The Long Displacement: The Plight of Bengali Hindus in Tripura ( 1947– present )
Saurav Gupta
August 21, 2025
Tripura’s story since 1947 is inseparable from movement—of borders, of people, and of belonging. For Bengali Hindus, the state became both a refuge and a frontier, a place to restart life and a place where that life was repeatedly unsettled by waves of violence, militancy, and political rearrangements. Their journey—from the first crossings after Partition to the traumas of the 1980s insurgency and the uneasy calm of the 2000s— reveals how fragile security can be when demographic change, competing nationalisms, and armed groups converge.
Refuge in a princely state:
When British India was partitioned in August 1947, Tripura was still a princely state adjacent to the newly formed East Pakistan. Violence and discrimination across the border pushed many Bengali Hindu families to move into Tripura, which had long-standing cultural and administrative links with Bengal. These flows intensified again during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, as another large cohort of Hindu refugees fled conflict and reprisal to reach the relative safety of Tripura’s plains and towns. Academic and policy studies consistently note that these migrations altered Tripura’s social and political landscape in enduring ways, expanding the Bengali Hindu population and compressing the space—literal and symbolic—of indigenous communities.
For families who crossed with little more than memories, Tripura offered roads, markets, and schooling, but also years of hardship: camps, makeshift housing, and slow access to land or jobs. The state’s rulers and later governments did attempt rehabilitation, but the scale of movement meant that settlement often occurred on the margins—forest edges, revenue land, and areas historically used by tribal communities for shifting cultivation. The seeds of later conflict were present in these early choices.
From tension to bloodshed:
By the late 1970s, competition over land and political representation had sharpened. In this period, armed tribal organizations emerged, demanding protection for indigenous rights and resisting what they saw as dispossession. On 8 June 1980, the Mandai massacre near Agartala became a gruesome turning point: hundreds of Bengali Hindu civilians were killed in a single night; official counts reported 255 dead, while other estimates ranged higher. The massacre was quickly followed by wider ethnic rioting that left many more dead
and displaced. For Bengali Hindus who had already fled once, the violence felt like history turning back on itself—refugees again in the place they had remade as home.
The state’s response combined emergency policing with institutional reforms. The Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) was established in 1982 and later brought under the Sixth Schedule in 1985, granting substantial autonomy over nearly 70% of Tripura’s area. This was intended to protect indigenous land and culture, while calming the political climate that had given militant outfits oxygen. For Bengali Hindus in mixed or interior areas, the new administrative map added a layer of uncertainty to daily life— jurisdiction shifted, revenue and land rules evolved, and the sense of being 'inside' or 'outside' could change within a few kilometers.
The insurgency years: 1990s–2000s:
The 1990s saw a hardening of militancy. Groups such as the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) and the All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) used kidnappings, extortion, and targeted killings to assert control and to drive fear into non-tribal populations, especially in rural belts skirting the hills. Travel after dark became unthinkable in many blocks; bus routes were ambush-prone; and shopkeepers in weekly haats paid 'tax' to stay open. For Bengali Hindu families, the repertoire of daily caution expanded: relatives were moved into towns, girls sent to study with cousins, and homesteads broken into two—one part maintained, one kept ready to abandon. Security researchers documenting the conflict trace a long arc from the violent surge of the 1980s to a gradual decline by the late 2000s as state forces expanded, roads and communications improved, and militants surrendered in waves.
'Displacement' in this period was often repetitive and local rather than a single dramatic flight: families might leave a village after a kidnapping, return after a few months to salvage a harvest, and then move again when threats resumed. Those who sold land did so under duress and at poor prices; those who stayed navigated an economy of fear. The trauma etched itself into community memory—weddings planned around curfews, festivals celebrated under police watch, and school years punctured by closures.
Law, borders, and the politics of belonging:
Tripura’s proximity to Bangladesh, porous riverine stretches, and dense social ties across the border ensured that migration—legal and illegal—remained a live political issue long after the guns began to fall silent. Parties and civil society groups continue to debate cut
off dates for legal residency and demand roll revisions to identify post-1971 entrants, reflecting how demographic anxiety still threads through the public sphere. For Bengali
Hindus whose parents or grandparents arrived as refugees in 1947 or 1971, such debates can reopen questions of legitimacy and belonging even when their own lives are decades deep in Tripura.
At the same time, the TTAADC framework persists as a key pillar of Tripura’s peace architecture. While far from perfect, it has provided a constitutional channel for indigenous governance, reducing the space for violent redress and making it possible for mixed communities to negotiate everyday coexistence through councils, panchayats, and administrations rather than through barricades.
Memory, justice, and the work of repair:
The worst of the terror has receded since about 2009, thanks to counterinsurgency, development of roads and connectivity, and negotiated surrenders. Yet the social repair is incomplete. Survivors of the Mandai massacre and subsequent riots still search for adequate memorialization and compensation; many who lost land or livelihoods to fear induced sales have little recourse. A generation grew up associating home with the possibility of sudden loss, and that shadow lingers in patterns of migration: educated youth who might have anchored rural markets chose careers elsewhere, and villages that once carried a mixed social fabric are thinner, quieter, more transactional.
For Bengali Hindus, dignity lies in having their history acknowledged without erasing the parallel suffering of indigenous communities who also experienced dispossession and marginalization. The point is not a competition of traumas, but a shared insistence that
civilians—whatever their language or lineage—should never again be made targets of ethnic hatred or strategic violence. That moral baseline is essential to triplicate truths in Tripura: refugees deserve security and the chance to thrive; indigenous peoples deserve land protections and cultural autonomy; and the state owes both equal citizenship under law.
What a humane future requires:
A truly post-conflict Tripura would rest on four commitments:
1. Truth-telling and remembrance: Public recognition of events like the 1980 massacres and riots, grounded in credible documentation, honours victims and anchors 'never again' in civic memory. This can include archives, school curricula, and local memorials supported by the state.
2. Restitution where possible, compensation where not: Families who lost land and livelihoods to violence or coercion should have access to fair processes for redress. Where restoration is impracticable, transparent compensation schemes can help close open wounds.
3. Constitutional pluralism in practice: The TTAADC’s autonomy needs adequate resources and clear coordination with state departments so that service delivery in mixed areas is smooth, predictable, and impartial. When the rules are clear, communities are less likely to read bureaucratic friction as ethnic bias.
4. Border management with human sensitivity: Strengthening legal pathways, surveillance, and cooperation with Bangladesh reduces the scope for trafficking and militant movement while avoiding the indiscriminate suspicion that periodically stigmatizes lawful residents. Ongoing debates over electoral rolls and migration must be handled with evidence, due process, and care—especially because many Bengali Hindu families’ refugee histories are themselves part of Tripura’s social foundation.
Tripura today is calmer than the state remembered in the fearful stories of the 1980s and 1990s. But calm is not the same as closure. For Bengali Hindus who came as refugees and then endured repeated displacements, the promise of India—protection, belonging, and a fair chance—remains both a memory and a demand. Meeting that promise, without diminishing anyone else’s rights, is the unfinished work of a state built by many journeys.
References :
[1]: papers.ssrn.com/vol3: "The Impact of Partition of India on Tripura" ;
[2]: ijsdr.org/papers/IJSDR2411"Impact of Partition on Tripura: Migration and Socio-Political ..." ;
[3]: www.muslimsocieties.org/vol-8-no-2:"Impact of Demographic Change on the Muslim Community ..." ;
[4]: Wikipedia, "Mandai massacre" ;
[5]: "INDIA: Tribal Terror, TIME" ;
[6]:https://ttaadc.gov.in/About--TTAADC, "About TTAADC ;
[7]: Wikipedia="Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council" ;
[8]: "Institutional Framework for Welfare of Tribes in Tripura" ;
[9]: "Migration and Ethnic Violence in Tripura", Salim Ali Faultlines" ; [10]: "Tripura: Ethnic Conflict, Militancy & Counterinsurgency" ;
[11]: "Data | Chronology for Tripuras in India - MAR" ;
[12]: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/guwahati/eci-invites-motha-in-del-for-talks on-illegal-migration-says-pradyot/articleshow/"ECI invites Motha in Del for talks on illegal migration, says Pradyot"
(Tripurainfo)
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