FOj^T&Y IN TRIPURA 45 Tripura Era (i.e. 1886 A D.). This Act of Maharaja Bir Chandra Mamkya denied the right of the people to "any elephant-trapping operations, Sal, Garjan, Mouri, Agar, Saral, Dhuna or any other valuable trees, over which the State shall have full rights." By the Act II of 1297 T.E. (1887 A D.) jhujmiag near the vwiaityof Sal forests was forbidden for the first time, but no specific area was teetered as reserved. In the past, forests had no value to the rulers of Tripura. But now with Bir Chandra Manikya, only those forests were considered to have no value which did not contain any marketable produce. The Tripura Durbar was definitely inspired by ih€ neighbouring colonial administrators in enacting Swh laws. In British India the first Forest Act was enacted in 1865 and a fuM-fledged Forest Department was established in 1866. Under the colonial rulers the main aim of the Forest Department was the systematic exploitation of forest resources for mercantile interests. In 1871 nearly the whole British District of the Chittagong Hill Tracts was -declared to be Government Forest2. As a result the amount of profit within tlwee years (1874-75) was stupendous. Necessarily, the Tripura Durbar leamt this lesson from the British. In 1894 the -British India Oovemaoent issued a forest Policy Circular based on J.A. Vbelcker's formula wherein profit from timber was designated as the o|riy factor which the Government ought to take into account before formulating any policy. In Britain too, a fierce struggle had taken place between the forest people of Ireland and the emerging British industrialists in the first quarter of the l^th oeiatury. With that knowledge of the past in his honaeland-where the foresters ultimately Succumbed and the emerging capitalist economy triumphed in Britain, the Viceroy of India, Lord Canning, said to 18fi2that India's forest administration upto 1857 was a "melancholy faHure". It should be pointed out that the series of Forest Acts of British India in 1865, 1^78; 1€94, and 1927 were no less brutal than the forest legislation of Britain. The age-old right of the foresters was redefined as crime and new terms, namely, poaching, woodtheft, tresspass, ^tc., were introduced. There were sharp divergences between the officially proclaimed aims of the colonial forest legislations and its actual operations. In 1894 the British Government declared its Forest Policy thus : "The sole object with which state forests are administered is public benefit," The same loud wish was expressed by the Tripura Durbar. In fact, regarding forests, everything was propagated in the name of "public benefit" and "conservation of forests", although the actual aim was very different. In Tripura the Maharaja fesued a fresh 'permit' system in 1903. The regulations of 1903 laid down severe punishment for any infringement of any pro vision of the regulations. In 1913 a more compreh'ensive set of rules was drawn up for the organisation of the Forest Department and Tripura was divided into several forest mahals or sub-divisions. But even so, till then it was only on the reservation of trees, in contrast to the reservation of forest area, that the main emphasis wa^ given, fa the