Christian Terror in Tripura
Today terrorism is associated with only one religion, Islam, in popular opinion. Islamic terrorist organizations openly declare war on the non-believers which makes it easy for people to relate terrorism with Islam. However, the adventures of the other Abrahamic offspring of Judaism, Christianity in terrorism remains in the shadows as nations that stand up to Islamic terror are invariably seen as Christian states. It rarely occurs to the public that Christianity could encourage terrorism, as it is adept at brainwashing its targets through education before they can think for themselves.
But the handiwork of the Church in the still disturbed North Eastern states of India, though not known to the Indian public, has been observed even by some western researchers. Tripura, the land that derives its name from the deity Tripurasundari, faces the terror of insurgency groups till today thanks to the Baptist mission from New Zealand which was the first missionary to set foot in the hills. If it was difficult for the missionaries to lure Hindus living in plains accustomed to some luxuries, then it was impossible for them to save the souls of tribals who didn’t see the inventions of the new world as luxuries at all. They failed miserably in Tripura till the 1980s almost 40 years since they arrived there.
So they decided to do what they do best, other than conversion, divide and rule. After the second partition in 1971, they saw an opportunity in the scores of Bengali Hindus from Bangladesh taking refuge in Tripura. The partition caused an influx of Bengali Hindus that they became the majority, two-thirds of the state, while the indigenous tribal communities were forced to be the minority. Tribals were feeling insecure and this served the opportunity on a platter to the missionaries. And thus, one of the most gruesome attacks on Hindus was enacted – backed by the Church sponsored terrorists.
The Mandwi massacre still etched in the memories of both Bengali Hindus and tribals proved how goading different sections of Hindus through imaginary racial and ethnic differences could prove to be deadly to Sanatana Dharma. The then Congress government settled the refugee Bengalis in the deep pockets of tribal hamlets, supposedly to ensure that there were Congress voters in all constituencies not willing to relegate power to CPI-M. This played an important role in alienating the tribals further. The Mandwi massacre happened on 8 June 1980 in a village Mandwa, 30km or so away from the state capital Agartala.
It was triggered by a small incident where a tribal youth was assaulted. Tripura Upajati Juba Samiti and Tripura National Volunteers were the so-called tribal rights organizations propped up by the church. TUJS, initially formed as a political party with indigenous tribals as majority, was backed by the Baptist Church in the hope of dismantling Communist hold on the tribal population by promoting and expanding its role in the identity crisis. The radicals, first generation Christian converts, in TUJS formed TNV later allegedly because the land encroachment and Bengali influx continued. Bejoy Hrangkhawl who formed TNV started his career as a police informer and lay evangelist and made TNV notorious even among the tribals.
During the Mandwi massacre, these two groups started cordoning off the Bengali concentrated areas in the midst of tribal villages from June 6. They whipped up the passion among tribals slowly through small riots here and there. Seeing the armed tribals starting to surround their area Bengalis started fleeing villages for safety. Manas Paul who has elaborately covered tribal vs non-tribal violence in Tripura in his book ‘The Eyewitness: Tales from Tripura’s Ethnic Conflict’ notes that strangely for some reasons tribals ‘did not target the Muslims at that point of time’. He notes this while describing another massacre in Amarendra Nagar which is not as widely known as the Mandwi massacre and happened 3 days later.
TUJS and TNV, the tribal organizations initiated the riots by cordoning off Bengali areas and providing arms to the tribals. Meetings were organized to plot the killing of Bengalis and later the intelligence agencies found out that people from TUJS and TNV took the role of masterminds in them. Despite the local officials pleading for help, it fell on the deaf ears of the Congress government. Bengalis who took refuge in the Mandai check post were ruthlessly massacred by tribals under the influence of TUJS and TNV leaders. The victims ranged from a 3 month old baby to 90 year old women and pregnant women with their stomachs slit open as per eyewitness accounts. The women were targeted with sharp weapons inserted in their genitals. BDO Sharma who was an eyewitness counted 250 bodies but lost count after that as he was confused by the sea of blood and bodies swamped in it.
The numbers are still a matter of speculation as the Congress government asked the doctors to suppress the numbers so as to not lose its supportive image among the Bengalis. The Church found an enemy in the Communists as it dominated the tribals whose leaders prevented the missionaries from luring them into conversion but it also found that no secular party wanted to actually stand up to Church. So it became that the political party that came up with a compromise with the terrorist organizations was the one to win elections. Every other party started dancing to the tune of the Church to grab power and treated Bengali Hindus as second class citizens which continues to this day. The aftermath of the massacres in the 1980s saw large scale conversion in tribal villages sometimes up to 800 people or entire villages in one day as reported by The Baptist Herald, a journal run by Tripura Baptist Christian Union. It is said that missionaries used to spread rumours that those who had converted became more prosperous after they embraced Christianity and were not affected by diseases anymore. Another method was to offer a stipend to young converted Christians to study in Christian institutions making tribals see what they were missing by not converting. They painted an image of prosperity associated with Christianity in the minds of tribals. Loss of livelihood through alienation of land meant loss of tribal culture. Church put this to use by campaigning that Hindus from plains are different from tribals religiously and would erase tribal culture as they swell in numbers.
Politicians didn’t care to solve their problems, militants were making their life difficult and there was the imaginary threat of their culture being erased by Bengalis. They needed something to hold on to, to project their problems and get organized. This social vacuum was used by the Baptist Church to convert more tribals through educated first generation converts and peddle the same narrative that Bengalis are a threat to their culture while the truth is otherwise. In the aftermath of the 1988 peace accord in which militants of TNV surrendered, a new terror outfit National Liberation Front of Tripura(NLFT) was formed. There was speculation that only a few of the TNV cadres came out and that the hardliners were lurking in the shadows for the right opportunity to strike again. And it proved to be true when the dissenting factions of TNV formed NLFT. Even though NLFT lists liberation from neo-colonist India, establishment of independent Tripura, getting back the land rights of tribals, stopping the influx of Bengalis as its objectives, even CPI-M which is usually Church friendly accused it of converting tribals to Christianity. Church used land related issues and the identity crisis of the tribals to create a rift between them and the Bengalis from Bangladesh to create an imaginary enemy. It made them dependent on the church backed militant organizations to counter that enemy. NLFT was the biggest and most notorious of those organizations.
Since its formation, NLFT has seen many splits and rifts for which forced conversion of tribals has been cited as one of the important reasons. 90% of the NLFT top leadership were first generation converts through educational institutes established by missionaries. Preachers of the Baptist Church sympathized with and helped NLFT which returned the favour by escorting preachers to tribal villages for proselytization and forced conversions.
The Home Ministry banned NLFT in 1997. In August 1999, it abducted 4 RSS leaders. Then they went on a spree killing local CPI-M leaders. In December NLFT terrorists ransacked a Buddhist temple. In the same month in the Jamatiya Hoda, the tribal conference, tribal leaders decided to not pay any tax to terrorists. Within a fortnight a Jamatiya leader was murdered for refusing to convert to Christianity and the next day another temple was vandalized. Terrorists looted the idols and scriptures from the temple. Meanwhile, in September Jogendra alias Joshua Debbarma, chairman of the political wing was expelled. Another senior leader Nayanbasi Jamatya deserted NLFT along with his 125 plus supporters citing that the organization didn’t want to make Joshua Debbarma the ‘King of the Kingdom of Tripura’. A few months later NLFT released a statement saying that Joshua was expelled for his religious extremism. The statement said that on Joshua’s insistence NLFT cadre converted tribals at gunpoint and made an abortive murder attempt on the head tribal priest Bikram Bahadur Jamatya.
Then CPI-M also didn’t want to have anything to do with the Church as their leaders were also butchered by NLFT terrorists. In 2000 CM Manik Sarkar made an explosive statement that the Baptist Church was aiding NLFT. Nagmanlal Halam, a priest of the Baptist Church was arrested while trying to smuggle explosives to NLFT based on the information extracted from two other priests arrested previously. There were reports that Halam confessed that he had been buying and smuggling explosives to NLFT for three years. Another member of the Church who had received training in guerrilla warfare at an NLFT base, one Jatna Koloi, was arrested at the same time.
In the last two years of the 20th century, more than 5000 tribals were converted to Christianity, it is claimed. Following this tribals formed vigilant groups to defend against being converted at gunpoint. A Hindu saint Santi Kali Maharaj was also murdered by NLFT terrorists. His ashrams were raided and schools, as well as orphanages, were forced to shut down. NLFT issued fatwas against celebrating Durga puja and bombed the market the previous day as Hindus were shopping against its wishes. NLFT even warned the tribals against mingling with non-tribals during Durga Puja celebrations. In 2004 when tribals brushed away NLFT’s fatwa against Durga Puja and celebrated it with pomp, 2 Bengali villages were raided and 4 non-tribals, 2 of them children were murdered in cold blood. Later the different factions of NLFT began losing steam and its terror operations reduced gradually. One of them NLFT (SD) signed a peace deal and 88 cadres surrendered to the state in 2019 after 4 years long peace talks.
Recently NLFT has been in news again as their cadre started extorting money from businessmen ahead of the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council elections and more recently 3 Hindus, 2 Bengalis and 1 tribal were abducted. However, they were returned and 4 terrorists surrendered in a different event claiming they were facing hostility in their organization and the hideouts. DGP of Tripura has said that the shortage in funds and manpower has frustrated the cadre of the remaining part of NLFT to surrender on their own. NLFT might go out of existence. But the threat Hindus, tribals and non-tribals alike, face from Christian missionaries remains. At the beginning of 2019, 96 converted tribals were brought back to Hinduism with the help of VHP and Hindu Jagran Manch. They alleged that they were treated badly by the Baptist Christians. There are efforts to bring more of them home. But as relentless as ever the Church attacks on all fronts – one of them is using proxies to obtain a ban on pashu bali in Tripura which is an inherent part of the customs there. Only the method of attack has changed. The enemy is still the same.
