Htydsczvcz vcvz

Dhgscjgyerg s’rg cui tcgwt

Yuu5gtcw gt5u5w

Amir, some writers, especially a huge chunk of Kannada writers in

the old Mysore
region, have glorified Tipu Sultan to sickening degrees. Is there no
end to their slaughter of
truth done under the mask of exercising creative freedom? I’ve
always believed that there
should be no restriction of any kind on writers. I must now admit
with some shame that while
at one time, I was part of this same group that loudly howled about
unconditional, unlimited
artistic freedom, I now realize what they were—me included—doing
all along. We hollered
about our right to artistic freedom, but denied the same freedom to
our critics. What we did
was gangsterism—we defined everything. Our idea of progress was
Progress, our
classification of dialectics became Logical Reasoning, our definition
of economics was
Economics and we had the Final Word on history because, well,
because we were doing all
of this in the service of history. Spreading the distorted version of
Tipu Sultan’s story is just
another page in their grand project of projecting falsehood as truth
because it helps the march
of Progressiveness. And I’ve happily played my part in this, leading
from the front on several
occasions.
The legend of Tipu as a hero started during the period of our
freedom struggle as songs
sung by wandering minstrels. These rustic, uneducated, illiterate
singers sang his praises at
street corners, before shopkeepers, at village fairs and in
marketplaces to earn their
livelihood. It’s incredible to seriously believe that these folks had
any accurate idea of the
historical Tipu. Rich Muslim shopkeepers paid them quite
handsomely to listen to the praises
of the long-deceased sultan. But because it was the time of our
struggle for independence,
anybody who had fought in the past against the British for whatever
reasons was automatically
considered a freedom fighter. Thus, plays were written at that time
glorifying Tipu as a patriot
and audiences believed these plays. And this was really how Tipu
became a legendary
freedom fighter in the popular imagination. This trend continued
post-Independence. Myths
are hard to create but far harder to destroy. Our Marxists, vote-bank
politicians, artists, film-
makers…everybody wanted a piece of this heroic Tipu. And so, true
history was buried.
Nobody bothered to verify the basis of the legend of Tipu Sultan the
Great.
Look how insidiously an idea is buttressed with careful deletion of
facts. As an example
of British hard-heartedness, our eminences harped on the British
taking Tipu’s two sons as
hostages. However, they concealed the fact that taking war hostages
was originally an
accepted practice among Muslim kings. Mir Jumla, a general under
Aurangzeb, defeated and
looted the entire treasury of the king of Assam. And he didn’t stop
there. He demanded more
money and took the king’s sons and a daughter as ransom till the
king brought him the sum. Mir
Jumla also took the sons of the king’s feudatories—Burhagohain,
Borgohain, Gad Gonia
Phukan and Bad Patra Phukan—as prisoners of war. Saqi Mustad
Khan records this event in
Masir-i-Alamgiri, Aurangzeb’s authorized history, written in 5th Al
Hijra 1072.5, which
corresponds to January 1603. I looked this up in Jadunath Sarkar’s A
Short History of
Aurangzib (Orient Longman, 1979, p. 108). When Khurram’s
rebellion against his own father
failed, Jahangir took his son’s sons—his own grandsons, Dara and
Aurangzeb—as captives.
Not just that: during the Mughal rule, every Rajput king had to
station at least one son in
the badshah’s court as a sign of respect. The undertone of this
arrangement was clear to both
parties—the son was a glorified hostage, ensuring obedience from
the Rajput kings. It might
surprise you but this custom was inaugurated by Akbar. This took on
other forms—a Rajputruler defeated in war had to marry his
daughter off to the Mughal king—a wife, but
nevertheless a permanent hostage, really. Most Rajput kings agreed
to this, given their
vanquished status. Maharana Pratap was the exception. He refused to
send his son to Akbar’s
court. It is also a fact that every such prisoner was compulsorily
converted. But Cornwallis,
who took Tipu’s sons as hostages, treated the boys with the care and
propriety that befitted
royal heirs, something that none of the Muslim rulers did in similar
circumstances. If our
progressive historians and writers paint Tipu Sultan in heroic hues
for the sole reason that he
fought the British, why do they remain mute about the Marathas,
who fought the same British?
The British by their own admission had identified the Marathas as a
bigger threat to their
imperial ambitions. And then there’s this other mass of very vocal
Kannada-language
champions who hail Tipu as the ‘son of Karnataka’ and the ‘true son
of Kannada’. Kannada
was the official language of the state when the Wodeyar dynasty
ruled over the Mysore
kingdom. I’m talking about the time before Tipu’s father, Hyder Ali,
a trusted general of the
Wodeyars, usurped the throne of Mysore. But when Tipu took over,
he changed the
administrative language from Kannada to Farsi. You can see this
even today. Land and
revenue records in Karnataka use Farsi terminology till date
—‘Venkata Gowda’s son
Narasimhe Gowda’ is written as ‘Narasimhe Gowda bin Venkata
Gowda’. Similarly, we’ve
still retained ‘Khata’, ‘Khirdi’, ‘Pahani’, ‘Khanesuvari’, ‘Gudasta’
and ‘Baranamoona’, a
direct handover from Tipu’s times. Not just that—Tipu changed the
names of entire cities and
towns: Brahmapuri became Sultanpet, Kallikote became
Farookabad, Chitradurga became
Farook yab Hissar, Coorg became Zafarabad, Devanahalli became
Yusufabad, Dinigul
became Khaleelabad, Gutti became Faiz Hissar, Krishnagiri became
Phalk-il-azam, Mysore
became Nazarabad, Penukonda became Fakrabad, Sankridurga
became Muzaffarabad, Sira
became Rustumabad, and Sakleshpur became Manjarabad—are
these samples of Tipu’s
nationalism and religious tolerance?
But Tipu merely followed a time-honoured precedent set by most
Muslim rulers:
renaming cities from their original Hindu names to Islamic ones.
Aurangzeb renamed
Chatagaon to Islamabad. After demolishing the Keshava temple in
Mathura, he renamed it
Islamabad as well. In his time, Varanasi or Kashi became
Mohammadabad. Other Muslim
rulers also did their bit: Delhi became Shahjahanabad, Agra became
Akbarabad, Golconda
became Hyderabad, Bidar became Zafarabad, Kadapa became
Neknamabad, Kalpi became
Mohammadabad, Khandauth also became Mohammadabad, Prayag
became Allahabad and
today’s Aligarh was called Kol.
This list is just a fraction—my father’s research yielded eight pages,
complete with the
names of cities, towns and villages that were renamed. I’m
reproducing his note on the
subject: ‘This list is incomplete. The ideal method is to tour every
corner of India and talk to
scholars and local people and then compile a comprehensive volume
of the list of places that
have been renamed during Muslim rule. I wouldn’t really care if
they built a town from
scratch and gave it an Islamic name. But renaming existing cities is
as heinous as forcibly
converting a living, breathing person to another religion.’
Amir, my father’s notes open a whole new world. I’m still unable to
imagine how he
managed to accomplish so much.