Tipu Sultan in the 21st century
Was Tipu Sultan a Muslim despot? Or was he a true nationalist who bravely battled a foreign power? This debate may have never entered the popular domain had it not been for an innocuous remark by an actor over the name of an airport, of all things, that inspired violent protests in Karnataka last November.
Serious scholars would hesitate to make such a binary assessment, but politicians tend to be less cautious in their judgements if it fulfils their purposes. The violence after the Karnataka government marked Tipu Sultan’s birth anniversary is an example. At the celebrations, Girish Karnad said the Kempe Gowda International Airport should have been named after the dynamic 18th century ruler of Mysore because it was situated at Devanahalli, where he was born.
Mr Karnad’s remarks apparently smote the sentiments of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Vokkaliga community so profoundly that they felt constrained to send him death threats and resort to protests that left several people dead. Perhaps the fact that BJP had lost the last Assembly elections on corruption charges against its chief minister made this manufactured dispute over a threecentury-old legacy an attractive platform on which to rebuild a political base.
Kate Brittlebank does not subscribe to the BJP’s view on this issue nor the Intrepid Patriot theory as purveyed in the lavishly fictionalised production that Doordarshan aired aeons ago. Her book, Tiger: The Life of Tipu Sultan, provides so nuanced a portrait that it probably won’t change the terms of the popular debate either. But for anyone interested in academic rigour in assessing the past, this fact-rich precis, distilled from years of scholarly study of this fascinating ruler and the nature of his rule over mainly Hindu subjects, sets the record straight.
Ironically, current Tipu demonology replicates colonial attitudes. He loomed large in British consciousness for terrorising them in their trading strongholds, highly embellished accounts of which appeared in the press. “Over the decades and through four Anglo-Mysore wars, people hungrily awaited reports of the latest outrage perpetrated by the so-called tyrant,” Ms Brittlebank writes. When Tipu was killed at the siege of Srirangapatna in 1799, there was widespread jubilation in Britain — “Tipu’s demise fuelled further creative output on the part of not only authors and playwrights but also artists who put paint to canvas to glorify the victory.”
The British had good reason to give Tipu a bad press. He and his father Haider Ali fiercely resisted British attempts to establish a foothold in prosperous Mysore for more than three decades. In fact, all Europeans were strictly forbidden from entering Mysore. Unlike the Nizam of Hyderabad or the Maratha Peshwa, Haider and his son were not fooled by offers to assign “Residents” to their court. Not that either ruler was a xenophobe. Recognising the superiority of European military expertise, both freely used the latest weaponry and hired French mercenaries in their battle formations.
The vilification of Tipu as a Muslim and foreigner was also a British construct. The hostile rhetoric emphasising Tipu as a “Mahomedan” was the result of “age-old animosity that began with the Crusades and would have resonated with audiences back home”. True, Haider had deposed a Hindu dynasty; but the Wodeyars nursed a grievance against his heir not for being a Muslim but for seizing their kingdom — they allied with the British in the last Anglo-Mysore War in the hope of retrieving it.
Nor was Tipu an “outsider”. He was of Arab descent, but specifically Navayat — elite Arabs who had been in south India for several centuries. Besides, Muslim dynasties proliferated in the Deccan – in Gulbarga, Bidar, Bijapur, Golconda – all governing non-Muslim subjects.
By locating history within the times, Ms Brittlebank provides a different perspective. The criticism of Tipu’s extreme cruelty of conquered populations looks less like wilful savagery when you know “it was common practice to set examples to forestall further opposition” and that the British were no strangers to such practices.
On religious intolerance, Ms Brittlebank makes the same point as several Indian historians have: Destruction of religious sites was a political act of conquest, irrespective of whether they were coreligionists. She points out that the Shaivite and Vaishnavite dynasties did not hesitate to destroy Hindu images and temples that were associated with their rivals in the south and patronised dargahs and mosques.
Tipu, likewise, demolished the Varahaswami temple that was associated with the Wodeyars. Had he been driven by religious motivations, “he would not have allowed the Sri Ranganatha temple to flourish within sight of his palace”. He also generously endowed the famous Jain temple at Sravanabelgola and the Sringeri Math.
This argument holds true for the forced conversion and transfer of Christians from the Malabar coast, access to which was vital for foreign trade. Those acts were part of a policy of chastisement because the Christians were regarded as fellow travellers of the British, as were the Nairs and Kodavas.
The portrait that emerges is of a shrewd, learned and talented ruler, very much a product of his time. To paint him as communal or patriotic is to invest him with attributes that were conceptually alien in the 18th century. The question is whether 21st century politicians will understand this.
TIGER
The Life of Tipu Sultan Kate Brittlebank Juggernaut 163 pages; ~399