Neer Mahal looks for water

Ramananda Roy Acharya

Neer-Mahal (Neer - water and Mahal - palace) means a palace on water. This image is often restricted to dreams and fairytales, but in the northeastern state of Tripura that dream was turned into reality by the then king Birbikram Kishore Manikya Bahadur in the year 1930. He built a palace called Neermahal in the middle of the lake Rudrasagar. Half of the Palace is an open-air theatre and the other half, on the Western Side, is called the Andar Mahal that was used by the Royalty.

The Maharaja commissioned the British company Martin and Burns to construct a summer resort for him. Martin and Burns took nine long years to complete the palace in the middle of the lake. The palace is second of its kind in India after the Jalmahal in Rajasthan. It is the burning existence of the great taste and thoughts of king Birbikram who belonged to the 2nd largest dynasty of the world – The Manikyas.

The palace is located at Melaghar, in South Tripura, about 55 km from the capital Agartala. The 400 metres long building has 24 rooms with great architecture. The palace is a fascinating blend of Hindu and Muslim traditions. Neer Mahal attracts tourist not only from each and every part of India but from abroad as well. It shares a huge margin in revenue generation for the state government at present.

But the charm is no more as it stands wearily. From the very beginning it defends itself from the attacks of rain, sun and human beings. I really don’t know why people use its walls to write their names and so on. It is a wonder that it is still standing without any proper maintenance, and this lone water palace in Eastern India may crumble any day, as the lake on which it stands is slowly shrinking. The water level of Rudrasagar is also going down drastically.

Largely because of the careless approach of the Centre and State, very little has been done for the restoration of the palace and conservation of the dying lake. The wetland area of Rudrasagar has reduced to about 2 square Kms. Over the last five decades, as human activities have grown along the banks of the lake, it has started to take a toll on the ecological balance of the wetland. Hundreds of migrant families from erstwhile East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, started entering the area from the early 50s. They were settled along the banks of the Rudrasagar Lake. The growth in settlements resulted in extension of agricultural activities at the cost of the lake. In the upstream, human activities should be checked, pollution in and around the lake should be minimised and the people living on the lake should be made aware of how their daily practices are acting as a slow-poison to the lake. Soil erosion due to deforestation in the catchments area of the lake has caused the lake to shrink.

Tourism helps to generate a heavy amount for the central government every year. The centre is also spending a lot for promotion of business. But if the sites are not taken care of, in the near future, tourists will lose interest in visiting these places of history like the Neermahal.