Fateh Ali Tipu (1750 – 1799) had been hailed by a section of historians and politicians as not just another earliest of freedom fighters but as a pioneer in modernisation and as a visionary. For others he is etched in their historical memories as a fanatical and gruesome villain. What is the truth?
As ever, with all such figures in history, the truth about Tipu remains elusively, in between these two extreme ends of the spectrum and is multi-dimensioned.
This article is an attempt to track down the real motives behind the actions of Tipu and the forces that shaped his career. There are valuable lessons to be learnt from his life – for all Indians irrespective of their caste or creed.
His age
The age in which Tipu lived was a period of great transition in Indian history. Mughal Empire was at its lowest ebb. The Islamic sovereignty over India was giving way to Maratha and Sikh power. And the British as well as other European powers were beginning to make their presence felt in the South. Uncertainty prevailed as to who would become the dominant ruling power in post-Mughal Hindustan. In the Deccan Hyderabad Nizam was an important traditional Islamic ruler. But he was neither powerful nor ambitious. It was in such a situation that a military official from the small feudal state of Mysore had established himself as a powerful and ambitious ruler with great possibilities for the future – his was Hyder Ali, the father of Tipu. Tipu who succeeded Hyder, set his eyes on the Indian scenario. He saw the slowly vanishing Islamic empire at Delhi and he wanted to emerge as the next Islamic empire builder in India. But there was a hitch.
His Lineage, his legitimacy
Despite his flirtations with Hyder Ali against British which ended in a defeat, Nizam of Hyderabad had been careful never to recognise Hyder Ali as a royal personage. He called him in 1779 as a mere Zamindar. So after the death of his father, Tipu realised his vulnerable state particularly in view of his empire-building ambitions. He needed to be recognised as a legitimate Islamic prince- Sultan. So in 1784, two years after his father’s death he approached the Mughal court to get recognised as one of the princes of the Empire. But then the Mughal emperor Shah Alam III, near blind and at the mercy of pro-British Majud-dawalah, who was the acting chief-minister and for all practical purposes ran the affairs of Mughal Empire, refused to recognize Tipu as a legitimate Sultan.1
For his ambitions of territorial expansion, this was a real problem for Tipu. If the news of the inability of Tipu to be recognised as a traditional Islamic prince spread amidst his Islamic soldiers that would dampen their spirits to fight for him. So after a failed attempt to get Marathas address him as a “Badshah”, Tipu started projecting him as a soldier in the cause of Islam-fighting against the idolatrous Hindus around him.
Tipu tried to forge an alliance with the Nizam of Hyderabad citing a common enemy-the enemy of Islam. He reminded Nizam of the time when the “terror of the sword of Bahmuni Sultan freed the territory of Islam from the thorns and brambles of infidel opposition”2 and asked him to revive that glory by entering into an agreement with him-a Muslim rather than allying with infidels so that they could be “united in repelling and conquering the infidels” and the Muslim population could live in peace. Nizam was initially inclined to accept the offer but what made him break ranks with Tipu was the mention of matrimonial alliance that Tipu suggested. Contemporary court historian Mir Hussain Ali Khan Kirmani describes the scene:
“-as the sentences of the letter included the mention of matrimonial connexion, Nizam, excited by his folly, became angry and gave these joy dispensing words no place in his envious mind, and considering the term Naik which belonged to the Sultan’s forefathers as discreditable and relationship with him a disgrace …he turned his face aside from the true path and dismissed the embassador (of Tipu).”3
Generally the Marxist historians and Islamic apologists argue that the atrocities said to have been perpetrated by him, were actually exaggerated by the British to justify their own aggression against the native ruler. For example Mohibbul Hasan states that the atrocities “were allegedly fabricated either by persons embittered and angry on account of the defeats which they had sustained at (Tipu’s) hands.”4
His jehad for the title of Sultan
However “Neshani Hyduri” written in praise of Tipu Sultan written by contemporary court historian Mir Hussain Ali Khan Kirmani narrates with unhidden enthusiasm the enslavement of the infidels and their humiliating treatment at the hands of Tipu’s forces:
“The conquering Sultan now therefore appointed and dispatched his Amirs and Khans with large bodies of troops to punish these idolaters and reduce the whole of the country to subjection…in a short time attacked and destroyed many of their towns, returning with eight thousand men and women with their children as prisoners. In the same way Monsieur Lally collected from the Ilaichee Mountains an immense crowd of these wild men, like a flock of sheep or a herd of bullocks and returned with them to the presence”.5
The irony will not be last on the reader that Tipu who is projected today as a champion of native freedom did allow his European friends to treat fellow Indians as “a flock of sheep or a herd of bullocks”. During his invasion of Travancore Tipu’s men executed his orders and “relieved the shoulders of all the infidels they met, man or boy, from the weight of their heads.”6 Kirmani even speaks of Tipu taking “eighty thousand men, women and children” as prisoners of war.7 Many historians dismiss the figures as exaggerated.8 However it begs the question what kind of socio-political environment did force a court historian to record such exaggerated atrocities against “infidels”?
In fact, Tipu himself was very eager to project his wars as religious wars and spread the news that he was promoting Islam through the sword. In a letter dated January 18, 1790, Tipu expressed the confidence that almost all Hindus in Calicut would be converted to Islam and declared his military expedition as “holy war” (Jihad).9 The very next day in a letter sent to one Budruz Zuman Khan after informing him of conversion of four hundred thousand infidels to Islam in the war ravaged areas he exclaimed that for him “religious concerns and the duty of waging war against infidels superceding all other considerations” “10 During his Tamil Nadu expedition (1790), Muslim women “who had given their impure bodies to the lust of men of other religion” were impaled by his order.11
Already in 1787 Marathas had refused to acknowledge Tipu as a Sultan and would at best address him only as a Nawab. Now the subsequent actions of Tipu projecting himself as a fanatic jehadi further irritated the Marathas who refused any positive alliance with him. Tipu used the Islamic card as a ploy for gaining recognition among Islamic kingdoms and loyalty from his Muslim soldiers. This attitude entered so deep into the psyche of Tipu that in his dreams he started seeing his political enemies as “Kafirs”.12
His compromises
The alienation of fellow Indian forces because of his misplaced search for pan-Islamic recognition cost Tipu dearly in subsequent years. In 1792 when Lord Cornwallis defeated Tipu in a surprise attack, the latter agreed not only to cede territory to the British and pay them three crore and thirty lakh of rupees either in gold mohurs, pagodas or bullion (of which one crore and thirty five lakh he had to pay immediately and the rest in installments) but also give two of the three eldest sons as hostage to the British for the due performance of the treaty.13 His main anxiety was his recognition as a legitimate Islamic king-from some quarters-for which he was ready to go to any length to achieve that and it was that recognition that eluded him.
However Britishers were not ready to trust Tipu as much as they trusted the Nizam of Hyderabad. Tipu himself proved to be untrustworthy to any of the major forces then acting in Indian political scene. Even his legendary relation with French was not entirely sincere. Even as he was sharing wine with the French, he was writing to British governor-general congratulating “his Lordship” regarding the British victory over the French “who are of a crooked disposition, faithless and the enemies of mankind, may ever be depressed and ruined” and expressing his “firmest hope that the leaders of the English and the Company Bahauder…are the well wishers of mankind, will at all times be successful and victorious”14
His submissions to the Caliphate
Meanwhile in his letters to the Ottoman Caliphate as well as to the king of Afghanistan he sought help by portraying him as an emerging Islamic empire builder in Hindustan and sought his recognition. In seeking diplomatic ties with Caliphate, Tipu had two objectives-both interrelated. One was, as I.H.Qureshi the eminent Islamic historian points out, to confirm and legitimise his title.15
The other was to create a pan-Islamic support for him against his enemies. In order to arouse the Islamic sentiments of the Caliphate Tipu portrayed his conflict as a religious one. He wrote that ten thousand Muslim children had been forcibly converted to Christianity and many mosques and Muslim cemeteries had been destroyed and turned into churches.16 Tipu proposed to Istanbul “cooperation in political and economic spheres” through “trade relations, factory establishments, new arms and naval power.” Sultan tactfully refused Tipu all his requests. As far as recognition of his position, Sultan viewed Tipu’s request as one from a lesser Muslim ruler and as an acknowledgement of Istanbul’s primacy as the seat of Caliphate.17 The letter is also important as perhaps the first of its kind in proclaiming the subservience of India’s Islamic sovereignty to that of Caliphate. Azmi Özcan points out that this “was the first and only instance of its kind on the part of an Indian ruler seeking recognition from the Ottoman Caliphs-“18
(To be continued)
(The writer a student of history can be contacted at 441, Kavimani Nagar, Nagarcoil-629 002, Kanyakumari Distt.)
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