Living on stilts in North Tripura

“They had to bring elephants to demolish our houses,” says Bharatjoy Reang.

“Even with that [the elephants] they would not be able to crush it. They would eventually resort to burning our tongs." This 75-year-old Reang Adivasi remembers a time when forest officers forcibly evicted and displaced him along with his wife and children from their home in Assam’s Sribhumi district (formerly Karimganj). That was in the early 1980s. The houses that he is referring to are known as tong ghar or gairing nok as the locals would say – a traditional dwelling common among many tribal communities in Tripura, including Bharatjoy’s own.

“We the people of the hill never used to live in mud or brick houses. We always preferred tongs,” he says pointing at his own house in this para (settlement) in North Tripura district. It’s a bamboo structure resting on bamboo stilts, a foot above the ground. Traditionally, they had thatched roofs but the one on Bharatjoy’s tong is made of tin. It stands next to a long and treacherous stone-paved road coming from Bagbasa and leading up to the serene Tongchera para in Zaithang village where we’re talking to him.

Bharatjoy’s is one of the first houses that you reach as you move into this settlement, resting in the arms of high mountains thickly covered in greenery and tranquil water bodies. About 25 kilometres from the city of Dharmanagar in the state of Tripura lies this rather secluded settlement of 150 families of the Reang tribe [also spelt Raing], listed as the only Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) in this state.

But if you were to spend some time in this settlement, you’d realise that it is not just the community that is vulnerable. So too are their forest lands, their language – Kaubru (one of the eight dialects of Kokborok), their way of life, and their traditional dwellings. Many in the community have moved into concrete houses made under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Gramin (PMAY-G). Bharatjoy also built a pucca house for himself in 2017, within a year of the scheme being introduced in Tripura with a changed name, from Indira Awas Yojana to PMAY.

And within three years of building the house, ironically, even as the prime minister spoke of having brought the "Ganges of development" to the North East, Bharatjoy’s house was caught in flames and destroyed. The one-bedroom pucca house that he had built with government assistance under the scheme was completely burned down. It exists today as a heap of rubble sitting right next to his tong ghar.

“That was some six years ago,” he says. “It was probably a short circuit that caused the fire. We appealed to the local leaders several times for help. They all said they would but didn’t. Never. They don’t care. It is only our vote that they want.” For two years after the disaster, Bharatjoy and two of his sons who are still dependent on him, lived with an older son in the same settlement. But eventually they decided to build a new tong ghar in place of a mud house.

“It took not more than two months with all the help from my family. I made this tong four years ago,” says Bharatjoy taking us inside his bamboo house. It’s not much more than 300 square feet. The floor and the sides of his house are made from woven bamboo strips. The bamboo species used for this is locally known as muli (Melocanna baccifera), he educates me. “For this size tong, you need at least 300 muli. These are young bamboo, usually no more than one year old.”

Everything starts with sourcing the bamboo. “Once procured, we don’t wait for long to cut the bamboo stems in different shapes and sizes. We don’t let them dry out. If you do, they will easily split. We make thin bamboo strips and weave them tightly,” he says. “For the base pillars, we like to use segun [teak] wood that’s at least 10-12 years old,” he says.

Bharatjoy uses a curved iron tool with a wooden handle called daau (or dhau) for almost all purposes – from cutting down the bamboo, splitting, and even making strips that are later woven to make the sides and floor of the house. For wooden parts, sometimes he uses a hand saw. Different communities across the northeast use varied tools for processing the bamboo for construction.

The Reangs are not the only tribe to make tongs. “Every tribe has their own way of making tongs. We usually don’t make verandas or balconies in our houses. People of the Debbarma community have extensions beyond floor space. Now some of our tongs are also being influenced by them,” says Bharatjoy.

None of them buy bamboo or wood, but rather source that from the nearby forest area. Other than muli, they often use makal (Bambusa pallida). “Gola bet or Burmese bamboo [Bambusa polymorpha] is used for tying the structures together. But these days, it is difficult to sustain structures with so many termites around,” complains Bharatjoy.

“They eat away the wooden base, leaving the stems hollow from the inside. Had it been kaaingla or kawadhyuti (sub-species of bamboo), this structure would have lasted for a century.” He speaks of extinct species of trees that were once used as major load-bearing components in building tongs that protected them from insects and termites.

“How will you get such trees to survive? People have been clearing up forests for cultivating betel nut or other things that get them more money,” laments Bharatjoy. Tripura is a densely forested state, with around 60 per cent of its land covered by evergreen and moist deciduous woods. The forests provide sustenance to many tribal communities like the Reangs and are integral to their way of life.

Food is both foraged and cultivated, using jhum (a slash and burn shifting cultivation practice). Once cropping and harvesting is completed, the land is left fallow for a long time and vegetative regeneration is allowed until the plot becomes cultivable once again. But with time, the choice and availability of land for jhum began to shrink, leading to a shortening of the jhum cycle. And a reduction in the restoration period lowered land fertility, resulting in poor yields.

In the 1980s when forest officials drove Bharatjoy from his house, it was to conserve forests and restrict jhum under the Forest (Conservation) Act of 1980. Jhum was a system of mixed cropping prevalent in the hilly areas of the state for ages. “We mostly relied on jhum cultivation and would occasionally take up contractual jobs of planting trees for the forest department,” says Bharatjoy reminiscing about his life before displacement.

After the ‘80s several ethnic tribes living on forest lands were uprooted. Many of them turned to settled cultivation of high yielding crops like areca nut and rubber. Ironically, the move away from jhum to a plantation economy has further resulted in a massive loss of forest cover for the state. According to a 2023 Forest Survey of India report Tripura has seen the maximum decrease of forest cover inside the Recorded Forest Area (RFA) of 116.90 sq km in the country.

“We were devastated. No one listened to our pleadings. We were left homeless overnight. All of us had to migrate to this place and built our lives from scratch. We have been living here for the last 45 years,” says Bharatjoy still troubled by his personal loss of decades ago. In the earlier days tribal settlements would move from hill to hill, build these dwellings on stilts, tong ghar, entirely out of bamboo and thatch, he explains. As they descended from the hills to the plains, Bharatjoy recalls, traditional bamboo houses were replaced by rammed earth and timber constructions. And closer to urban areas, by brick and cement buildings.

“Mud houses are vulnerable to termites. Our livelihood depended on jhum. We had to shift our house every few years from one hilly slope to another. Tong was our choice of housing. I have been making tongs all my life. Not much has changed in the process of making them in all these years. But new tongs are rare these days,” says Bharatjoy.

We are sitting inside his bamboo dwelling that seems dark even during daytime, with only one window to let the daylight in. A tiny kitchen consists of a hearth, built on a raised bamboo and mud platform. “There aren’t any partitions in our tongs. Everything is in the same room,” he says.

“Neighbours help each other here in making tongs. It would take 5-7 people around 2-3 weeks to make a mid-sized tong [roughly 250-300 sq ft]. I would always prefer a tong over a pucca house. But hardly anyone makes tongs these days. People desire pucca housing. I don’t blame them,” says Bharatjoy. His words sound like a nostalgic lament for the gradual disappearance of the traditional housing style. “It takes 80 to 90 thousand rupees now to make such a tong house from scratch. Who can spend that kind of money?”

Very few from the 150 Reang families here have anything like a steady source of income. A few of them work in tea gardens as wage workers. Others migrate to neighbouring districts in search of a livelihood. And many gather fruits and vegetables from the jungles and sell in either in the village or at the nearest market. Those who came here in 1980s after being displaced from neighbouring Assam, like Bharatjoy, had continued jhum cultivation for a while, but were forced to give that up later when the area was declared a reserved forest zone. “We don’t have any steady source of income here,” Bharatjoy says.

Initiatives by the state government like the Tripura Bamboo Mission (TBM) claim to “build the bamboo sector as a major livelihood provider and provide employment opportunities to 20,000 poor producers in the sector.” Regardless of such claims, Bharatjoy earns hardly anything substantial from his craft. “I mostly make khara,” he says pointing at a few bamboo coops sitting near his tong. These are also known as taukhaou among the locals and are used to cage domesticated poultry. “They sell for not more than 150 rupees each. But you can only sell so many of them in a month.”

The result: Bharatjoy hires an auto for about 20 rupees a day and goes to the market to sell his product. He makes hardly Rs. 2,000 a month from this craft. “We mostly rely on natural resources for our needs. We are barely surviving,” he says.

As livelihood options for them in the village shrink, many in the community find hope in educating their children. Nothila Reang, 52, Bharatjoy’s eldest son, who owns a tiny grocery shop inside in the settlement, reiterates the grim socio-economic scenario around the village. “Our children almost never study beyond the primary school level. Most of them drop out after Class 5 or 6. We don’t have anyone here who has a fixed job either,” he says.

Bharatjoy’s daughter Pandourung Reang, 40, and her husband Rongakanto Reang, work as contract labourers at the tea-gardens near the settlement. Their six-year-old daughter Zinaru studies at the Tongchera Jr. B School (primary) located in Jubarajnagar block, walking distance from their settlement. The family has recently built a new tong ghar on a little hill, about five-minutes-walk from the settlement.

“We always wanted a tong for ourselves,” says Rangakanto. “We have to go out every day to earn a living. So, it took us nearly one year of regular part-time work on the house and a total of 50,000 rupees for hired labour to build it. We moved in just a few months ago," he adds. A single light bulb illuminates the rather large tong of about 500 sq ft.

“We used chon [dried long grass] for the roof like it is done traditionally. It is very durable and keeps the hut cool,” he says. “Most people don’t have the skills anymore,” says Bharatjoy, looking wistfully at the mesmerizing if foggy view of the hills beyond the steep slope on which the balcony of the tong extends, resting on long bamboo pillars.

“But my grandchildren are eager to learn.”

This story is supported by a fellowship from Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation (MMF).