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Historical
Rise of Tipu Sultan
Mar 2010
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When the Marathas invaded Mysore in 1757, Nanjaraj agreed to pay them Rs.32 lakhs but could pay only six lakhs and for the remaining amount, he handed over fifteen taluks as security.' The Marathas came again in 1758, Haider took personal responsibility for the payment of arrears and he was also placed in charge of the field army. Haider Ali took advantage of the uncertain conditions prevailing in the state and assumed all powers of the king under the cover of being an officer of the Hindu ruler. Haider Ali died of cancer.
In 1786 Tipu assumed the title of Padshah or king. Thereafter he began to call himself 'the resplendent presence' and his army was designated as 'the holy camp'. His government was called the 'God given State'. The climax of his arrogance was reached when he ordered that the 'Khutbah' or daily prayer be read in his name. The name of Devanhalli, was changed to Yasufabad. The castle of Chitaldurg was changed to Farukh-yab Hisar or the propitiously acquired castle et al.
Tipu's Cruelty
Sewin B. Bowring, formerly Chief Commissioner of Mysore in his work Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan (1899) has given a number of instances of cruel treatment that was meted out to the Hindus in Mysore state. In a letter written by Tipu Sultan during the siege of Nargund, he says : In the event of your being obliged to assault the place, every living creature in it, whether man or woman, old or young, child, dog, cat, or anything else must be put to the sword...
In another letter addressed to an officer in Coorg, he says: You are to make a general attack on the Coorgs, and, having put to the sword or made prisoners the whole of them, both the slain and the prisoners, with women and children, are to be made Musalmans While alluding to a rising in Kanara, Tipu wrote to Badr-uz-zaman Khan: Ten years ago, from ten to fifteen thousand men were hung upon the trees of that district; since which time the aforesaid trees have been,waiting for more men. You must therefore hang upon trees all such of the inhabitants of that district as have taken a lead in these rebellious proceedings.
Respecting certain highway robbers at Calicut, Tipu wrote to Ashad Beg Khan: Such of the authors of this rebellious and flagrant conduct as have been already killed, are killed. But why should the remainder of them, on being made prisoners, be put to death. Their proper punishment is this : Let the dogs, both black and white, be regularly dispatched to Srirangapatam. In this context it may be mentioned that Haider Ali was equally ferocious in the treatment of his enemies. For example: When he defeated Khande Rao, the Hindu general, he kept him in an iron cage till the end of his life. He took pleasure in torturing his prisoners.
Bowring goes on to write: The Sultan in his memoirs gives the following account of his proceedings at Zafirabad, as he chose to call Merkara, the capital: It is the custom with you for the eldest of five brothers to marry, and for the wife of such brothers to be common to all five: hence there cannot be the slightest doubt of your all being bastards. This is about the seventh time that you have acted treacherously towards the Government, and plundered our armies. I have now vowed to the true God that if you ever again conduct yourselves traitorously or wickedly, I will not revile or modest a single individual among you, but making Ahmadis (Musalmans) of the whole of you, transplant you all from this country to some other; by which means, from being illegitimate, your progeny or descendants may become legitimate, and the epithet of "sons of sinful mothers" may no longer belong to your tribe.
In a letter addressed to Burhan-ud-din in 1786 Tipu writes: You must leave the women and other rubbish, together with the superfluous baggage of your army, behind. In brief, Tipu deemed women of little account.
Bigotry of Tipu
Professor Sir Thomas Arnold was a well known scholar of Islam. He had taught at MAO College, Aligarh in the 19th century. He wrote: For India has often been picked out as a typical instance of a country in which Islam owes its existence and continuance in existence to the settlement in it of foreign conquering Muhammadan races, who have transmitted their faith to their descendants, and only succeeded in spreading it beyond their own circle by means of persecution and forced conversions. Thus the missionary spirit of Islam is supposed to show itself in its true light in the brutal massacres of Brahmans by Mahmud of Ghazna, in the persecution of Aurangzeb, the forcible circumcisions effected by Haider Ali, Tipu Sultan and the like. Tipu Sultan most systematically engaged in the work of forcible conversions.
In 1788, he issued the following proclamation to the people of Malabar :
From the period of the conquest until this day, during twenty-four years, you have been a turbulent and refractory people, and in the wars waged during your rainy season, you have caused number of our warriors to taste the draught of martyrdom. Be it so. What is past is past. Hereafter you must proceed in an opposite manner, dwell quietly and pay your dues like good subjects; and since it is the practice with you for one woman to associate with ten men, and you have your mothers and sisters unconstrained in their obscene practices, and are thence all born in adultery, and are more shameless in your connection than the beasts of the field, I hereby require you to forsake these sinful practices and to be like the rest of mankind; and if you are disobedient to these commands, I have made repeated vows to honour the whole of you with Islam and to march all the chief persons to the seat of Government.
The above proclamation led to an uprising. Tipu Sultan sent an army of more than twenty thousand to enforce the general orders that "every being in the district without distinction should be honoured with Islam, that the honour of such as fled to avoid that honour should be burned, that they should be traced to their lurking places, and that all means of truth and falsehood, force or fraud should be employed to effect their universal conversion.
Sir Thomas concludes : The history of Islam in Southern India by no means always continued to be of so peaceful a character, but it does not appear that the forcible conversions of the Hindus and others to Islam which were perpetrated when the Muhammadan power became paramount under Haider Ali (1767-1782) and Tipu Sultan (1782-1788), can be paralleled in the earlier history of this part of India. (The Preaching of Islam, London, 1913).
Tipu was defeated in May, 1799. His sons surrendered and the dynasty came to an end. Simultaneously, the Wadiyars, who were the nominal rulers of the state in Haider Ali and in the early years of Tipu Sultan were restored by the British to a position of the dominion ruled by Haider Ali and his son.
On Tipu's tomb at Srirangapatam, is recorded : The light of Islam and the faith left the world; Tipu on account of the faith of Muhammad was a martyr; the sword was lost The offspring of Haider was a great martyr. The inscription was composed by Mir Hussen Ali and was composed by Abd-ul-Kadir.
Founding of Mysore State
The disintegration of the Mughal empire was accelerated after Nadir Shah sacked Delhi in 1739. The Marathas under the Peshwa Baji Rao had unwisely decided to march towards the North instead of consolidating its power in the South. Baji Rao felt that the future of Maratha power lay in conquering Delhi. In Baji Rao's words : Let
us strike at the trunk of the withering tree and the branches will fall
themselves. Maratha flag should fly from Krishna to Indus. It had adverse consequences in the South. The state of Mysore was ruled by the Wadiyar dynasty from the 14th century. Mysore was a viceroyalty of the Vijayanagar empire. However between 1731-34, the government of the state was usurped by two brothers, Devraj and Nanjaraj who reduced the royalty to a puppet. Haider Ali then was only a horseman in the service of Nanjaraj. Between 1750-60, Haider Ali came steadily into prominence; as Mysore was invaded by the Marathas in 1753, 1757 and 1759. Nizam-ul-Mulk regarded Mysore as Mughal territory and the state was drawn within the circle of conflict between the Peshwa and the Nizam.
Establishment of Vijayanagar Empire
Any write-up on the rulers of Mysore would be incomplete without a proper appreciation of how the Vijayanagar empire was set up to resist expansion of Muslim rule in the South. In brief, in 1336 Vijayanagar Empire was founded on the banks of the Tungabhadra by two leaders Harihara and Buka. Vijayanagar, the last bulwark of Hindu power in the Deccan which, gathering together the fragments scattered by the tumultuous assaults of Muhammad Thuglak formed a mighty state, able to parry every onslaught of the Muslims for two centuries to come, writes Stanley - Lane Poole in his well known work Medieval India. The greatest monarch of the Vijayanagar dynasty was Krishnadeva Raja (1509-1550) under whom the empire reached its zenith. Bijapur was defeated and for two generations no Muslim Sultan
made any serious attempt to invade the Vijayanagar empire. Krishnadeva was a great emperor in the ancient Hindu traditions of Asoka, Chandra Gupta Vikramaditya, Harsha and Bhoja. Vijaynagar was primarily a military state with the sole object of maintaining a successful resistance against the Muslims.
At about the time of the founding of the Vijayanagar empire, Bahamani kingdom was founded by Hasan Gangu in 1347 in the area north of Krishna river. For about 150 years, the kingdom had maintained its unity. But by the end of the fifteenth century, the kingdom broke up into five independent states of Berar, Ahmadnagar, Bijapur, Golkonda and Bidar. Though independent and at times warring against one another, they would get united for the purpose of opposing the power of Vijaynagar.
Destruction of Vijayanagar - Battle of Talikotta
The Bahmani kingdom soon realized the danger to their authority arising from the growing power and prestige of Vijayanagar. They formed an alliance and the army of Vijayanagar was defeated at the well known battle of Talikotta in 1565 AD.
Robert Sewell of the Indian Civil Service in his seminal work A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagar) published by Swan Sonnenschein &, Co., London, 1900, has described the destruction of the Empire in the following words:
On January 23, 1565, a pitched battle took place in which all the available forces of both sides were engaged. The third day saw the beginning of the end. The victorious Mussulmans had halted on the field of battle for rest and refreshment, but now they had reached the capital, and from that time forward for a space of five months Vijayanagar knew no rest. The enemy had come to destroy, and they carried out their object relentlessly. They slaughtered the people without mercy; broke down the temples and palaces; and wreaked such savage vengeance on the abode of the kings, that with the exception of a few great stone temples and walls, nothing now remains but a heap of ruins to mark the spot where once the stately buildings stood.
The aggressors demolished the statues, and even succeeded in breaking the limbs of the huge Narasimha monolith. Nothing seemed to escape them. They broke up the pavilions standing on the huge platform from which the king used to watch the festivals, and overthrew
all the carved work,.They lit huge fires in the magnificently decorated buildings forming the temple of Vitthalaswami near the river, and smashed its exquisite stone sculptures. With fire and sword, with crow bars and axes, they carried on day after day their work of destruction. Never perhaps; in the history of the world has such havoc been wrought, and wrought so suddenly, on so splendid a city; teeming with a wealthy and industrious population in the full plentitude of prosperity one day, and on the next seized, pillaged, and reduced to ruins, amid scenes of savage massacre and horrors begging description.
Such was the fate of this great and magnificent city. It never recovered, but remained for ever, a scene of desolation and ruin. Muhammad Qasim Frishta, wrote the following immediately succeeding the battle of 1565: The Sultan, a few days after the battle, marched onwards into the country of Ramraaje as far as Anicondeh, and the advanced troops penetrated to Beejanuggur, which they plundered, raized the chief buildings and committed all manner of excess.. The raja of Beejanuggur since this battle has never recovered its ancient splendour; and the city itself has been so destroyed that it is now totally in ruins and uninhabited.
The Muslims indulged in loot, rapine and plunder. The battle, however, did not crush the spirit of the people. In the words of Sardar K.M. Panikkar : The strength and greatness of Vijayanagar were not based on dynasties but on the national feeling of the Hindus of South India and their determination to resist the Muslims. A great military disaster may spell the end of a dynasty and demoralize for a short time the resistance of a people, but it cannot extinguish the national spirit of an old and powerful empire. (A Survey of Indian History).
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