Karnataka Election: Tipu Sultan's Death Continues To Be A Talking Point

“The Body of Tippu Sultan Was Found Here”

A modest and solitary stone tablet engraved with a star and crescent moon informs us of the spot where the ruler of Mysuru was killed in a battle 224 years ago in Srirangapatna, a town in Mandya district of Karnataka.

Some feet away from the gravestone, an official signboard erected by the government under the ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav’ to mark 75 years of Independence provides us the story about Tipu’s demise.

“In the Fourth Mysore war the British laid siege to Srirangapatna on 4th May 1799 AD and effectively breached the Fort at Watergate … Tipu moved in posthaste to the spot, and in the fight, fell to the bullet of a British soldier. It was here the body of Tipu Sultan was identified and recovered amidst heaps of the dead soldiers …”

Tipu Sultan’s death has found an unexpected new relevance in 2023. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in its bid to retain power in the key southern state, has invented two Vokkaliga characters—Uri Gowda and Nanje Gowda—who they claim, without any evidence, killed the Mysuru ruler Tipu Sultan in 1799.

While the vilification of the ‘Tiger of Mysore’ by the Hindu right is not new, in this election campaign Tipu has been pushed to an even more central position. For electoral gains, the BJP has tried to resurrect Tipu and forced voters to re-imagine his death.

Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Mandya on March 12, a huge arch was erected at the district’s entry point by the BJP workers. The arch hailed the two Gowdas. However, after a backlash, the reference was removed overnight.

This gambit particularly annoyed a section of Vokkaligas—a dominant landowning farming caste concentrated in southern Karnataka and in and around the Old Mysore region. The BJP is aggressively wooing them in this election.

While Mandya district, with its dominant Vokkaliga community, is a strong bastion of the Janata Dal Secular and Congress, the BJP has been attempting to make inroads in the region. The latest attempt is a clear bid to pit the Vokkaligas against Muslims while manufacturing new Hindu icons within the community.

The official signboard at Srirangapatna, however, contradicts the ruling party’s fictional account. Historians, opposition leaders and prominent Vokkaliga seers too have shot down the BJP’s fantastical theory calling it fake.

For Local Muslims, Tipu is “Sultan”

A short distance away from Tipu’s dying spot, two imposing minarets and a façade of the Jama Masjid or the Masjid-e-Ala fuse delicately into the spotless blue summer sky. The impressive two-storied structure located within the boundaries of the Srirangapatna Fort was built during the time of Tipu in 1784. The two towers are known to have an internal staircase consisting of about 200 steps.

For the past 18 years, Syed Raus has been teaching English, computer and other subjects to the students who come to the madrasa inside the mosque to gain religious knowledge. Near the courtyard of the mosque, little children are reciting holy Islamic scriptures as part of their summer camp. Apart from that, there is dry silence in the air.

For Raus, Tipu, whom he refers to as “Sultan” in veneration, is an icon whose influence on the socio-economic lives of people here continues beyond his lifetime. Tipu is remembered for his land and social reforms; for introducing and promoting mulberry silk cultivation, a thriving industry today; for breeding and conserving the active and strong cattle breed Amrut Mahal, which he also successfully deployed during battles; laying the foundation of what is today the Krishna Sagar Dam; developing rocket missile technology and most importantly for taking on the East India Company.

“Sultan excelled in all fields, be it technology, administration, or faith. Do only Muslims benefit from all his contributions? No. The entire society does. It is just that while the haters are fewer in number, they are louder. Those who love Tipu, both Hindus and Muslims, are more in number but are silent,” says Raus.

As one drives through the picturesque Old Mysore region, cutting past sugarcane fields and cruising by the waters of the Cauvery, it is difficult to gauge how successful the BJP has been in communalising Tipu into a “Muslim bigot” from a secular, pro-farming community and pro-innovation ruler who died fighting the colonial British. The BJP’s drive against Tipu bothers local Muslims who hold him in high regard.

Tipu: A victim of Politics?

For the BJP, Tipu embodies ‘the Muslim’—the eternal political adversary, a figure Hindus must polarise against, a character the Opposition parties are loyal to in order to appease Muslims.

Senior BJP leader Amit Shah in January declared that the Karnataka election would be a choice between Modi “who built [the Ram] temple” and those “who glorify” Tipu. Those who believe in Tipu cannot do any good for Karnataka, Shah said in February, attacking the Congress and the Janata Dal Secular. 

Several other senior BJP leaders have gone on to state that the election would be a battle between Savarkar and Tipu—a battle between the Hindu nationalist ideology versus a ‘Muslim’ ruler who, in their eyes, oppressed Hindus during his rule. For the RSS-BJP, Savarkar was a Hindu patriot while Tipu was a “Muslim tyrant who converted Hindus in Coorg.”

BJP minister and Karnataka education minister C.N. Ashwath Narayan, himself a Vokkaliga, has asked voters to finish off Congress leader Siddaramaiah in the election the same way the two Gowdas slayed Tipu. Another senior BJP leader Basanagouda Patil Yatnal referred to Muslim voters as Tipu Sultans and said that in the Bijapur constituency only the followers of Shivaji would prevail.

After seizing power from the Congress-JDS coalition in 2019, one of the first decisions by BJP chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa was to cancel the Tipu Jayanti celebrations started by the Siddaramaiah-led Congress regime in 2015.

But things were not always this unpleasant. In 2012, when Yeddyurappa quit the BJP to form his own party, he had donned Tipu Sultan’s headgear and held a mock sword during a function seeking the support of Muslims.

During the same period, when the BJP’s Jagadish Shettar was chief minister, the state government had released a monograph titled ‘Tipu Sultan—A Crusader for Change’, written by B Sheikh Ali to commemorate the 150th year of the Indian Freedom Struggle of 1857. “His concept of Nation State, his novel idea of state entrepreneurship, his advanced military skill, his zeal for reforms, etc makes him a unique leader far ahead of his age,” wrote Shettar in the preface.

Govinda M Karjol, then culture minister of the BJP government, also wrote that the period of 1782-1799 witnessed the “benevolent rule” of Tipu Sultan and praised him for having fought the British “single-handedly” and “valiantly.”

Contrast this with the narrative pedelled by the BJP in the current campaign. If earlier the right-wing groups allegedly resorted to distorting facts, manipulating narratives, and exaggerating grey events about Tipu, today, they have resorted to plain lies and invented stories, believe many historians and progressive thinkers.

The Drama Versus Book Narrative

At the centre of the discussion is a play titled ‘Tippu Nija Kanasugalu’ (Real Dreams of Tipu Sultan) by RSS-linked playwright Addanda C Cariappa, which portrays Tipu as a villain who was slain not by the British but by the two Vokkaligas.

This is based on a similarly-titled book by Cariappa. The book’s cover depicts Tipu as a ghastly figure, with strained eyebrows, sharp devilish ears, flaming eyes and a menacing, malevolent, bloodthirsty glare. The actual Tipu was often shown sporting a neatly curved moustache and a clean-shaven chin under his magnificent headgear embroidered with jewels. But Cariappa’s Tipu wears a thick chinstrap beard without any facial hair above the lips, like some conservative Muslims did in the modern era.

The title of the book and the play are considered to be a dig at the famous play ‘The Dreams of Tipu Sultan’ written by acclaimed late actor and playwright Girish Karnad in 1997.

Recently, Karnataka Horticulture Minister Munirathna had announced he would produce a film on the lives of the two Gowdas. But he had to stall the project last month after prominent Vokkaliga seer Nirmalanandanatha Swamiji expressed displeasure and advised Vokkaliga leaders cutting across parties to refrain from raking up the issue that could insult the community.

Debunking BJP’s theory

Locals in Mandya and Mysuru say they have never heard of the two Vokkaligas before the BJP brought them up recently. A section of Vokkaliga progressive thinkers even take it as an affront because they rate Tipu sympathetically. They underline that Uri means flame and Nanje means venom in Kannada as metaphors for the BJP’s devious strategy to communalise the atmosphere and the elections.

The Vokkaliga community never viewed Tipu Sultan as anti-Vokkaliga, says Ugra Narsimha Gowda, a prominent Vokkaliga social activist in Mysuru. “Tipu was for Vokkaliga and for farming communities. My ancestral village is 18 kms from Srirangapatna. My father lived till 93 and passed away four years ago. In his lifetime we never heard a negative thing about Tipu Sultan,” says Gowda. He goes on to list the number of policy interventions Tipu had made for the farming communities, including interest-free loans.

Sunanda Jayaram, a Vokkaliga woman farmer leader associated with the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha in Mandya, says her community is not affected by the “fake narrative” about Uri Gowda and Nanje Gowda. “They thought the Vokkaliga community will get attracted by this. But the community does not see Tipu as a bad ruler,” says Jayaram.

The BJP’s opponents, too, are not buying the theory. H.D. Kumaraswamy, JDS leader and former chief minister, has accused the BJP of stigmatising the Vokkaliga community, to which he belongs, and portraying them as villains forever. Among those who have debunked BJP’s theory is Mysuru-based historian P V Nanjaraj Urs, who last year released a book in Kannada titled ‘Tipu Manyate Sigada Sulthana’ (Tipu: A ruler who did not get his due recognition), highlighting the achievements of the ruler. He believes that the recent theory is not an attempt to distort history but to create false history.

“If Tipu was born a Hindu …”

Close to Malavalli town, where BJP leaders claim the fictional characters lived, is the farm of Syed Ghani Khan in Kiragaval village in Mandya. Kiragaval means a small watch tower.

During the period of Tipu, a small army was stationed here to keep a watch on advancing British forces marching from Madras. It is said that Tipu donated the land in and around the village to soldiers of his disbanded army to grow different varieties of Mangoes. Among those families was that of Khan who still grows around 120 varieties of mangoes in his farm, keeping alive the legacy of Tipu. Since the KRS dam came up, farmers, bolstered with irrigation facilities, shifted to paddy cultivation but the Khan family retained mango orchards too.

“We grew up hearing our grandmother telling us how Tipu Sultan was a brave person, who fought against the British for the country. All this is only for politics and vote bank. If the public falls for it, communalism will grow. Generally, this place has seen brotherhood. There has been no conflict between us and our Vokkaliga brothers,” says Khan.

Most Indians know about Tipu from the Sanjay Khan-starrer television serial ‘The Sword of Tipu Sultan,’ which showed him facing off against the British. Based on a novel by Bhagwan Gidwani, the serial was broadcast on Doordarshan during the 1990s. Even then, Tipu was not spared by the right-wing, as writer Bhupendra Yadav noted in a piece published in ‘Economic and Political Weekly’ December 1990 in the heydays of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.

An agitation kicked off after the director of the Trivandrum-based Bhartiya Vichar Kendra, an RSS outfit, claimed that the television serial on Tipu Sultan injured the Malayaei Hindu sentiments, wrote Yadav.

However, Tipu Sultan survived that but only to be vilified again and again, first by the British and now by the Hindu right, say experts. If Tipu was born a Hindu, the same Modi government would have given him a Bharat Ratna or Padma Vibhushan for the social reforms he introduced in the Malabar region, says Urs.

(This appeared in the print as "Sword's Edge")

Omar Rashid in Mysuru and Srirangapatna