishore. Gedu Mian convinced him that only a merger with Pakistan would stop Bengali Hindus fleeing to the state and outnumbering the indigenous tribal population.^[26]

By November 1947, Mian was leading major protests across the state. The Swaraj daily newspaper predicted than an economic blockade of Tripura was imminent.^[27] Alarming intelligence began to reach New Delhi that “preparations are being made to invade Tripura. Several pamphlets inciting Muslims to conquer Tripura and annex it to East Bengal are in circulation in Eastern Pakistan”.^[28] Two government servants separately wrote to Sardar Patel urging him to take action.^[29] “I am rather distressed to hear that tactics similar to those employed in the case of Kashmir are being resorted to by Pakistan for creating trouble in Tripura state,” wrote K. C. Neogy.^[30]

In the whirlpool of rumours, it is hard to gauge what was actually going on.^[31] Certainly “The situation in Tripura… was not nearly so bad as was reported in the press”.^[32] Rumours that the Tripura Maharaja planned to annex the Chakla Roshanabad estate were shared across the border, which were blatantly false. But whatever the case, by mid-November several rival militia groups had been set up across the state. The Congress and Communist Party – usually bitterly divided over everything– joined hands with the anti-Pakistan Muslim organisation ‘Tripura Rajya Praja Majlish’^[33]. The Kirit Bikram Rakshi Bahini ‘resistance force’ was formed to intimidate the Anjuman and make sure Tripura didn’t fall to Pakistan.

As the situation worsened, the Maharani dissolved the regency council, made herself sole regent, and flew to New Delhi “to secure Indian help to abort a possible Kashmir-type operation in Tripura”.^[34] Sardar Patel assured her of full military support from the Indian government and soon after, the Governor of Assam Akbar Hydari arrived in the state. Finally, on 11^th November 1947, the Maharani announced “The Accession of this state to the Dominion of India” which had apparently been “decided by the late ruler after due consideration and full consultation with all sections of the people”.^[35]

Five days before Christmas, Jawaharlal Nehru fired Chief Minister Satyavrata Mukherjee, and two weeks later Durjoy Kishore was forced to resign and leave the state.^[36] Gedu Mian and his family fled to Comilla – 50 kilometres across the border in East Pakistan, where they faded from relevance. His grand house in Agartala, Gedu Mian Bari, was seized by the state and today has been converted into the Regional Coaching Centre Agartala.^[37] “There was evidence of pro-Pakistani elements at work in Tripura,” wrote Nari Rustomji, Governor Hydari’s advisor, “but we were fully alert and quickly pounced on the trouble-makers.”^[38]

The Maharani signed a merger agreement with the Government on 9th September 1949,^[39] and so the ancient kingdom of Tripura ceased to exist.^[40]

When the dust had settled, ‘Tripura’ emerged as part of the Indian Union, and ‘Chakla Roshanabad’ as part of East Pakistan. Just like Punjab, Bengal and Assam, the events of 1947 partitioned the dominions of the Manikya dynasty between two new states. The new border was a disaster for Tripura: only 50 miles from South Asia’s greatest port at Chittagong, the state found itself cut off from its entire export economy and 1000 miles away the nearest available Indian port, Calcutta. Tripura’s only train station was 3 kilometres on the other side of the border.

The border was also fatal to all of the Maharaja’s tenants who ended up in East Pakistan. When Pakistan abolished the zamindari system in 1950, the Maharaja’s land was seized as ‘Enemy Property’. Most affected by this was not the royal family, but the ziratia tenants who lived in the zamindari but owned land in Tripura state. “Within a few years, they had been turned from the Maharaja’s loyal subjects into Pakistani foreigners without rights…the ziaratias, unlike the Maharaja, were not compensated in any way.”^[41]

Over time, much of Tripura’s elite Muslim community left the state. They were frequently perceived as separatists by the Indian Government now, and “in April 1950, Tripura officials were instrumental in the burning of Kamalpur town and the killing and driving out of its Muslim population. In 1951, the Tripura government started requisitioning land owned by Tripura Muslims in the border area in order to settle Hindus who had fled there from East Pakistan.”^[42]

Meanwhile, thousands more Bengali Hindu refugees poured into the state and within three years Tripura would undergo a dramatic demographic shift. The new government scrapped the 800 kilometres² tribal reserve set up by Maharaja Bir Bikram “for increasing land revenue, economic growth and particularly for refugee rehabilitation.”^[43] This was the first of several such acts, which gradually chipped away at the tribal reserves. “Hundreds of Bengali refugee settlements started springing up in the hills, often bearing names like ‘Atharacard’ (Eighteen Cards) or ‘Baiscard’ (Twenty-two Cards)”^[44] after the number of families in the town that had been allotted government refugee cards.

Until 1947, indigenous tribal communities had been a majority in Tripura state, or Hill Tippera. By the 1980s, they comprised less than 25%.^[45]

As Tripura’s indigenous population became a minority in their own homeland, ethnic tensions exploded into violent riots, sparking one of the first insurgencies in India’s Northeast. In 1980, 250-400 Bengalis were massacred in the village of Mandai, just on the edge of Agartala in a brutal show of racial violence. The justification for the violence was an alleged Bengali plot to change Tripura’s demography.

Although ignored in most of the country, events in Tripura were watched by the rest of the Northeast. In the words of Subir Bhaumik, “Powerful nativist movements in neighbouring Assam and Meghalaya and elsewhere in the region hold up Tripura’s example of demographic transformation to justify their campaign against unrestrained migration from neighbouring countries.”^[46]

After East Pakistan descended into genocide in 1971, ever more Bengali refugees sought refuge in India’s Northeast. The term ‘infiltrators’, used by parliamentarians in Tripura to identify Bengali immigrants since the 1960s gained currency across the region.^[47] In 1985, the ‘Assam Accord’ was signed to stop Bengali migration to Assam state and prevent it from ‘turning into another Tripura’. To do so, a new ‘National Register of Citizens’^[48] was established in the state.

Only a handful of books have been published on the Tripura conflict, and it is still widely unknown to most Indians outside the Northeast. But we ignore it at our own peril. The refugee crisis here is crucial to understanding the fault lines of modern South Asia.

In 2019, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah announced that the National Register of Citizens would be extended to the entire country. Attached to the Register was a controversial new ‘Citizenship Amendment Act’, which effectively rendered Muslim immigrants from post-1971 as illegal immigrants while protecting refugees from other religious communities. As protests broke out across the country, the European Parliament has warned that the legislation is “set to create the largest statelessness crisis in the world.”^[49]

Notes and References

1. Hazarika, S., Strangers of the Mist: Tales of War and Peace from India’s Northeast (New Delhi: Penguin India, 2011), p. 123. ↑
2. A Twipra dynasty from Burma’s Arakan. See Bhattacharjee, A., & Vittal, B., S. D. Burman: The Prince Musician (Tranquebar: Westland Publications, 2018), p.3. ↑
3. https://www.indianmemoryproject.com/178/. ↑
4. It is a common claim in Agartala that the Ujjayanta palace inspired the Gaipajama Palace, featured in the two Tintin stories Cigars of the Pharaoh and The Blue Lotus. I have not found independent evidence of this. ↑
5. As cited in Lintner, B., Great Game East: India China and the Struggle for Asia’s Most Volatile Frontier (Noida: Harper Collins India, 2016), p. 203.This official number is somewhat controversial, deriving from the 15^th century text ‘Rajmala’ which listed 149 kings of Twipra as of 1431. The historical accuracy of the list has since been called into question. ↑
6. Chakravarti, M. “Documentation of the Process of Integration of Princely Tripura with the Indian Union” in ed. Nag, S., Gurung T. & Choudhury, A., Making of the Indian Union: Merger of the Princely States and Excluded Areas (New Delhi: Akansha Publishing House, 2007), p. 314. ↑
7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU2iS-o2quc. ↑
8. Ghoshal, A., Refugees, Borders and Identities: Rights and Habitat in East and Northeast India (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021), p. 144. ↑
9. Lintner, B., Great Game East: India China and the Struggle for Asia’s Most Volatile Frontier (Noida: Harper Collins India, 2016), p. 204. ↑
10. Ghoshal A.,” Statelessness or Permanent Rehabilitation: Issues Relating to the Chakmas of Chittagong Hill Tract in Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura” In ed. Bhattacharyya A., Basu S. Marginalities in India (Singapore: Springer, 2018), p. 265. ↑
11. Private Interview, Subir Bhaumik, November, 2021. ↑
12. Private Interview, Subir Bhaumik, November, 2021. ↑
13. Bhaumik, S. Insurgent Crossfire: North-East India (New Delhi: South Godstone: 1996), p. 68. ↑
14. Ghoshal, A., Refugees, Borders and Identities: Rights and Habitat in East and Northeast India (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021), p. 144. ↑
15. The zamindari was often called ‘Plains Tipperah’, as opposed to Princely ‘Hill Tipperah’. In the 1920s Hill Tipperah was renamed ‘Tripura’, whilst the plains retained the name ‘Tipperah’. ↑
16. Hunter, W. W. The Imperial Gazetteer of India, New Edition, published under the authority of His Majesty’s Secretary of State for India in Council. Vol 13. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908-1931), p. 119. ↑
17. Chishti, S. M. A. W., Political Development In Manipur 1919-1949 (Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science: Aligarh Muslim University, 1979).Sudhirkumar Singh, H., Socio-Religious and Political · Movements in Modern Manipur (1934-51) (Doctor of Philosophy Thesis, Jawaharlal Nehru University), Chapter 6, p. 144. ↑
18. Bhaumik, S. Insurgent Crossfire: North-East India (New Delhi: South Godstone: 1996), p. 69. ↑
19. Rushdie, S. Shame (London: Jonathan Cape, 1983), p.178. ↑
20. Chakravarti, M. “Documentation of the Process of Integration of Princely Tripura with the Indian Union” in ed. Nag, S., Gurung T. & Choudhury, A., Making of the Indian Union: Merger of the Princely States and Excluded Areas (New Delhi: Akansha Publishing House, 2007), p. 318. ↑
21. According to Seyyed Sajjad Ali, a journalist based in Tripura, the movement was not led by Gedu Mian himself, but rather he became a casualty of it by association. Ali argued that there is little evidence that Mian’s protests showed any evidence of pro-Pakistani leanings. ↑
22. Private Interview, Seyyed Sajjad Ali, December, 2021. ↑
23. Ghoshal, A., Refugees, Borders and Identities: Rights and Habitat in East and Northeast India (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021), p. 143. ↑
24. Chakravarti, M. “Documentation of the Process of Integration of Princely Tripura with the Indian Union” in ed. Nag, S., Gurung T. & Choudhury, A., Making of the Indian Union: Merger of the Princely States and Excluded Areas (New Delhi: Akansha Publishing House, 2007), p. 319. ↑
25. Sinha, S. P., Lost Opportunities: 50 Years of Insurgency in the North-East and India’s Response (New Delhi: Lancer Publishers and Distributors, 2007), p. 131. ↑
26. Seyyed Sajjad Ali, a journalist based in Tripura, argues that the movement was spearheaded by Durjoy Kishore, and not led by Gedu Mian himself. ↑
27. De, R. K., “Merger and Princely Tripura’s Political Transition: 1947-49” in ed. Nag, S., Gurung T. & Choudhury, A., Making of the Indian Union: Merger of the Princely States and Excluded Areas (New Delhi: Akansha Publishing House, 2007), p. 349. ↑
28. Chakravarti, M. “Documentation of the Process of Integration of Princely Tripura with the Indian Union” in ed. Nag, S., Gurung T. & Choudhury, A., Making of the Indian Union: Merger of the Princely States and Excluded Areas (New Delhi: Akansha Publishing House, 2007), p. 332. ↑
29. De, R. K., “Merger and Princely Tripura’s Political Transition: 1947-49” in ed. Nag, S., Gurung T. & Choudhury, A., Making of the Indian Union: Merger of the Princely States and Excluded Areas (New Delhi: Akansha Publishing House, 2007). ↑
30. Chakravarti, M. “Documentation of the Process of Integration of Princely Tripura with the Indian Union” in ed. Nag, S., Gurung T. & Choudhury, A., Making of the Indian Union: Merger of the Princely States and Excluded Areas (New Delhi: Akansha Publishing House, 2007), p. 320. ↑
31. The best summary of these rumours can be found in De, R. K., “Merger and Princely Tripura’s Political Transition: 1947-49” in ed. Nag, S., Gurung T. & Choudhury, A., Making of the Indian Union: Merger of the Princely States and Excluded Areas (New Delhi: Akansha Publishing House, 2007), p. 348-9. ↑
32. Chakravarti, M. “Documentation of the Process of Integration of Princely Tripura with the Indian Union” in ed. Nag, S., Gurung T. & Choudhury, A., Making of the Indian Union: Merger of the Princely States and Excluded Areas (New Delhi: Akansha Publishing House, 2007), p. 336. ↑
33. De, R. K., “Merger and Princely Tripura’s Political Transition: 1947-49” in ed. Nag, S., Gurung T. & Choudhury, A., Making of the Indian Union: Merger of the Princely States and Excluded Areas (New Delhi: Akansha Publishing House, 2007), p. 347. ↑
34. Bhaumik, S. Insurgent Crossfire: North-East India (New Delhi: South Godstone: 1996), p. 70. ↑
35. Chakravarti, M. “Documentation of the Process of Integration of Princely Tripura with the Indian Union” in ed. Nag, S., Gurung T. & Choudhury, A., Making of the Indian Union: Merger of the Princely States and Excluded Areas (New Delhi: Akansha Publishing House, 2007), p. 318. ↑
36. Bhaumik, S. Insurgent Crossfire: North-East India (New Delhi: South Godstone: 1996), p. 70. ↑
37. Private Interview, Subir Bhaumik, November, 2021. ↑
38. Chakravarti, M. “Documentation of the Process of Integration of Princely Tripura with the Indian Union” in ed. Nag, S., Gurung T. & Choudhury, A., Making of the Indian Union: Merger of the Princely States and Excluded Areas (New Delhi: Akansha Publishing House, 2007), p. 320. ↑
39. The state became a Union territory a month later 15 October, and a state of India in 1972. ↑
40. There was resentment for many in Tripura that the decision to join India had been made by a foreign regent (the Maharani was from Panna in Madhya Pradesh. To this day many of the state’s residents resent that their state was merged with India by a foreign regent.) ↑
41. Van Schendel, W, The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia (London: Anthem Press, 2005), p. 127. ↑
42. Van Schendel, W, The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia (London: Anthem Press, 2005), p. 99.↑
43. 
    Bhattacharyya, G., Refugee Rehabilitation and Its Impact on Tripura’s Economy (New Delhi: Omsons Publications, 1988), p. 17-20. ↑
44. Bhaumik, S., “Tripura, Ethnic Conflict, Militancy and Counterinsurgency” in Policies and Practises. 2012. 52: p. 8. ↑
45. Bhaumik, S., “Tripura, Ethnic Conflict, Militancy and Counterinsurgency” in Policies and Practises. 2012. 52: p. 5. ↑
46. Bhaumik, S., “Tripura, Ethnic Conflict, Militancy and Counterinsurgency” in Policies and Practises. 2012. 52: p. 4. ↑
47. Van Schendel, W, The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia (London: Anthem Press, 2005), p. 195. ↑
48. The first NRC was conducted in Assam in 1951. ↑
49. https://indianexpress.com/article/world/set-to-create-largest-statelessness-crisis-in-the-world-european-parliament-to-debate-caa-next-week-6236738/ ↑