‘I am Truth Wing, I am Bharat Wing’
Why is Tipu relevant now? Should we bother about historic personalities who are long dead and gone?
That is almost like asking whether history is relevant at all as the discipline deals with characters long dead and gone! In the case of people like Tipu Sultan they become relevant because they are made into a political football by the acrimonious politics of our times. Ever since the Congress Government started the Tipu Jayanthi in 2014 to commemorate his birth anniversary, it caused great angst to several communities in Karnataka, whose ancestors had suffered his brutalities. The BJP did its share of ridiculous myth-making as a counter, talking about Uri Gowda and Nanje Gowda as his killers—all with an eye to target the Vokkaliga vote bank. In all of this, I felt that it was truly a historian’s responsibility to set the record straight, bring the facts on the table and present the unvarnished truth of Tipu Sultan, as he was, with warts and all.
While growing up in Kerala, there was a dichotomy in the narrative we heard about Tipu Sultan. The textbooks, the Doordarshan series and the academic narrative of that time portrayed him as a great hero who fought against the East India Company and a secular icon, while the collective memory talked about a different picture. Which is the truth?
That he was a brave soldier who fought valiantly and had a visceral hatred for the British is without doubt. That it took the British three decades and more to subjugate Mysore speaks volumes of the bravery and resistance that both Haidar Ali and his son Tipu offered. But retro-fitting his image as a freedom fighter for the liberation of India or a secular icon is hyperbolic. About his fanaticism and religious bigotry too there can be little doubt. These are again evidenced from his own letters, his horrifying manifesto where he pledges to annihilate all infidels. Being a highly educated man, he wrote copiously and from his own writings we see a religious zealot. His horrific crimes against the Christians of Mangalore and Canara, the Mandyam Iyengars in Mysore, the Kodavas in Coorg and the Nairsand Thiyyas in Malabar still resonate an inter-generational trauma. These cannot be brushed away as mere collateral damage. After destroying the Mammiyoor temple and the Palayur Christian Church, his armies made way to destroy the famous Guruvayur temple. But having got wind of his nefarious plans, the priests hurriedly moved the idol to a safer location at Ambalapuzha in Travancore, where it was kept in safety till the end of Tipu’s military regime.
The intelligentsia in Kerala accuse that there is a deliberate attempt to rewrite history to suit a Hindutva agenda now. How do you answer the allegation that you are a part of the ‘right-wing’ historians?
After 10 books, and 17 years in this field and numerous attacks, I have become immune to all kinds of innuendos and ad hominem slanders. People will say what they want to say. I have no affiliation to any political party or group; I am Truth Wing, I am Bharat Wing, if you may! To this end, I have even established an institution, the Foundation for Indian Historical and Cultural Research (FIHCR) to foster new scholarship in Indian historiography based on robust research and adherence to facts. But what is wrong if some ‘right-wing’ historians are writing an alternative version of history? When Marxist historians, who were also card-carrying members of the Politburo, and those with clear political leanings towards the Congress could set the agenda for so many decades, if another group emerges now and produces different scholarship, why does it offend the status-quoist gatekeepers?
What are the proofs and records you have considered to throw light up on Tipu’s bigotry and religious persecution?
The British certainly gloated over their hard-won success in Srirangapatna and the fall of Tipu and his fort in 1799 was immortalised back in London through paintings, plays, prose, poetry and novels. But come to think of it, in none of the independent wars that he fought with the British without his father’s leadership, Tipu ever won. The first two Anglo-Mysore wars which Haidar led (and Tipu undoubtedly participated with great vigour), Mysore scripted unprecedented successes. Yet, the British did not villainise Haidar. British chroniclers like Colonel Mark Wilks are full of praise for Haidar. So, it’s quite ironic that the man who beat them black and blue, the British eulogized, and the man whom they defeated always and eventually killed in war, they demonised! If we are told not to take British records, Persian chronicles of his court or worse, Tipu’s own writings seriously, is it just interpretative extrapolation to suit contemporary political standpoints that have an upper hand?
If these are authentic, do you think there were attempts to cover up in the post-independence period the atrocities that Tipu committed on the Catholics of Mangalore, Hindus of Malabar and the Kodavas in Coorg for political reasons?
Without doubt. After independence, when history was marshalled as a tool for nation-building, it was considered prudent to not state some obvious and horrific truths. Will Durant had obviously called the Islamic invasion of India as the bloodiest chapters of human history. Our post-independent policy makers laboured under a misapprehension that somehow talking about these atrocities would upset social cohesion and national integration. By doing so, they were subliminally hyphenating today’s Muslims with the likes of Ghazni, Ghori, Timur, Aurangzeb, Tipu and others. So, their horrific social report card had to be whitewashed. While I always underscore that today’s Indian Muslims can never be held responsible for these crimes of barbarians, the converse also needs to hold good. You cannot wish away your past, just because it does not suit you.
Even if Tipu has committed all those crimes, why should be he judged by today’s human rights standards? He belonged to an era where such things were common.
In none of my books have I ever judged the characters of the past by today’s definitions and yardsticks. That violence is intrinsically linked with kingship and authority. But some more violent than their contemporaries, is also to be accounted for. Especially, when such violence is coupled with theological sanctions and desires to single out communities for their identity and faith. That we think talking about this can cause social tensions is somewhere subliminally putting the albatross on the Muslims of India today. This is grossly unfair to them as they are in no way responsible or accountable for these crimes.
In your book, you write about Tipu’s attempt to align with global Islamic forces to establish an Islamic state. However, he has been so far portrayed as the icon of Hindu-Muslim unity and his grants to various temples are often highlighted to prove this. How can a man who is supposed to have destroyed thousands of temples not just spare the famed temples in his capital city but give endorsements and grants to them?
Tipu did appeal to the religious sentiments of the ummah or Muslim brotherhood to invade India and create a pan-Islamic Caliphate or Sultanate of the country. These are evidenced from his own letters. In the book I have deduced with evidence that several of these grants were possibly carryovers of his father’s reign. Haidar Ali despite being a cruel despot and a usurper, was steeped in realpolitik and pragmatism and knew that any overt Islamisation of a Hindu majority kingdom, whose Hindu king he had dispossessed, would not be taken well. But Tipu would have none of it. He Islamised Mysore by calling it Sarkar-e-Khudadad, replaced Kannada and Marathi in the court with Persian and renamed cities and towns with Islamic names. In a life filled with so much uncertainty, war and skirmishes, Tipu was deeply superstitious and came increasingly under the spell of astrologers and soothsayers. Many of the grants and aid also come as part of the rituals and remedies that several of these astrologers suggested to him. The astrologers had instilled some vague fear in his mind not to molest a temple that belonged to Ranganatha. One sees the plethora of temples in Southern Karnataka, bearing the name of ‘Ranga’—Magadi Ranga, Kalyana Ranga, Guddada Hole Ranga and so on. Many are not even shrines of Ranganathaswamy. So, it is quite likely that to save the deities and the temples, this innovative method was used by the Hindus of the time to quickly install a Ranganatha idol or rename their deity with a ‘Ranga’ suffix to ensure that they survived.
Have you felt your writing is making many established historians and intellectuals uncomfortable? Do you have instances of being censored or cancelled by the same people who cry the loudest about fascism and censorship?
Of course! The incessant attacks, witch-hunt and attempts at delegitimising me and my scholarship is an unending project of some of the ‘liberal’ intellectuals. I have had to even drag some of these defamatory allegations to courts. The same people who speak of the need to dismantle an old Brahminical order that ringfences its club members and denies outsiders privilege cannot tolerate someone who does not necessarily share their world-view. That in the past I have had to leave a literature festival that I founded or that I am seldom invited to some of these glitzy, incestuous literature festivals is further evidence of this phenomenon. But honestly, none of this noise bothers me. I have a clear vision and idea of what I am doing. The love and reception that I receive directly from my readers, especially the youth across India, makes all these cancel-culture attempts and dog-in-the-manger syndromes specious and laughable.