National

Where Is Tipu’s Sword?

A Tipu Sultan University, and in BJP-ruled Karnataka?

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Where Is Tipu’s Sword?
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The legendary 18th century Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan’s legacy hasn’t had much luck of late, with his reputation often a subject of bitter dispute. Now the name, and what it signifies to different people, has become fuel for another controversy. This one came about after Union minister for minority affairs K. Rahman Khan ann­ounced in December that a minority university would be created in his name in Srir­an­gapatnam, in Karnataka’s Man­dya district, once the capital of Tipu’s kingdom and where his remains are interred. 

Predictably, the suggestion has come like a red flag in the face of the ruling BJP and the state’s Hindutva lobby. The possible veneration of a “mass murd­e­rer” of Hindus, and that too under their watch? G. Mad­husudhan, Legislative Cou­ncil member from Srirangapatnam, calls Tipu an “earlier version of Osama bin Laden”. “The man had such conte­mpt for Hin­dus. The whole of Kerala, especially Malapp­uram, saw that. He wasn’t just any other Muslim expans­ionist or emperor,” says Madhusudhan.

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The Karnataka BJP, indeed, has even opposed the creation of the minority institution, irrespective of its name. “One Muslim university, the AMU, has bred enough trouble for social well-being. Crea­ting another one in Srira­ng­apatnam will destroy the region’s secular fabric. This is a plan of the Muslim fun­damentalists, the minister is a puppet in their hands,” adds Madhu­sudhan, a former BJP spokesperson.

To be sure, Tipu’s rule is seen as a sort of inflection point in the history of the region’s community relations—its pro­blematics, omitted in the sanitised off­icial image, have for decades been a stock-in-trade of a parallel right-wing narrative. Tipu was essentially engaged in a cat-and-mouse fight with the East India Company for control over Kera­la’s ports; the RSS focuses relentlessly on his violent trail. In this telling, the en-masse flight of upper-caste lan­ded gentry from Mal­a­bar came in the backdrop of “mass killings, forced conversions, circumcisions and beef-feeding”. That the Pak­istan navy has a ship named ‘Tippu Sultan’ is also something  right-wingers have latched on to gladly.

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Bangalore-based historian Suryanath U. Kamath, non-committal on whether it’s kosher to name a university after Tipu, agrees his appr­o­ach to non-Muslims was “complica­ted”. “He was good to them inside his territory and by and large behaved well with them. But in Malabar and Coorg, he had hundreds murdered or converted,” he says.

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Tipu Sultan’s gumbaz in Srirangapatnam. (Photograph by S. Satish Kumar)

Was the violence communal in origin or was it just realpolitik of the times, a desire to unleash terror on those who refused to bow to his sword? There are historians who lean towards the latter. Sheikh Ali, a retired history professor at the University of Mysore, points out that Tipu was also harsh towards Mus­lims. “He was bitterly opposed to the nawabs of Cuddapah and Kurnool. And he was more hostile to Hyderabad’s Nizam than he was to the Marathas.”

The incessant talk of Tipu’s atrocities also eclipses some of his other acts that could be seen as fri­endly to Hindus, such as an annual grant to 156 temples in his kingdom and the close relationship he shared with Shankaracharya Sri Sachi­dan­anda Bharati iii. In fact, letters prove that he had even helped in reinstalling an idol at the math that was ransacked by the Marathas.

And while his “Islamist legacy” can be debated, there is little doubt about his other ach­ievements, whether it is the development of modern rocket technology or using trade as a tool to spread his influence globally. It is this legacy that continues to be a big draw for tourists to Srirangapatnam. “The­refore, to call him a bigot would be erroneous,” says Ali. “A lot of our ideas of Tipu Sultan come from British colonial historians who were imprisoned by him or those who were not reconciled to his rule.” Noted filmmaker M.S. Sathyu feels it’s “high time” Tipu got due recognition. “He was a freedom fighter and Sriran­gapatnam is where his capital was, where it had all started. So what’s wrong?”

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One difficulty is that the ‘Tiger of Mysore’ has always been a bit of a polarising figure. The airing of even a TV series on the man, The Sword of Tipu Sultan, was bitterly opposed by some who claimed to be descendants of the families persecuted by his army. More rec­ently, former Karnataka education minister D.H. Shankaramurthy, in 2006, had mar­ked him as someone opposed to Kannada, given that he enforced Persian as the official language. When playwright Girish Karnad stepped in to defend Tipu, veteran Kannada novelist S.L. Bhyrappa reacted by saying that valorising Tipu as a national hero would be tantamount to overlooking the atrocities he perpetrated in the name of religion. (This time, he’s again jumped into the fray, urging the government to scrap the plan to name the proposed university after the 18th century ruler.)

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Some have even suggested that a less divisive figure be chosen to name the university. “Why not someone like Sir Mirza Ismail?” asks K.B. Ganapathy, editor of The Star of Mysore. “He was a Muslim par excellence, an educationist and a democrat.” A diwan of the Mysore kingdom, he was renowned for his administrative skills and was later even invited to join the Jaipur rulers in the 1940s, where one of the main roads is still named after him. “My point is, why go back 200 years to bring back a controversial figure? Tipu may have fought the British but he would have eventually brought in the French. Are they supposed to be any better?”

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Ironically, the latest controversy has erupted at a time when the Defence Research and Development Organ­is­a­tion (DRDO) has decided to acknowledge Tipu’s legacy by establishing the country’s first archaeological rocket mus­eum at Tipu Sultan’s rocket courtyard in Srirangapatnam. DRDO chief controller, R&D, W. Selvamurthy, on seeing the pitiable condition of the courtyard, is reported to have said, “It’s really sad and appalling. The matter is of great concern. The place which gave birth to the basics of rocket technology can’t be treated this way.” 

Reacting to arguments that Tipu’s atrocities preclude all encomiums, Irfan Habib, one of our foremost his­torians and emeritus professor at Aligarh Muslim Univer­sity, says, “Even the rebels committed atrocities in 1857-58. That doesn’t mean we can say there shouldn’t be a road named after Bahadur Shah Zafar in New Delhi. The truth is, Tipu star­ted the resistance against the British and for this he has a place in Indian history.” But the travesty perhaps lies in naming a minority institution after Tipu Sultan. The Congress, always a sucker for the politics of empty gestures, has reduced him to a Muslim figure. “This decision act­ually belittles his memory because there is nothing that he did for Muslims. What he did was for the entire country,” says Habib.

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