Kashmir receives a lot of coverage in the Indian and international press for its insurgency and state action resulting in civilian casualties. Indeed, Kashmir's sorrow is like an everlasting wound on the Indian psyche. And yet there is another corner of South Asia which is even more sad, violent, and neglected. The place is Tripura, in the Indian Northeast. Civilian casualties in Tripura from insurgency-related incidents far outnumber those in Kashmir. One senior Indian bureaucrat informed the national press late last year that over 900 civilians had been killed in as many as 87 militant attacks in Tripura over the last four years. During the same period, 477 civilians had died in 40 incidents in Kashmir. It comes as a startling bit of information — that this little state known for its rolling hills, orange crop and for being practically surrounded by Bangladesh — is really the most violent corner of India.
Innocent deaths, kidnappings and extortions are a regular part of life in Tripura and have been for many years now since an insurgency arose to unsettle this area more than two decades ago. These years of tribal insurgency demonstrate the depths to which a misguided and frustrated identity movement can sink in the absence of a guiding political ideology and firm and recognisable leadership.
In the Northeast, where militancies with various levels of commitment to violence as means to an end proliferate, the Tripura insurgents manage to shock and chill for the nonchalance with which they commit crimes against the innocent and unarmed. Nowhere in the entire region, from Assam to Nagaland, is there such a thin line which separates the insurgent from the criminal. And what makes the Tripura rebels far more dangerous is their access to sophisticated arms, fed by a cross-border gun-running network. Besides, they enjoy the patronage of the local political parties, which have developed a stake in the insurgency. Unlike lay criminals, the violence practiced by these militants is more indiscriminate and cold-blooded, and it is this raw brutality that makes Tripura's experience stand apart from the other Northeast insurgencies. For all practical purposes, it can be said that the insurgents of Tripura have declared a war on the people — an unequal war in which no man, woman or child, whether 'tribal' or Bengali, is spared.
The fighting has by now affected nearly the entire rural hinterland of the tiny state, where some 30 odd militancies are active. However, two outfits carry out most of the attacks, abductions and killings. The National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), a tribal group, controls virtually all of the Tripura Tribal Autonomous District Council (TTADC) area, which covers almost two thirds of the state's territory. Its rival, the All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF), has undisputed writ over a smaller patch in the state's northeast area contiguous with Bangladesh. Several retaliatory rag-tag armies, such as the United Bengali Liberation Force (UBLF) and the Amra Bangali, had also managed to keep the levels of violence high, but they have by now petered out after much-hyped beginnings. However, other less organized but more criminal groups also operate in the state, sometimes kidnapping victims in order to 'sell' them to the more political outfits. There is a Left Front government in place in Tripura, of course, but its presence is felt only in the capital, Agartala. No one with a political identity or balance in the bank is keen to move out of Agartala for fear of being abducted or killed.