Tribal student body holds 12-hour Tripura shutdown on Roman script for Kokborok; 300 detained

 AGARTALA: Around 300 protesters, including women, were detained in Dhalai and West Tripura districts as the influential Twipra Students Federation (TSF) held a 12-hour shutdown in Tripura on Monday, demanding the introduction of Roman script for the tribal Kokborok language and passage of the 125th Constitutional Amendment Bill. Police officials in Agartala said that no major untoward incident was reported from any part of the state as the TSF activities were demonstrated in more than six places in support of their demands. There was no significant impact of the shutdown, a police official said, adding that only on some highways were vehicular movements slightly disturbed for a brief period as the agitators held demonstrations.

TSF President Samrat Debbarma and General Secretary Hamulu Jamatia said that they earlier met Governor Satyadeo Narain Arya and Chief Minister Manik Saha and submitted memoranda, but they have yet to take any favourable steps on both emands. Tribal-based parties Tipra Motha Party (TMP) and the TSF have been holding numerous agitational programmes for the past few months to introduce Roman script in Kokborok language and approve the 125th Constitutional Amendment Bill, which, when enacted, would further empower ten tribal autonomous bodies in the northeast—three each in Assam, Mizoram, and Meghalaya, and one in Tripura. TSF leader Jamatia said that “since the government is unresponsive towards their two vital demands, they have been forced to observe a dawn-to-dusk shutdown on Monday, and if the government remained silent, they would intensify their stir.”

The Constitution 125th (Amendment) Bill was tabled in the Rajya Sabha by the government in 2019, and it seeks to further strengthen the 6th Schedule of the Constitution, under which the ten tribal autonomous bodies were constituted in Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Tripura. Tripura has a 12 lakh tribal population out of its 40 lakh inhabitants, and 70 per cent of the tribals speak the Kokborok language, which was recognised as the second official language by the then CPI-M-led Left Front government in 1979.

The demand for the Roman script for Kokborok recently gained strength after there were reports that students in various schools in Tripura, especially the Central Board of Secondary Education-run schools, were compelled to write answers for the Kokborok subject in the CBSE board examination in the Bengali script. The TMP has also been spearheading agitations across Tripura demanding the introduction of the Roman script for Kokborok.

For over five decades, there has been a debate over the use of the Bengali and Roman scripts for the Kokborok language. While some Kokborok speakers favour Bengali, the majority of the tribal intellectuals and academicians advocate for the Roman script. Since 1988, two commissions have been set up on the issue under tribal leader Shyama Charan Tripura and linguist and academician Pabitra Sarkar.

A TMP leader said that Kokborok is the mother tongue of the tribal people, belongs to the Tibeto-Burman family, and is close to other languages of the northeastern region such as Bodo, Garo, and Dimasa. (IANS)

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