Tripura Tourism
Tripura is a
state in
North-East India. Tripura is surrounded by
Bangladesh on the north, south and west. The Indian states of
Assam and
Mizoram lie to the east. The capital is
Agartala and the main languages spoken are
Bengali and
Kokborok (also known as Tripuri). It was formerly an independent
Tripuri kingdom and was merged with independent
India on
15 October 1949 by the
Tripura Merger Agreement. It was also known as
Hill Tippera (anglicized version of
Tipra) during the
British India period
and has a glorious history of over 2500 years and 186 Kings
.
Tripura finds mention in the
Mahabharata, the
Puranas and pillar inscriptions of Emperor
Ashoka. Tripura was a
princely state before its merger with the
Indian Union. The
Tripuri Kings (
Habugra) held the title of Manikya and ruled Tripura for 3000 years until its merger.
Udaipur, in
South Tripura district, was the capital of the Kingdom. The capital was shifted to Old
Agartala by King Krishna Manikya in the eighteenth century, and then to the present Agartala in the 19th Century. The 19th century marked the beginning of Tripura's modern era, when King Bir Chandra Manikya Bahadur Debbarma modeled his administration on the pattern of
British India and enacted various reforms.
The
Ganamukti Parishad movement led to the integration of the kingdom with India in 1949. Tripura was heavily affected by the
partition of India and the majority of the population now comprises
Hindu Bengalis, many of whom came as refugees from
East Pakistan after independence in 1947. Tripura became a centrally administered Union Territory on
July 1,
1963 and attained the status of a full-fledged state on
January 21,
1972.
Armed conflict in Tripura has been a problem since the end of the 1970s as an aftermath of
1971 Indo-Pak war. Mass migration of Bengalis from Bangladesh during this time has resulted in wide-spread insurgency and militancy in the state with groups such as the
Tripura National Volunteers, the
National Liberation Front of Tripura and the
All Tripura Tiger Force aiming to drive away the
Bengali people.
