Literary & Cultural Works
Author, Poet, Artist, Heritage Preservationist
A Life in Letters and Art
Beyond the realm of governance, Jishnu Dev Varma has cultivated a distinguished literary and artistic life that spans decades. A published author of six books, a poet of acclaim writing in both Bengali and English, and a visual artist whose works adorn temples, tourist destinations, and public spaces across India, his creative output reveals a mind as engaged with beauty, language, and cultural meaning as with the mechanics of statecraft.
His artistic vision is deeply informed by his Tripura heritage and the Manikya Dynasty's centuries-long patronage of literature, music, and the arts. Whether writing about the indigenous wisdom of India's Northeast, composing poetry that meditates on language and identity, or creating sculptures for public spaces in collaboration with Sanskar Bharati, his creative work consistently returns to themes of cultural preservation, historical memory, and the enduring relationship between humanity and nature.
Published Works
Master of Time: Journey Through an Ancient Kingdom
An ambitious narrative that traces the arc of the Manikya Dynasty across the centuries, weaving together historical scholarship, personal reflection, and the author's intimate knowledge of his family's royal legacy. The book offers readers a rare insider's perspective on one of India's most enduring yet least-known ruling lineages.
The Children of Water Goddess
A lyrical exploration of the myths, folklore, and cultural traditions of Tripura's diverse tribal communities. Drawing on indigenous narratives of creation and identity centred on the worship of water deities, the work illuminates the spiritual and ecological worldviews of India's northeastern peoples.
Views, Reviews, and My Poems
A collection that brings together critical essays, literary reviews, and original poetry spanning the author's creative career. The poems, composed in both Bengali and English, range from intimate personal reflections to meditations on language, nationhood, and the passage of time.
Con (Fusion) Of Language
A thought-provoking examination of language, identity, and cultural change in post-colonial India. The book interrogates how the collision and confluence of linguistic traditions — Sanskrit, Bengali, English, and the tribal languages of the Northeast — have shaped modern Indian identity and literary expression.
Indigenous Wisdom — Man and Nature
A scholarly work documenting the ecological knowledge systems of India's tribal communities, with particular focus on the relationship between indigenous peoples and their natural environments in the Northeast. The book argues for the integration of traditional ecological wisdom into modern environmental policy and sustainable development practice.
Maharaja Bir Bikram College: A Dream College
A commemorative history of the institution founded by and named after the author's maternal uncle, Tripura's last ruling monarch. More than an institutional history, the book reflects on the role of education in the transformation of a princely state into a modern democracy.
Featured Work: “Master of Time”
Published in 2025, “Master of Time: Journey Through an Ancient Kingdom” is Jishnu Dev Varma's most ambitious literary work to date. Drawing on his unique position as both a historian and a direct descendant of the Manikya Dynasty, the book offers readers a rare insider's perspective on one of India's most enduring yet least-known royal lineages. The narrative spans the full arc of the dynasty's fourteen-century history, weaving together archival research, oral traditions, personal family memories, and the author's own reflections on what it means to carry such a legacy into the modern democratic era.
What distinguishes “Master of Time” from conventional dynastic histories is its dual perspective. Dev Varma writes not only as a chronicler of events but as someone who has lived within the culture and traditions he describes. His accounts of royal ceremonies, family customs, and the palace's relationship with the broader community carry an intimacy that no outside historian could achieve. At the same time, his education in English literature and his decades of public service give him the analytical distance needed to place his family's story within the broader currents of Indian history.
The book has been praised for its accessible prose style, which makes a complex historical narrative engaging for general readers while maintaining the scholarly rigour that academics demand. Its publication came at a moment of renewed interest in India's princely states and their role in shaping the nation's political, cultural, and architectural heritage.
Featured Work: “Indigenous Wisdom — Man and Nature”
Published in 2022, “Indigenous Wisdom — Man and Nature” represents the intersection of Jishnu Dev Varma's intellectual interests and his governance practice. The book documents the ecological knowledge systems of India's tribal communities, with particular focus on the relationship between indigenous peoples and their natural environments in the Northeast. It argues — compellingly and with extensive evidence — that traditional ecological wisdom contains vital insights for modern environmental policy and sustainable development practice.
The work is not merely academic. It directly informed the design of the Bio Village 2.0 programme and the solar electrification initiative, both of which incorporated principles of community-based environmental stewardship that Dev Varma had studied and documented in the book. In this sense, “Indigenous Wisdom” serves as both a scholarly contribution and a policy blueprint — demonstrating how intellectual engagement can directly shape governance outcomes when the author holds positions of administrative authority.
Poetry & Literary Voice
Jishnu Dev Varma's poetry, composed in both Bengali and English, has been celebrated for its evocative, lyrical quality and its engagement with themes of heritage, identity, and the natural world. His verses often draw upon the landscapes and cultural traditions of Tripura, transforming the personal into the universal.
His poetic sensibility is deeply rooted in the Bengali literary tradition, which has produced some of the world's greatest literature — from Rabindranath Tagore to Jibanananda Das. Dev Varma's work continues this tradition while bringing to it a distinctive northeastern perspective, drawing on the region's unique ecology, tribal cultures, and the particular experience of growing up as a royal descendant in democratic India.
His English-language poetry, while less voluminous, demonstrates a different dimension of his literary voice — more analytical, more philosophical, engaging with questions of language itself as both a medium of expression and a carrier of cultural identity. This linguistic duality is explored extensively in his book “Con (Fusion) Of Language,” which interrogates how the collision and confluence of linguistic traditions have shaped modern Indian identity.
In the language of rivers and forests, I find the truest grammar — where each leaf is a syllable, each monsoon a verse, and the silence between them the most eloquent poetry of all.
— From 'Views, Reviews, and My Poems'
We are children of many languages, inheritors of many grammars. In this confusion lies our genius — the ability to think in one tongue, feel in another, and dream in a language that has no name.
— From 'Con (Fusion) Of Language'
Visual Arts & Sculpture
As a practitioner of modern art, painting, and sculpture, Jishnu Dev Varma brings the same creative intensity to the visual arts that characterises his literary work. His artistic creations — ranging from paintings that explore contemporary Indian themes to sculptural installations for public spaces — have been displayed at various tourist destinations, temples, and civic locations across India.
His artistic collaborations with Sanskar Bharati, the national cultural organisation, have produced works that bridge traditional Indian aesthetics and modern artistic expression. These collaborations reflect his conviction that art should not be confined to galleries but should inhabit public spaces, enriching the daily lives of communities and preserving cultural memory in tangible, visible form.
Heritage Preservation — INTACH
As Convener of the Tripura Chapter of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), and coordinator of the Trust's initiatives across Northeast India, Jishnu Dev Varma has played a pivotal role in documenting, preserving, and promoting the region's rich architectural and cultural heritage. His work with INTACH encompasses the documentation of historic structures, the promotion of traditional arts and crafts, and advocacy for the integration of heritage conservation into urban and rural planning.
The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, established in 1984, is India's premier heritage conservation organisation, working to protect the country's natural and cultural heritage. As Convener for Tripura, Dev Varma oversaw initiatives including the documentation of endangered historical structures, the cataloguing of traditional craft practices, and campaigns to raise public awareness about the importance of heritage preservation. His coordination role across the Northeast brought attention to the region's unique architectural traditions — from the bamboo longhouses of tribal communities to the palace architecture of the Manikya Dynasty — which had previously received insufficient recognition in national conservation efforts.
This heritage work connects directly to his artistic practice and literary output. The same impulse that drives him to document indigenous wisdom in his books, to create sculptures for public spaces, and to collaborate with Sanskar Bharati on cultural installations also motivates his INTACH work. For Dev Varma, heritage is not a static inheritance to be preserved under glass but a living tradition that must be actively maintained, interpreted, and transmitted to future generations.
The Multilingual Creative Mind
One of the most distinctive aspects of Jishnu Dev Varma's creative life is its multilingual character. Growing up in a household where Bengali was the language of culture and education, English the language of administration and wider communication, and the tribal languages of Tripura the languages of the communities his family had governed for centuries, he developed an intuitive feel for how different linguistic traditions carry different ways of seeing and understanding the world.
This multilingual sensibility permeates his creative work. His Bengali poetry draws on the rich literary heritage of Rabindranath Tagore and the mangalkavya tradition, while his English prose reflects the analytical clarity of the Western essay form. His visual art, freed from the constraints of any single linguistic tradition, often explores themes that sit at the intersection of cultures — the meeting points where tribal, Bengali, and modern Indian identities converge and create something new.
Art is not a luxury of civilisation — it is its foundation. A society that ceases to create, to imagine, to express its deepest truths in beauty, has already begun to decline. The artist's work is as essential as the administrator's.
— Jishnu Dev Varma