Splendours of Royal Mysore
The Untold Story of the Wodeyars
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EXCERPTS
THE CONTROVERSIAL SULTAN
- Tippu: Secular or Not?
It is pertinent to mention that unlike most other historical characters, Tippu Sultan and certain aspects of his life continue to ruffle feathers to this day. In September 2006, the Karnataka Minister of Higher Education Mr Shankaramurthy made some vague comments about Tippu Sultan having been ‘anti-Kannada’, saying that he had ensured the obliteration of Kannada by the imposition and adoption of Persian as the court language. This was enough to send the so-called ‘secularist’ brigade into a frenzy. Chat shows on television, articles in newspapers and general public debate was diverted from the Minister’s irrelevant comment to the larger issue of how Tippu was actually one of the most secular and progressive ruler of his times. Both sides hardened their stands and what followed was a free-for-all washing of dirty linen in public by the supposed intellectuals and thinkers. Voices of reason and rationalism usually tend to get subsumed by this kind of high-decibel frenzy—which anyway aims to cultivate and nurture strategic vote-banks.
Tippu’s secularism, or lack thereof, is a subject of great interest, and so merits much focus in this volume. In India, secularism is often little more than the branding of another as communal. We too resort to this game of vivisecting history and categorising the heroes and heroines of the past into air-tight compartments of ‘secular’ and ‘communal’, forgetting most often that they were also human beings after all, and, like any of us, were given to their moments of weakness and greatness alike. Two diametrically opposite schools of thought dominate the current scene of Indian historical research and debate. At one extreme we have the so-called ‘left-liberal’ and ‘rational’ historians for whom history is but class struggle. Religion and related matters do not hold any significance for them. Their notion of secularism extends to a level where they tend to over-simplify and at times undermine a lot of things that have been revered over the centuries. Completely distinct from this approach is that of the supposed ‘right-wing’, ‘nationalist’ historians who would see everything through the lens of religion and judge people thereby. The slanging match between these two groups continues as each tries to portray his version as the ‘truth’. Even with respect to Tippu, both sides have arguments and counter-arguments to buttress their claims.
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