Mangalore, Feb 8: Distortion of facts to defame Tipu Sultan is not a new phenomenon and was in fact a British initiative, said Dr. Barkur Udaya, Associate Professor, Department of History, Mangalore University.
Speaking at the 'Tipu Convention' organized by Universal Welfare Forum (UNIWEF) in Mangalore on Thursday, Dr. Udaya said that defaming of Tipu's personality and distortion of his history with an intention to project him as a villain was made by the British themselves in the first place.
“Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan resisted the British in the south. It was a norm with the British to project forces who stood against them in bad light. It has not just happened with Tipu but with everyone else who spoke against them. Why haven't the British spoken ill about the Mughals post-Aurangzeb? Why haven't they spoken ill about the Bahamani Sultans or the Nizams of Hyderabad? The British feared that more Tipu Sultans would take birth in India if his heroics remain intact in pages of history and hence made attempts to malign him”, Dr. Udaya said.
Dr. Udaya said that Tipu's action of punishing people in Coorg, Mangalore and Malabar must not be looked at through the prism of religious bigotry.
“The people he punished in Coorg, Mangalore and Malabar was for siding with the enemy he had identified (British). If conversion was his agenda, he should have joined hands with the Nizam of Hyderabad. If Tipu indeed looted temples of Kerala, one would not have found the wealth that has been unearthed in Padmanabha Temple in that state today. The Sringeri Temple was attacked by the Marathas. It was Tipu who made attempts to restore the losses. People who say he is anti-Kannada and anti-Hindu must look into these instances”, he said.
Dr. C S Dwarakanath, Former Chairman, Karnataka Backward Classes Commission, echoed Dr. Udaya's observations about the charges of religious conversion on Tipu Sultan.
“People allege that Tipu converted 70,000 people in Coorg to Islam. The British gazetteer of the time itself states that Coorg had a population of 50,000. How can more people be converted when the total population of the region itself is of a lower number? Going by the argument that he converted that many people, everyone in Coorg should have been a Muslim today”, Dr. Dwarakanath said.
Sharing his experience of having a debate on a TV channel on the issue of Tipu University with the likes of Sri Rama Sene chief Pramod Muthalik, BJP leader Gomadhusoodan and researcher Chidananda Murthy, Dr. Dwarakanath said that by opposing Tipu Sultan and calling him a traitor, the trio was proving that they “like their ancestors, sided with the British as they never took part in the freedom struggle”.
Recalling that Mr. Chidananda Murthy had pointed out in the debate about Tipu fighting against the British for his “selfish interest”, Dr. Dwarakanath posed a counter question as to why must the struggle of the likes of Jhansi Queen and Rani Chennamma be classified as a patriotic struggles and Tipu's fight against the British be considered as a struggle to save his own kingdom.
Calling Tipu a “great human being” and a “visionary”, Dr. Dwarakanath said that if people of Karnataka are indebted to Tipu for his revolutionary reforms.
“If people of my household, my village, the entire Kolar region and several other places of the state are self sufficient with food, it is because of sericulture, which was introduced in Karnataka by Tipu. Thousands of us eat food and remember him for giving us a way of life. It was Tipu's vision that saw Kannambadi dam come into being. Liquor and tobacco prohibition were his ideas and today we have them as an Act. While palaces of other kings would have sections for art and entertainment, sections of Tipu's palace would be used for research activities. The missile technology has origins in his vision. Talk about library science and he had a huge library himself. Had Tipu not been obstructed by battles and other headaches, he would have transformed India to a new level”, Dr. Dwarakanath opined.
Abdussalam Puthige, Editor in chief, Vartha Bharathi Kannada daily, Rafeeyuddin Kudroli, President, UNIWEF, were also present.
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