As Raj Kamal Jha, The Indian Express editor, has said in his recent speech “its not that good journalism is dying but its just that bad journalism is making a lot of noise”, we need to be cautious on what we are being fed by the so-called popular media. Likewise when we deal with history and historical personalities, we need to see the things in perspectives and not be driven by the narratives of bigotry and vilification. Tipu Sultan has time and again been projected as the locus of anti-Hindu vanguard. This is a marked characteristic of a society and a nation that sees history through emotion and not fact or reason. It is also the sign of a mostly illiterate and mostly neo-literate people. As Tipu Jayanti is nearing in Karnataka, it is once again a time to revisit the traditions and history and try understanding the things. The Companion brings to you a collection of articles published in different news portals, so that we critically engage with Tipu Sultan and history and avoid being agents of communalism consciously/unconsciously.
Why we love to hate Tipu Sultan
By Vikram Sampath, Live Mint
In our zeal to be on the right or left of Indian politics, we have thrust Tipu (and other rulers like him) to the scrutiny of “Secularism”, “Communalism” and “Nationalism”—terms that were non-existent in 18th century India. Judging characters of the past by the yardsticks and definitions of today is being grossly unfair to them because the facts don’t fit our straight-jacket.
An essay in imperial villain-making
By William Dalrymple, The Guardian
Recent work by scholars has succeeded in reconstructing a very different Tipu to the one-dimensional fanatic invented by Wellesley. Tipu, it is now clear, was one of the most innovative and far-sighted rulers of the pre-colonial period. He tried to warn other Indian rulers of the dangers of an increasingly arrogant and aggressive west. “Know you not the custom of the English?” he wrote in vain to the nizam of Hyderabad in 1796. “Wherever they fix their talons they contrive little by little to work themselves into the whole management of affairs.”
India’s wrapped understanding of history
By Aakar Patel
Ashoka the Great did not slaughter foreigners or Muslims when he conquered Kalinga. It was Oriya-speaking Hindus whom he butchered by the tens of thousands, according to the stories we are told. But Ashoka is called ‘great’, and his lion emblem is the official symbol of the republic of India. The wheel in the middle of the Indian flag is called the ‘Ashoka chakra’ because that is also his symbol. Why do we honour Ashoka and not Tipu, when both men are accused of the same crime? We know the answer and it is obvious. A Muslim king cannot get away with doing the same things a Hindu can in India.
Erasing History For the Kodavas, Tipu means a traumatic extirpation
By Deepak Thimaya , Outlook
It is said that the ancestry/history of Kodavas was lost after Tipu’s attack. Now, I too do not know where our roots are and what our history is. It is said that a new generation of Kodavas emerged from the babies who were protected in their mothers’ wombs. While this gives the historical reasons for Kodavas’ animosity against Muslims and why they supported the British, it also explains why Kodavas have loyally found themselves in the camps of the BJP and RSS. Meanwhile, it is also intriguing how Kodavas do not make a huge cry about how they also suffered at the hands of the Lingayat kings of Haleri dynasty.
By Markande Katju, The Logical India
There is a huge ancient Vishnu Hindu temple, built around 1000 A.D. known as the Ranganath Swamy Temple near Tipu’s palace at Seringapatam, and I have personally visited it. If Tipu was communal, would he not have demolished it ? Instead he gave many costly gifts to it.
by MA Deviah, Firstpost
Evidence of Tipu’s deeds in Coorg comes from within his own court. Tipu’s biographer and courtier Mir Hussein Kirmani wrote about Tipu’s exploits in Coorg in his The History of Tipu Sultan, “The conquering Sultan dispatched his Amirs and Khans with large bodies of troops to punish those idolaters and reduce the whole country (Coorg) to subjection. They attacked and destroyed many towns. Eight thousand men, women, and children were taken as prisoners. They were collected in an immense crowd like a flock of sheep or herd of bullocks.”
Politics of Tipu’s tableau and beyond….
By Abu Iman , www.karnatakamuslims.com
Unfortunately, today the identity of Tipu Sultan has been confined to the Muslim community. While many establishments like Mysore University, the Bangalore International Airport, new towns, important roads or circles etc could have been named after Tipu, the successive governments are busy in naming the establishments after a select few historical figures.
Attempts at distorting history of Tipu Sultan
By Abdul Basith, TwoCircles.net
Tipu was not just a freedom fighter and a great patriot; he was a social reformer, who put an end to many age old social evils practiced by the elite class Nair Hindus
He was the ruler who ordered the reconstruction of Srirangapattana temple, destructed by the Maratha forces.
By Manimugdha S Sharma, Times of India
This debate, argue historians, is a reflection of the Sangh Parivar’s penchant for “reducing everything down to easy binaries”. They point out that Tipu was a man and a ruler way ahead of his time, not a caricature of a bigoted Muslim king.
Tipu built several roads and bridges apart from buildings, and also laid the foundation of a damming project on the Cauvery, which was finished only in the 20th century and is today known as the Krishna Raja Sagara Dam. The thriving sericulture industry in Karnataka today is also a Tipu legacy.
Tipu Sultan and the Double-Edged Sword of History
Deepti Sreeram , Tehelka
For BA Saletere, the first historian from Mangalore who pioneered the documentation of the socio-political history of the 18th century Vijayanagar Empire, Tipu was the “defender of Hindu dharma” and “a saviour of one of the greatest spiritual centres of learning that belonged to a religion other than the one he professed.”
By Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed , Frontline
Court chroniclers routinely exaggerated the exploits of their masters. Take the two volumes of the Nishan-i-Haidari written by Kirmani, for instance. These were translated into English in 1842 and 1864, and the translations are not reliable. Kirmani was a pensioner of the British in Calcutta when he wrote the original volumes. His claim that 80,000 people in Coorg (Kodagu) were forcefully converted to Islam is often cited. Yet this was about the size of the entire population of Coorg in 1839-40, which indicates that Kirmani was exaggerating. The 1871 Census, the first in British India, recorded 154,476 Hindus against just 11,304 Muslims in Coorg. There might have been conversions, but the numbers seem to have been exaggerated substantially.
By Sandeep Balakrishna
And Tipu Sultan is in many ways the “Aurangzeb of the South”. As the author of a book on Tipu Sultan (Tipu Sultan: The Tyrant of Mysore, Rare Publications, Chennai), I am both amused and amazed at the continuing efforts to paint him as a hero, patriot, and freedom fighter.
To be sure, the Tipu myth gained currency after Bhagvan S Gidwani’s distorted novel named The Sword of Tipu Sultan, where Tipu is hailed as the “tiger of Mysore” among other things.
Love Godse, Hate Tipu Sultan: Why The ‘Tiger of Mysore’ Still Troubles The Saffrons
By Subhash Gatade , Countercurrents.org
The anti-Muslim attitude of the RSS was shaped by the colonial historians such as H. M. Elliot and John Dawson, who compiled the History of India as Told by Its Own Historians. They denounced Muslims, contending that they destroyed temples and prosecuted Hindus. The real purpose of Elliot’s formulation was to inject a heavy dose of communalism in the minds of people of the 19th century.
Tipu beyond the ‘Enigma’ and the ‘Bigot’ narrative
By Sadif Ashraf & Rohith Vemula www.roundtableindia.co.in
Throughout history, Muslims’ narratives were excluded and consciously forgotten by colonial representatives and the Hindu nationalistic historians (enlightened neo-colonial elites). Recently they ‘included’ Muslims in history as anti-national. This year, when Karnataka government decided to celebrate Tipu day on November 11, the day Tipu Sultan was born, the natural reaction from RSS came out and it labelled Tipu as anti-Hindu and thus anti-national.
By Walter Semkiw MD
Tipu Sultan is considered, along with his father, Haider Ali, as a pioneer of rocket development. Kalam was quite amazed that an Indian was being honored at a NASA facility, while back home, most of his fellow Indians had forgotten about Tipu Sultan.
How Congress called Tipu a freedom fighter, but reduced him to a Muslim
Anisha Sheth|, www.thenewsminute.com
“There, Congress took it upon itself to organize Tipu Jayanti. There was no pressure to do so. For the first time that day, I saw Tipu Sultan with a beard. Until then, we generally saw Tipu fighting with a tiger. Hindu fundamentalists call him anti-Hindu, and the Muslim fundamentalists, PFI and other groups are making him an Islamic icon. Because the Congress did it haphazardly, the only thing Tipu Jayanti has done, is to benefit fundamentalists on both sides.”
Three Hindu temples in Karnataka which keep alive fond memories of Tipu Sultan
BJP and allied organisations maintain that the former Mysore ruler was a Muslim fanatic, who demolished temples and converted Hindus by force. While the historians probe the deeds or misdeeds of Tipu Sultan, there is strong evidence of several temples in Karnataka still cherishing their association with him. Many of them prospered under his rule benefiting directly from him.
Tipu Sultan: a secular internationalist, not a bigot
Muzaffar Assadi , The Hindu
A ruler, who once identified himself with the American and French Revolution and Jacobinism, has remained an enigma to many. That a man who ruled for just 16 years continues to haunt Hindutva groups obviously means that Tipu continues to exist in the political discourses, political narratives as well as in the imagination of nation-building. This is where the irony of history lies — one cannot just bury Tipu in the annals of history.
Keep The Balance. Both Are Heroes of Their Time
By Arun Prasad , The Indian Express
Both the Kempegowdas and Tipu Sultan have left an indelible mark on the history of Bengaluru. They used their sovereignty to render noble works. May the heroes rest in peace. Let us not put them down for narrow political gain.
Why the British commemorate Tipu
By Janaki Nair , The Indian Express
No one did more to commemorate Tipu Sultan than his inveterate enemies, and eventual victors, the British. Tipu’s dogged defiance and the storming of Srirangapatna led to the explosion of memorabilia, kitsch, poems and plays, promoting the development of completely new forms of art, such as Robert Ker Porter’s 2,550 square foot panoramic painting.
Story of Tipu Sultan’s rockets
Arun Dev & Shalini Umachandran,Times of India
“All the rockets in the world today can be traced to those used during the wars in Mysore,” says aerospace scientist Professor Roddam Narasimha, DST year-of-science professor, engineering mechanics unit of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, who has been pursuing Tipu”s rockets as “an interesting sideline” for decades. “There is one single line of technology development that links those rockets to what the US, Russia and India are doing today “
By Rajat Ghai , Down to Earth
As the controversy over whether “Tiger of Mysore” Tipu Sultan was an Islamic iconoclast or a secular nationalist rages on in India, it is time for us to reflect on a different side of the man—that of an able ruler and visionary who revolutionised the economy of his kingdom, improving the lives of millions of his subjects. Among the many contributions of Tipu, one in particular stands out. The sultan laid the foundations of the silk industry in Karnataka, especially in the southern part of the state.
Why BJP doesn’t like Tipu Sultan, the king who fought British and whom they feared?
Firstly, Rulers were monarchs and there would be negative aspects to everyone. In modern era, in democracies, leaders can commit genocide, yet be ‘nationalist’ and ‘patriot’. And their followers have the cheek to term Tipu Sultan as ‘bigot and committing atrocities’.
The point is that Tipu, a Muslim, as first man who rose against British power in India, can’t be accepted by Hindutva walas.
So, even if he had a ring with ‘Rama’ written on it, or his excellent relations with Sringeri Sankaracharya, lone king of era who didn’t compromise with British, and laid his life in the battle–nothing can make him a ‘hero’ in the eyes of BJP and Sangh Parivar.
Seven things you may not have known about Tipu Sultan, India’s first freedom fighter
A new book By Kate Brittlebank examines the myths and realities of Tipu Sultan’s life and reign
Tipu was fascinated by western science and technology, and got gun makers, engineers, clockmakers and other experts from France to Mysore. He then set up his own manufacture of bronze cannons, ammunition and muskets to “Make in Mysore”.
