State Indicted-Deb Commission Report on Tripura

Deb Commission Report on Tripura Brinda Karat INCIDENTS of rape including custodial rape have been a major concern of different sections of the democratic movement. It is hence surprising that the atrocities being committed on tribal women in Tripura have been largely ignored. When reported, developments in that state have been projected as a fall-out of the electoral battle between the Con- gress(I) and the CPI(M). In fact, the issues raised by the happenings in Tripura relate in a much deeper way to the linkages between state, class and gender oppression. It is the experience of an exploited and impoverished tribal community fighting for its rights to land and the survival of its identity; it is the experience of the Indian state trampling on minimum democratic rights through the use of its armed forces; it is the experience of how rape of women is used as a political weapon to bring a community/class to heel on the assumption that the collective identity of that group is linked to the 'izzat' of its women; it is the experience of how a Communist ftrty through long years of struggle and sacrifice has come to be recognised by that class and community as 'one of their own'.