How Ayodhya’s New Ram Mandir Has Given The BJP An Edge In Tripura’s Remote Tribal Belt

Ayodhya may be more than 1,600 kilometres away from the northeastern part of Tripura that borders Mizoram and Bangladesh. 

But the new Ram Mandir at Ayodhya has emerged as the most powerful determinant of the voting preferences of a majority of the Bru community which forms about 22 per cent of the state’s indigenous population. 

That’s because the Brus have, over the past three decades, embraced a Sanatan Dharma revivalist movement. This movement has led to the Brus getting organised under a structured Satya Sanatan Dharma Mandal, also called the Ram Mandali. 

The pran pratishtha ceremony at the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya was an important day for the Sanatani Brus of Tripura and they celebrated it through a lot of festivities and prayers. And the ceremony at Ayodhya also sealed their decision to vote for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the forthcoming elections. 

This revivalist movement, launched in 1990, is a unique one that has resulted in preservation and propagation of the ancient Sanatani cultures, traditions, religious rituals and codes of social conduct among the Brus. 

More importantly, it has stopped and reversed the onslaught of Christian missionaries who were aggressively converting poor and gullible Brus through sorcery, doles and various allurements.

Brus, who number about 3 lakh in Tripura, are mainly concentrated in the Unakoti, Gomati, Dhalai, North Tripura and South Tripura districts of the northeastern state. These five districts, and the Khowai district, make the Tripura East Lok Sabha seat. 

The Brus, thus, form a significant part of the electorate in this Lok Sabha seat which is reserved for Scheduled Tribe (ST) candidates. The BJP has fielded Kriti Singh Debbarma, daughter of the erstwhile King of Tripura, Maharaja Kirit Bikram Kishore Debbarma from this seat. 

A six-member delegation of the Ram Mandali, led by the sect’s dharmaguru Manaram Bru Sanatan Bagra, popularly called ‘Monu’, travelled to Ayodhya for the pran pratishtha ceremony on 22 January at the invitation of the organisers of the ceremony (watch this Youtube video). 

"It was a glorious occasion and the invitation extended to us was a great honour to us, especially our ‘Monu’. It was then that we decided that all Brus would vote for the BJP, which has fulfilled the dreams of millions of Sanatanis by constructing the Ram Mandir,” Jatindra Reang, a spokesperson of the Sanatan Dharma Mandali and president of the Unakoti district unit of ‘Janajati Suraksha Manch’, told Swarajya. 

Reang, who teaches at Manikpur Residential English Medium School at Chawmanu, a small town in Dhalai district of eastern Tripura, says that the Mandali has also succeeded in ghar wapsi of hundreds of Brus who had converted to Christianity. Chawmanu is about 120 kilometres east of state capital Agartala. 

“Now, less than 4 per cent of Brus are Christians and we are actively working to bring them back to the Sanatani fold,” said Reang. 

How The Mandali Started 

‘Monu’, who is 60 years old and dresses like Shree Ram complete with the crown and other embellishments, was a devout child who was also very intelligent. 

“He was born in Manu (near Chawmanu, where Reang lives) and his family migrated to Mizoram when he was very young,” said Reang, 40.

The family, like other Brus who had settled in Mizoram, faced intense pressure from Christian missionaries to convert. 

“Monu also observed that many Brus were giving up their ancient customs, traditions and rituals and were falling prey to many social evils. They were becoming rootless and were devoid of spirituality. He decided to do something about it,” said Reang. 

But he (Monu) also realised that defying the missionaries in a Christian-majority and majoritarian state like Mizoram would be foolhardy. So he started looking towards Tripura to set up a base in the state. 

Monu started creating an awareness among his community members about the need to preserve their age-old religious culture and traditions. He realised the need to organise the Brus into a Sanatan religious sect in order to effectively counter the Christian missionaries. 

With this in mind, the first mandir of the Brus was established in 1990 at Ganaram Chowdhury Para in Dhalai district’s Manikpur. 

Like many other Bru families who had migrated to Mizoram, Monu’s family used to practise their age-old Sanatan Dharma secretly and silently while they were in Mizoram. But their lives changed when thousands of Brus who had refused to convert were driven out of Mizoram in the late 1990s. 

Monu’s family, like many others, came to Tripura and settled down at Naisinghpara in North Tripura district in 1997. Naisinghpara is about 180 kilometres east of Agartala. It is about 50 kilometres from the India-Bangladesh border and also close to Mizoram. 

But Tripura was in the grip of tribal insurgency at that time and the insurgent groups had close ties with the church. The leadership of the insurgent groups was largely Christian and they encouraged forcible conversion of not only Tripuris, but also Brus, to Christianity. 

“So Monu and his followers had to operate below the radar. However, despite great risks to his life, he continued to preach and show light to thousands of Brus. Mandirs also started coming up. Some of our preachers and activists were targeted by the militants. By the end of the first decade of this century, things started improving and with militancy dying down, we could operate openly and freely. Our movement spread rapidly,” said Reang. 

Today, there are 30 mandirs dedicated to Bhagwan Ram in Tripura and a few more are being built. Most of the Brus in Tripura are now members of the Satya Sanatan Ram Mandali. 

The mandali is very organised and has strict codes of conduct that stress on living a virtuous life, charity and spirituality. 

Members of the mandali are expected to keep away from intoxicants, practise high standards of morality in their personal lives and set an example for others to follow. Proper forms of worship, including singing of bhajans and religious dances, are all codified in two books — Smaikri Ni Dustur and Aing Dustur Boi — penned by Monu. 

The sect is highly organised with its members categorised into six groups. Stepping up from one group to the next higher one involves various trials, written examinations and interviews and is quite elaborate. 

“If we have to counter Christians missionaries and remain true to our Sanatanu roots, we have to be highly organised,” said Reang. 

The Satya Sanatan Dharma Mandal has been able to bring back more than 60 per cent of the Brus who had converted to Christianity and make them Sanatanis once again. Now, less than 4 percent of Brus are Christians. 

“We will bring all of them back into the Sanatan fold soon. We don’t offer material benefits and allurements like the missionaries do. Nor do we try sorcery and organise faith healing camps. We just preach the Sanatani tenets and create awareness about the way our forefathers lived and conducted themselves. That is enough to get those who had converted back into our fold,” Reang explained.

For now, the immediate task before him and other prominent members of the mandali is to get the entire community to back the BJP candidate. 

Not much effort is required on their part, though. The widespread sentiment among the Brus, as articulated by Reang, is “jo Ram ko laye hum usko layenge” (we will bring to power the party which made the Ram Mandir).