The Two Tripuras

On the 15th of October 1949, the last Maharaja's Regent, Maharani Kanchanprava Devi, signed the Instrument of Accession with the Indian government, thus acceding the former Princely State of Tripura to the Union of India. Seven years later, it became a Union Territory on 1st November 1956 and eventually, on 21st January 1972, almost two decades later, it was granted full statehood. But there was another Tripura in the neighbouring East Pakistan or Bangladesh, with a slightly different spelling, which existed not as a Princely State, but as a district known during colonial times as Tippera. In 1960, the Bangladesh government renamed Tippera as Comilla, after its district headquarters, thus eliminating the naming confusion that had been existing for quite a while. 

Between the Surma, Kalni, and Barak rivers, back in the 15th century, the Kingdom of Tripura emerged under the Manikya dynasty. These rivers flow between today's northeastern Bangladesh, Sylhet in Assam, and the hills of Mizoram. Politically, they were in conflict and alliance with the adjoining Hussain Shahis of Bengal, which had its territories expanded between the borders of Bihar-Jharkhand to the west and central Bangladesh in the east. The fight was more for geographical supremacy over the plains, that was suited best for trading and commerce, and while the Manikya kings were raiding against the Hussain Shahis, a perpetual war zone was created in this Surma-Meghna basin and the Lushai-Tripura hills. 

In the 1580s, during the reign of Amar Manikya of Tripura, the Mughals under Emperor Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar launched campaigns from Bengal that broke the kingdom's hold over the fertile plains; the kingdom lost Srihatta (Sylhet), Komolya (Comilla) and Bhulua (Noakhali), which were absorbed into the Bengal Subah, while the Manikyas were pushed back into the hill country, marking the permanent separation between the western plains that became much later Tippera/Comilla under Bengal and the eastern hills that remained the Princely State of Tripura, though the Manikya rulers later retained zamindari rights in today's Chakla Roshnabad (broadly along the Comilla-Noakhali-Sylhet belt) within those same plains under Mughal and British rule even after losing political sovereignty.

And thus, the greater Kingdom of Tripura was unofficially divided into Mughal and non-Mughal entities, thus the eastern part remaining free from Mughal colonisation. Following the Mughals, the arrival of the British continued administrating this absorption of the west portion as part of British Bengal, while the eastern stretch remained an independent Princely State. And so, continuing the mispronunciation by the British, the western portion became Tipperah (or Tippera) and the eastern region became Hill Tipperah, which gradually changed to Tripura. 

But 18th-century European cartographers oversimplified this demarcation and clubbed both the regions (and a couple of more territories) under one single unit of Tippera. This oversimplification was later resolved according to the 1793 Permanent Settlement Act, where the Manikyas still continued taking revenues from the Chakla-Roshnabad region, but under the protectorship of the East India Company. Finally, in 1803, the Princely State of Hill Tipperah was carved out, leaving the Chakla-Roshnabad strip under the Bengal Presidency. It's not clear when, but it could be assumed that when the British recognised the sovereignty of Hill Tipperah, by the 1830s, the state name slowly started to slip from Hill Tipperah to simply, Tripura, although official maps continued to label this distinction as Hill Tipperah and Tipperah even till the 20th century. But, a further truncation was yet to come. 

It's interesting to note that although these were two names of the same Tripura, it wasn't either partition or division, just a simple subject of administration by two different entities. By 1960, the reference of Tripura or Tippera was permanently wiped out from Bangladesh, and it became simply Comilla. It's interesting to note that at the time the British arrived in the northeast of India in the 19th century, Hill Tipperah or Tripura included today's Tripura state and an extension to North Lushai Hills, that was later acquired by the British East India Company in 1886. This includes today's districts of Mamit, Kolasib, Aizawl, Champhai and Serchhip of Mizoram. Till the creation of a separate Lushai Hills by the British in 1890, the various Mizo clans were distributed politically between Hill Tipperah and Chittagong districts. But one tragic incident once again changed the boundaries of Hill Tipperah, and this was towards the end of the 19th century. 

Towards the last decades of the 19th century, in around the 1870s, the British had gradually formed their grip over Assam and acquired tea estates, boosting their business and network with Burma and around. But while they were pushing their colonial agendas, they encroached on tribal areas all across the subcontinent, dominating the lumber and tea trade. Hence, when they poked their noses into the business of the Lushai people, illegally and without consent, that did irk the latter to react in a rather aggressive way. Hence, on 27th January 1871, in the tea estates of Alexandrapore (in today's Hailakandi district, southern Assam), the Lushai protested and raided the tea estate, that created a stir in the neighbourhood. The raid, looting, and kidnappings had escalated to the point that alarmed the British authorities to permanently find a solution to these constant attacks, hence removing the eastern portion of Hill Tipperah, joining it with the remaining Lushai regions of Chittagong, and making it a separate district of Lushai Hills (which is essentially today's Mizoram state) in 1890. 

Since then, the two units were governed separately. Tipperah came under the Bengal administration and Hill Tipperah, as a separate Princely State, but under the Assam government. Today, only the word Tripura survives, as a state of northeast India. These maps here are recreation of the original versions created by James Rennell (1779), Surveyor General of India (1885) and John Bartholomew (1864) respectively.