Around us, as soon as we left the hostel, it appeared that Tripura was falling apart, riven by ancient hatreds stoked by recent angers growing out of land dispossession and the failure of successive governments to provide any facilities worth the name to the tribal communities, to nudge them toward economic development and improved lifestyles.

The Assam movement against ‘foreigners’ touched off a similar agitation in Tripura and militants in the tribal campaign were swift to seize the advantage. First, a Quit Notice was announced on all ‘foreigners’ (read here Bengalis) who had entered the state after 1949, when it merged with India. This was issued by none other than the moderate TUJS. Within three months, the campaign was out of the hands of the moderates and captured by Hrangkhwal’s Tripura National Volunteer and its cohorts.

In an explosion of violence that charred villages and hamlets in the rolling countryside, Bengali men, women and children were hunted down and killed, their properties looted and torched. In retaliation, some Tripuris and other tribespeople also died—but the majority of dead were Bengalis.

One such site of a massacre was Mandai Bazar. We were brought there under military escort from Agartala and the major who led the convoy kept telling us, ‘You won’t be able to believe your eyes. It is horrible.’

Some bodies were still lying about when we arrived at Mandai, a village which also doubled as a major haat or bazaar for the neighbouring areas. Survivors told tales of a massive attack by tribals at night, of fleeing in terror through jungles and paddy fields and of how one tribal constable from the local police picket had rebelled and joined the rioting. A mother and child lay next to each other. Not far, a dao was plunged into the ground next to a human skull. Temples had been descecrated and looted. Three hundred and fifty died in those mad hours in Mandai. They were a prelude to the hatred and madness of Nellie and other killing fields in Assam.

The major wept like a baby when he came near the woman and her child. It was embarrassing to see a man in uniform break down uncontrollably, for very rarely does someone witness such sights. He perked up a little later where he took us to a nearby school building where two tribesmen were being held for their alleged role in the attacks. Both men were tied by rope to the steel bars in the windows. Their feet too were manacled.