History of Tripura

Rakhal das

Sep 07, 2025

When did Bengalis come to Tripura, and when did Tripuris start living there? (A step-by-step timeline)

Short answer first

• Tripuris (Tipra/Tiprasa) are the indigenous people of the region. Archaeology shows settled life in what is now Tripura by at least the 7th–12th centuries CE; reliable written history of a Tripuri kingdom begins from the 15th century. Their presence is thus pre-medieval and continuous.
• Bengalis appear in the record in medieval times: Tripura’s kings invited Bengali priests, scribes and settlers from the 15th century onward; the royal chronicle Rajmala was composed in Bengali. Large-scale Bengali in-migration, however, happened after 1947 (Partition) and especially in 1971 (Bangladesh Liberation War).

Step 1 — Before written history: people were here long before chronicles

• Rock reliefs at Unakoti (often dated to about the 7th–9th centuries CE) and the temple-site sculptures of Pilak (from the 8th–12th centuries CE) show that Tripura had organized religious/artistic life in the early medieval period. These sites don’t “prove” ethnicity, but they do prove settlement and culture.

Step 2 — A Tripuri kingdom emerges in the records

• The royal chronicle Rajmala and other sources make the Tripuri (Twipra/Tipra) polity visible. Modern historians treat the 15th century as the start of reliably recorded Tripura history under the Manikya rulers (earlier names in the chronicles blend legend and history). In other words, Tripuris were living here well before the 1400s, and by the 1400s a Tripuri state is clearly on record.

Step 3 — First documented Bengali presence (15th–18th centuries)

• Court culture turns Bengali-friendly. The Rajmala itself was compiled in Bengali verse by court poets, which signals the arrival—and prestige—of Bengali literati at the Tripura court.
• State-led settlement. Multiple scholarly summaries (based on the Rajmala and later historians) note that Ratna Manikya (late 15th c.) invited Bengali households to settle in the kingdom and granted them land rights—an early, recorded wave of Bengali settlement.
• The plains connection. For centuries, the Tripura kings held the revenue estate of Chakla Roshnabad in the Bengal plains (today mostly in Bangladesh). That estate had a large Bengali peasant population under Tripura’s authority, creating a long, porous Bengali–Tripuri interface around the kingdom.

Step 4 — The 19th–early 20th century: slow but steady inflow

• Under British paramountcy (Tripura remained a princely state), Bengali clerks, teachers and traders came in small numbers with administration, schooling and commerce. Through the late 1800s and early 1900s, settlement expanded in the cultivable tracts (often referenced in state revenue records as jangal-ābādī development). The scale was modest compared to what would follow after 1947.

Step 5 — 1947–1950: Partition transforms the demography

• After the Partition of India (1947) and communal violence in East Pakistan, Tripura—sharing a long, soft border—received large numbers of Bengali refugees. Scholarly estimates put the Bengali arrivals over the next two decades (up to 1971) at about 609,998 people. This period marks the first truly mass Bengali in-migration into the hill state.

Step 6 — 1971: the biggest single surge

• During the Bangladesh Liberation War (1971), Tripura hosted an extraordinary influx of refugees—contemporary counts go up to 1.4 million people taking shelter at the peak (many later returned after Bangladesh’s independence). Even with returns, the cumulative effect of 1947–71 firmly shifted Tripura’s population balance.

Step 7 — After 1971: settling, return flows, and a new balance

• Post-1971, many refugees remained and regularized their stay; others went back. By the 1980s, the state created the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) to safeguard tribal interests in two-thirds of the state’s area—an institutional response to the big demographic changes of the mid-20th century.

Pulling it together: the two dates you asked for

When did Tripuris start living in Tripura?

• Long before the fifteenth century—they are the indigenous people of the land. Archaeology places complex settlement here by 7th–12th c. CE, and a Tripuri kingdom is clearly attested from the 1400s. So, a safe, documented answer is: by early-medieval times at the latest; likely earlier through Tibeto-Burman migrations into the region.

When did Bengalis come to Tripura?

• Earliest documented arrivals: 15th century, via royal patronage (priests, poets, scribes and some settlers), with Bengali becoming prominent in court culture (e.g., the Rajmala in Bengali).
• Mass arrivals: 1947–1971, driven first by Partition and then by the 1971 war, producing the largest demographic shift in Tripura’s history.

Notes on the evidence (why historians answer this way)

• Archaeology vs. ethnicity: Sites like Unakoti and Pilak give us dates for culture and settlement; they don’t label communities. We link them to the Tripuri past because later Tripuri rule is historically visible in the same region, and there’s continuity of place.
• Court records matter: The language and personnel of the royal court (e.g., Rajmala in Bengali; invitations to Bengali settlers) are hard evidence of Bengali presence centuries before modern refugee flows.
• Refugee counts: Post-1947 figures are taken from peer-reviewed historical studies that compile government tallies and field research; they show both the scale and timing of migration.