In poll-bound Tripura, royalty in focus

‘Communists never gave us our due’

Jishnu Devvarma’s wish to be the second member of Tripura’s royalty to enter the 60-member State Assembly will have to wait. Polling in the reserved Charilam seat has been rescheduled on March 12 because of the death of rival candidate Ramendra Narayan Debbarma of the CPI(M).

But whether or not he makes it, Mr. Devvarma is certain his royal family will be back in the State’s political space if his party, Bharatiya Janata Party, ends 25 years of Communist rule.

The 59-year-old Mr. Devvarma is the uncle of king Pradyot Kishore Manikya, who is the working president of a beleaguered Congress in Tripura.

‘BJP gave respect’

“The BJP has returned the respect the royal family deserves. The Left Front government has not only been indifferent to the royalty but also undermined the contributions of the 800-year-old Manikya dynasty,” Mr. Devvarma said.

The last member of the Tripura Assembly was Bibhu Devi, Pradyot Kishore’s mother. She became a Congress MLA for the first time in 1983 and went on to become a Minister in 1989 before being elected MP two years later.

“If the BJP is announcing airport after my grandfather, if in the Congress manifesto we are doing the same thing, if (Chief Minister) Manik Sarkar is unveiling my great grandfather’s statue, I don’t think they are doing it without understanding there is a sentiment attached to the royal family,” Mr. Pradyot Kishore, 38, told The Hindu at Ujjayanta Palace, the royal residence in the heart of Agartala.

Much of the palace, built by Maharaja Radha Kishore Manikya between 1899 and 1901, was acquired by the State government to house the Assembly until it moved in July 2011 to a new location 6 km north of Agartala. The Tripura State Museum filled up the space vacated by the Assembly.

“My father Kirit Bikram, who was MP thrice, my politician mother and I underline the royalty’s relevance though the communists never gave us our due,” Mr. Pradyot Kishore said.

In August last year, the BJP celebrated the 110th birth anniversary of Tripura’s ruler Bir Bikram Kisore Deb Barman, the present king’s grandfather. Prime Minister Narendra Modi lent weight to the party’s claim that it was trying to revive the royal history “distorted” by the Marxist rulers.

The BJP also promised to honour Maharaja Bir Bikram with a posthumous Bharat Ratna besides naming Agartala Airport after him. The Left Front government had a few years ago passed a resolution to name the airport after Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.

Tripura’s kings have been titular heads after the Bir Bikram reign ended in 1947. The royal gloss began fading when the first Communist government was formed in the State in 1978.

The Tripura kings had built several educational institutions across the State, besides providing financial assistance to Tagore, Visva Bharati University in Shantiniketan, West Bengal, and to scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose.

The Manik Sarkar government had denied these publicly, saying the Manikya rulers had no development to their credit. “Monarchy has no place in our ideology, but it is wrong to say we denigrate royalty,” State CPI(M) secretary Bijan Dhar said.

The bid to reinvent an erstwhile king as a Hindutva icon is leading to noises around the royalty, he added.