 The Kakborok speaking rulers of Hill Tipperah had the ownership of land in Chakla Roshanabad, a part of Comilla district of erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and it was from that territory of their ownership that they got some Bengali speaking people migrated into Tripura to serve as priests, teachers and administrators, for they had already adopted Bengali as their official language due to their close association with neighbouring East Pakistan and specially because of the cherished association of the last three tribal rulers of the princely state with Rabindra Nath Tagore whom they were the first to acknowledge as a great poet. Hence it was that there developed a mixed culture of the native tribal people of Hill Tipperah and the culture of the plain land introduced by migrants from East Pakistan. As a result of the huge influx of Bengalee refugees from East Pakistan the demographic character of the State, then already merged into the Indian Union, underwent a sea change with the tribals becoming a negligible minority. The Kakborok speaking tribals settled in the capital town of Agartala and also in other towns of the State adopted, voluntarily or circumstantially, Bengali as the language of communication not only with the Bengalees but also among themselves. Gradually they lost their touch with their own mother tongue. This was so also because the Tripuris, the Reangs, the Chakms and the Mizos of the State had their different languages of which one community did not have any knowledge of the other communities. Their language was rather unintelligible to one another.A section of the tribals, under the instigation of some foreign powers, started feeling that they were reduced to the status of a colony under the overwhelming majority of the Bengalees whose native language and culture almost imperceptibly eclipsed their native languages and cultures - be those Tripuri or Reang or Chakma or Mizo. The picture, however, is the same all over the world. During the early part of the Anglo-Norman period in England, French eclipsed the English language and culture for nearly 200 years and in India the English language and culture did the same to Indian languages and culture during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. But as in England so in India there followed an era when the natives realized their status of having been reduced to a colony under foreign rulers and consequently they carried on a movement for the revival for their native language and culture. The crises in both the countries were stemmed and a reawakening followed resulting in a Renaissance in both the countries - in England in the Tudor age and in India in the 19th century. In Tripura very recently it is observed that the younger generation of Kokborok speaking people prefer to speak in Kokborok rather than Bengali which their parents use for communication not only with their neighbours but also with the senior members of their own families. It is not that the young Tripuri boys and girls and young men and women do not understand Bengali. But they make it a point to speak either in Kokborok or in English but never in Bengali. This, of course, has not created any fresh crisis in culture. What has created a crisis in culture in Tripura is the importation of pseudo-American culture through the constant exposure to so-called western culture through telecasts, internet services and film media. Putting on indecent dresses especially by young generation in a bid to be called 'modern' and 'smart' has been causing a cultural crisis in the sense that these dresses are neither the traditional tribal dresses like Ria and Pachra nor traditional Indian dresses like Dhoti-Kurta or Salwar Kameez. Soil and patched jeans put on by young men and jeans with hips indecently bulging out as put on by young women are not only eye-sore to viewers but also a shameful degradation of decent cultural tastes. We have become so used to these embarrassing exhibitionism that we do not consider this as a bad taste or a crisis in culture. Culture, however, does not mean only dress styles. It has a very wide connotation. How we great others, in what manner we talk to others, specially to elderly people, what food we prefer to eat and in what manner, our gestures and postures that we deliberately take upon while we move among the public and all such other so-called petty aspects of behaviour come under the connotation of culture. And when we find a departure from the accepted norms in these matters, we get shocked in however small a way; but the fact remains that it bespeaks a crises in culture. Tripura is no exception in these matters. |