Tripura

"It is, indeed unfortunate that Tripura, despite its age—old tradition, culture, natural wealth, beautiful landscape and archaeological treasures failed to attract the attention of the rest of the country. Only when the staccato of gunshots reverberated from the hills, Tripura attracted the world's attention. As the state slowly emerged from obscurity due to blood spilling tribal militancy to become a flash point of the South Asian conflict zone, people outside the region now could at least recognize the name—Tripura. But, still, Tripura to them meant—and perhaps continues to mean——-a land of tribal guerrillas where killing and kidnapping is the order of the day. For them Tripura is a place with high hills, rugged terrains and deep forests where death lurks in every road, at every bend. It is when you tell them that this is the place where literacy is more than 80 percent, where ONGC is now setting up its first mega power project or when you remind someone that music maestro Sachin Dev Burman actually hailed from the Royal family of this state and was a 'tribal' in ethnic sense or it is the Tripura king who first recognized Rabindranath Tagore in his teen, you will find a shade of amazement flashing across their eyes."

"The most prominent among the terrorist outfits of Tripura is the NLFT (National Liberation Front of Tripura). It employs terror tactics to effect mass conversion to Christianity (The Statesman 1999, 2000; Ghosh 1999) and is a predominantly Baptist (Protestant) organisatian. Whatever token non-Christian representation it had, it has lost recently. Nayanbashi Jamatiya, a Hindu leader, led a revolt against the policy of forcible conversion of the NLFT and left a rebel camp in neighbouring Bangladesh with his followers. On April 8, 2001, while his party was moving towards the Indian border; it was attacked by the main group; seven activists were killed and he himself was seriously injured and taken to a government hospital in Bangladesh."

"In Tripura there were several cases of reverse persecution of non-Christians by Christian members of the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), a militant tribal group that often is evangelical. For example, NLFT tribal insurgents have banned Hindu and Muslim festivals in areas that they control, cautioned women not to wear traditional Hindu tribal attire, and banned indigenous forms of worship."

"With regard to the violence by the Christian separatist group NLFT, the report again employed ambiguous and generalized statements to dilute the horrific acts of terror committed in the name of Christianity. While acknowledging Christian violence, it referred to the Hindus as the ‘majority religious community’ even though in the northeast Indian states where most such violence occurs, it is Christians who constitute the overwhelming majority not only numerically but also in terms of controlling the government and other civic institutions. The report mentioned the Christian violence as something which others have ‘accused’, and not as a matter of established fact, despite there being numerous official verdicts and reports in India proving that violence... It concludes its very brief paragraph on this matter by rationalizing the violence as the fault of the Hindus: ‘The group contends that the dominance of Hinduism has resulted in the marginalization of Christians in Tripura’. In other words, Christian violence is caused by their alleged ‘marginalization’, and is hence justified, even though Hindus have been systematically ethnically cleansed from that region. Unlike its reporting of the alleged atrocities against Christians, where the Hindu side of the story is never given, here the NLFT’s reasoning is given prominence... The specific events of killings of Hindus by NLFT are never discussed. USCIRF simply ignores the numerous reports by South Asian Terrorism Portal (www.satp.org), a terrorism watch group run by professional police and intelligence bureaucrats, that listed twenty-one violent incidents involving NLFT Christians for that year."

"Tipara is a country extremely strong… The Raja is proud of his strength and the practice of conch-blowing and idol-worship prevailed there… Murshid Qulî II decided to conquer Tipara and put down idolatry there. He wrote to Sayyid Habibullah (the Commander-in-Chief), Md. Sadîq, Mir Hãshim, Shaikh Sirãjuddin Md., and Mahdi Beg who were then engaged in the Chittogong expedition, that… they should set out with their forces, observing every precaution, arrive close to the Kingdom of Tipara, and try to conquer it… The Tipara soldiers did not fail to fight regardless of death. The Muslim troops invested the fort from four sides. A severe battle was fought. The zamindar’s men lay dead in heaps. The victors entered the fort… The flag of Murshid Quli Khan was unfurled on the top of fort Udaipur. The Muslims raised the cry of Allahu-ãkbar and the Muslim credo (There is no deity except Allah and Muhammad is His messenger), and demolished the temple of the zamindar which had long been the seat of idol-worship. Making a level courtyard on the side of the temple, they read the Khutba in the Emperor’s name… The world-illuminating sun of the faith of Muhammad swept away the dark night of infidelity, and the bright day of Islam dawned."