Jitendra Chandra Paul: The Man Who Gave Tripura Its First Daily

He lived to 101 — long enough to see Tripura go from princely state to Indian statehood. Along the way, he founded its very first Bengali daily newspaper.

A Life Spanning Tripura’s TransformationNeed to Know

• Jitendra Chandra Paul (1914 – 12 September 2014) was a Bengali freedom fighter, journalist, and author from Agartala, Tripura.
• He was born in Brahmanbaria, then part of British India’s Bengal Presidency, in present-day Bangladesh.
• He was imprisoned for years for his role in India’s independence movement.
• In 1954, he founded Jagaran, Tripura’s first Bengali-language daily newspaper.
• He served as general secretary of the Tripura Ganatantrik Sangha, the Tripura State Democratic Union.
• He died on 12 September 2014, in Agartala, at the age of 101.

Building Press InstitutionsGood to Know

• He authored around a dozen books over his career, though detailed titles are not well documented in available sources.
• Soon after Tripura’s first elected state government was sworn in, in 1972, he helped raise the demand for a dedicated Press Club. This was under the banner of the Tripura Sangbadik Sangha.
• He was involved in Tripura’s public response to serious ethnic violence in 1980, and in advocating for refugees who had arrived from former East Pakistan.
• He is remembered as one of the founding figures of Tripura’s modern journalism.
• Tripura itself only formally merged with India on 15 October 1949, following an agreement signed with Maharani Kanchan Prava Devi that September. Paul’s own journalism and public life began just a few years into that new chapter.

Test Yourself

Please wait…

1. In 1954, Jitendra Chandra Paul founded Jagaran, described as what for Tripura?

Its first Bengali-language daily newspaper

Its first English-language weekly

Its first radio station

Its first printing press

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A Regional LegacyGreat to Know

• Detailed public records of his life are noticeably thinner than for many national-level freedom fighters. This is common for regionally significant figures from smaller states like Tripura, whose contributions are well remembered locally but less documented nationally.
• His career shows how the freedom struggle and post-independence institution-building were often carried out by the same people. He moved directly from imprisonment for independence activism into building Tripura’s press infrastructure.
• Jagaran’s continued publication today makes his most lasting legacy an institution, not just a historical record of his own activism.