THE government of Tripura has decided to withdraw the section 3 of AFSPA from the state. This decision was taken in the meeting of the state cabinet held on May 27. Chief minister Manik Sarkar made this announcement at a press conference at the civil secretariat. Prior to this decision, the act was in force in the 24 police station areas and in parts of six police station areas. In view of the severe extremist problem the section 3 of the act was brought into force in the state on February 16, 1997 and was operational in two-thirds of the police stations of the state. As the security situation improved gradually, the number of police stations which fell under the purview of this act also became less in number. With this decision, the act will no longer be in force in any part of the state. Sarkar said the decision was taken after a thorough review of the law and order situation by the state home department which opined that in view of the law and order situation and state of the extremist problem, the act is no longer required to be in force in the state. There has been a tremendous and qualitative change in the situation; the extremist problem has been largely contained. So the cabinet has agreed that the act should be withdrawn. This is surely an important decision and will be widely welcomed by the people, the chief minister said. The union home ministry will be informed about the decision. As we go to the press, the state government has issued the gazette notification about the withdrawal of the act and a portion of the central paramilitary forces are leaving the state for Manipur and other states where their services are called for.

Where Does Tripura Differ

This decision has been widely lauded both inside and outside the state by the informed quarters who said that the decision has proved once again that Tripura is the model for the entire country in curbing insurgency. But at the same time, some questions are being raised from several quarters mainly in the social media. The question is largely as follows: why the act was at all brought into force in a state where the CPI(M) heads the government while the party has been consistently demanding withdrawal of this act from Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur and other parts of the country?

The answer has to be sought in the form and extent of the act that was in force in the state and how it was implemented and secondly the nature and extent of the extremist problem in the state and the strategy adopted to tackle it.

The first issue requires a brief understanding of the AFSPA itself. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act was passed by the Indian Parliament in 1958 initially to deal with the secessionist, extremist activities in Assam and Manipur. The territorial scope of the act was later expanded to the other five states of the Northeast -- Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram. The act is still in force in states like Manipur, Nagaland and Jammu and Kashmir. The act in its comprehensive form gives the armed force a number of special powers like arrest without warrant, search without warrant, open fire after giving due warning that may even cause death under various sub sections of the section 4 and exempts a member of the security forces from prosecution, suit or other legal proceeding for anything done in exercise of the powers conferred by this act. While in other states the act is in force in its entirety, the government of Tripura had only used the section 3 of the act that empowers the state government to declare whole or any part of the state as “disturbed area” by a notification in the official gazette. Hence, though the section 3 of the act was used in the state to declare the areas under several police stations as “disturbed areas”, the other sections of the act, whose misuse is often alleged elsewhere in the country, were never put into force in the state. What is more important and requires a special mention is, during these 18 years when this act was in force in the state, not a single incident of human rights violation or fake encounter has been reported as it has been in large numbers in states like Manipur or J&K.

Nature and Extent of Extremist Activities

It will be worthwhile here to mention briefly the nature and extent of extremist activities in the state as this will be helpful to understand why this act had to be used in the state. The state of Tripura has witnessed extremist activities since the early 1980s. The extremist outfit TNV and its over-ground political organisation TUJS were instrumental in fuelling the ethnic riot in 1980 with a slogan of pushing back the Bengali population who had come to Tripura after 1949 as a result of partition. Similarly Amra Bangali, an organisation floated by Anandamargis, was trying to fuel Bengali chauvinism. Both these organisations tried to create a feeling of hatred between the tribal and non-tribal masses with the identical aim of destroying the tribal and non-tribal unity with the ulterior motive of weakening the Left and democratic movement in the state.

The extremist outfits, initially the TNV and later in the post-1993 period the ATTF and the NLFT, had raised the secessionist slogan of ‘Independent Tripura’ and had indulged in merciless killings of hundreds of innocent civilians both tribal and non-tribal. They had unleashed a reign of terror, loot, arson, kidnapping in the name of their so-called movement of ‘Independent Tripura’. This extremist menace led to killing of about thousands of innocent civilians and members of the security forces and an atmosphere of terror that halted the entire range of developmental activities in the tribal areas. The slogan itself explains how these extremist outfits were against the unity and integrity of the Indian Union. These forces were acting as underground armed gangs, often taking shelter in the neighboring country. Their targets were always innocent villagers, mostly tribal people and they frequently used kidnapping and killings as their method.

Operation Bramhaputra: The CIA hand

However, this will be wrong to conclude that the secessionist and extremist activities that plagued Tripura and the Northeast were just the outcome of some local maneuvers. On the contrary, the fact remains that the whole range of extremist activities in the Northeast was and still remains the brain child of the US intelligence agency CIA. The formation of the Left Front government in West Bengal and Tripura in 1977 and 1978, respectively, the increased strength of the Left parties in Assam had not gone down well with either the US imperialism or the reactionary forces inside India who were panicked at this increased strength and influence of the Left and the CIA had apprehensions that this might lead to strengthening the Left movement in Bangladesh which would be too detrimental for the geo-political interest of the US to be allowed to happen. These apprehensions are reflected in some documents of the then US state department. So the infamous ‘Operation Bramhaputra’ was blue-printed to ensure secession of the Northeast from the Indian Union. The CIA misguided a section of the students and youth to start the ‘deportation of foreigners’ movement in Assam which encouraged the TUJS in Tripura and other tribal chauvinist organisations in Mizoram, Manipur to raise the secessionist slogans of ‘Swadhin Tripura’, ‘Swadhin Manipur’ etc. TUJS called a seven-day market boycott in June 1980 from its 12^th conference in March 1980 which resulted in the ethnic riot of 1980 in Tripura. The riots were aimed at stalling the first elections to the TTAADC and overthrow the elected Left Front government.

The CIA used a small section of the Christian missionaries to implement its heinous plans in Tripura. R R Cunville, a Christian missionary from New Zealand and a leading figure of a tribal society of India whose headquarters is in the US, met the TUJS leaders in 1978. Cunville in his paper ‘The church grows through people’s movement’ has openly instigated separatist sentiment as he writes: “The Tripuris suddenly became foreigners in their own country. They saw in Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya, their neighbors enjoying freedom, enjoying power. Naturally, they want to go the same way.”

The role of the Congress

It was the Congress which orchestrated the birth of TUJS in 1967 to weaken the traditional grip of CPI(M) and GMP among the tribal masses. The 29 years’ Congress rule before 1978 was marked by a sheer apathy towards the legitimate rights of the tribal people including formation of TTAADC, recognition of Kokborok as one the state language, restoration of the illegally transferred tribal land and protection of their constitutional right of reservation in job and education. The hatred for Congress among the tribal people is reflected in the results of the 1978 assembly election where the Congress could not win a single seat. It opposed the formation of ADC and hid behind the Amra Bangali during the riots. Before the assembly election of 1988, TNV president Bijay Hrankhwal made a secret pact to overthrow the Left Front government with the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and according to the plan just before the elections ran a spree of massacres killing 91 innocent people paving the way for the Centre to term CPI(M) as the mentor of the terrorists, impose disturbed area act in the state, send in massive number of central forces and capture the entire state machinery and rig the counting process to install a Congress-TUJS coalition government. The letters between BK Hrankhwal and Mr Gandhi were published in the Zoeing, a weekly from Mozoram. Such was the role of Congress in aiding and abating the extremists and till the last assembly elections they continued their alliance with INPT, an off-shoot of the TUJS and the over-ground political front of the extremist outfits.

The Glorious Role of the CPI(M) and the Left

The extremist activity in Tripura is distinct in its political orientation. While the tribal chauvinist parties like TUJS, INPT and IPFT had been the direct political front of the extremists, the main opposition Congress has not only always roped in these parties as their electoral ally but also engaged in aiding them financially and otherwise. On the other hand, the CPI(M) and Left has remained the prime target for the extremists. In the last three decades, 1,179 workers and sympathisers of CPI(M), including state cabinet minister Bimal Sinha, MLAs Kalidas Debbarma and Ananda Roaja, ADC member Sachindra Debbarma, party leaders Bhim Debbarma, Suramani Koloi, Kshirod Debbarma, Anil Baidya and a host of other brave hearts, have sacrificed their lives. No other political party in India has a comparable record of sacrifice to fight against the extremist and secessionist forces.

Strategy of Tackling Insurgency: A Humane Approach

The success of Tripura in containing the three-decade long problem of insurgency is now a known story. The Left Front government adopted a three-pronged strategy. Firstly, the futility of the political ideological questions raised by the extremist movement like independent Tripura or deportation of the foreigners was addressed. The government organised a number of peace meetings, talked to the family members of the misguided youth to persuade them to shun this barren path. The Party and mass organisations like GMP too took this initiative on their own. Massive and relentless ideological-political campaign was organised in defence of peace and peoples’ unity. Secondly, the strength and capacity of the security forces were increased, number of battalions of state’s own paramilitary force TSR was enhanced, local boys conversant with the local language and topography were inducted. The forces were asked to befriend the local people and win their confidence. While they were asked to be tough against the armed militants but there was always a strict order from the highest level of the government that no innocent civilians should be harassed and no incident of human rights violation should take place. Thirdly, as and when peace started returning, developmental work in the tribal areas started in full swing, as much as money possible was invested in speedy development of basic infrastructure of the tribal areas, cluster programme were implemented for their socio-economic development. The Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council is a unique political and developmental exercise that strengthened and decentralised political power to the tribal people. All these have resulted in a situation where the problem of insurgency was largely contained. The supremo of ATTF is behind the bars, the NLFT has joined the peace process. What is of importance here is the mobilisation of tribal people in fighting the extremist forces. Hence though it will be incorrect to conclude that the extremist problem is over for good as the US imperialism and other reactionary forces shall never sit idle and let a Left-led government function smoothly, but it can be said that it has been contained to a large extent.

And as it flows from the above the use of section 3 of the AFSPA was not the whole of the success story but only a small part of the much larger and comprehensive strategy. (END)