Tipu Sultan the Tyrant King :-E

Posted by Dr. Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup

Tipu Sultan the Tyrant King :-E

Most historians will vouch for the fact that viewed from any angle Tipu was a tyrant. His great ambition was to become an emperor of India from his relatively small-time position of being just a king of the principality of Mysore. He then wanted to convert Hindustan into an Islamic empire. His fight against the British was a part of this design and not out of any patriotism. For that purpose,he is said to have even consulted Brahman astrologers and thanthrics and then faithfully carried out all the rituals prescribed by them in Sree Ranganatha Swami Temple which fact leading some historians to see him as secular.


Historian Lewis B. Boury had described Tipu’s violence against Hindus in and around Malabar as way more ferocious than atrocities committed by Mahmud of Ghazni, Nadir Shah and Alauddin Khalji against Hindus in Hindustan. William Logan has mentioned in the “Malabar Manual” that Thalipparampu and Thrichambaram temples of Chirackal Taluqa, Ponmeri Temple of Badakara, and Thiruvangatu of Tellicherry were among the major temples smashed by Tipu Sultan

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Fra Bartolomeo in “Voyage to East Indies” describe Tipu Sultan’s military operations and portray him as a cruel and intolerant Muslim ruler. On occasions, he converted lots of Hindus into Mohammedans against their will. It is reported that he captured over one thousand Hindus in Coorg, forcibly converted them to Islam, and imprisoned them in the Sreerangapatanam fortress. All Coorgi Hindu prisoners successfully escaped during the last battle between the British and Tipu Sultan. So you understand the immense feeling of resentment  and consequent protest against the official celebration of Tipu's Jayanti in Coorg.


Report by Colonel Fullarton, the then in-charge of British forces in Mangalore, Tipu Sultan committed the worst possible brutalities on Brahmans during his acquisition of Palghat Fort in the year 1783. His soldiers scared Hindus by exposing the heads of all innocent Brahmans that were brutally killed by them from the fort Zamorin. The Zamorin then decided to abandon the fort, so that he and his Hindu followers didn’t have to witness more such brutalities.


Muslim historians such as Kirmani, and Ghulam Muhammad, Tipu Sultan’s own son, revealed numerous shocking facts and realities associated with Tipu Sultan in their writings. Since he wanted to give most things around him a Muslim touch, he got several Hindu names of places replaced with Muslim names.
For example, Mangalore or Mangalapuri was changed to Jalalabad, Mysore to Nazarabad, Bepur to Sultanpatanam, Cannanore to Kusanabad, Gooty to Faiz-Hissar, Dharwar to Quarshed-Sawad, Dindigul to Khaliqabad, Ratnagiri to Mustafabad, Kozhikode to Islamabad, and Dindigul to Khaliqabad. The local residents of all these places could revert to old names only after Tipu Sultan’s death!


If a section of Karnataka Muslims consider Tipu Sultan as a role model king and thereby they had got immense sense of power during his regime and want to celebrate its memory, this land being extremely tolerant, will have no objection. I understand that they have been doing this quietly for some years. But the moment the government confers official sponsorship and patronage to such sectarian expressions which run counter to the common milieu then then it becomes a fissiperous issue and acquire communal and contentious overtones.. By this act of minority appeasement for which the Congress is notorious to which even in this late hour they cling desperately hoping that it may bring some redemption to them from their abysmal political predicament they are not only clueless how to go about it, but also in the process, doing incalculable harm to the secular fabric of this country.

The Award Return Drama: Politics by Other Means.

Posted by Dr. Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup

The Award Return Drama: Politics by Other Means.

 Many observers of the debate on intolerance in India, have scoffed at the melodrama of returning the awards by,  first, the Sahitya Akademi clan of favored writers, then by the  historians, then by Bollywood and other-wood film directors, and now incongruously, of all people, by scientists. Of the latter, being one belonging to the fraternity, I am flabbergasted to see eminent scientists like Bhargava forsaking the scientific method of testing their contrived hypothesis of prevailing intolerance in India by proper analysis of data.. Let them analyze the supporting data and establish the hypothesis before others follow suit. Having betrayed the scientific community by hastily and unscientifically drawing from unsubstantiated data such a momentous conclusion, it is for him and his ilk to prove and establish their misconstrued contention. Others can act emotionally but scientists cannot and should not.

What are the evidences for an unprecedented state of intolerance now in India which can be solely attributed to acts of commission or omission by the Modi government, so that these people shed their medals at its doorstep? They have not particularly enumerated the episodes of "intolerance' but prefer to be vague by design, using the term "climate", inappropriately because climate is not man-made. So, judging from the general phobia that can be seen in media one may list them down to 3 murders of writers, the Dadri lynching, the Dalit children burning, Shiv Sena shooing away the ghazal singer Ghulam Ali, black-painting the face of erstwhile BJP loose cannon Sudheendra Kulkarni. and the independent MLA of J&K, Engineer Rashid, eight in all, but, by any means, add 2 more and make it a round figure of 10.

Even if these are 24 karat incidents of intolerance, which they are not , do they form a big deal? The glaring fact is that they have nothing to do with the Modi government, in fact not even with the respective state governments, all non-BJP. They are all fundamentally criminal acts the likes of which have happened sporadically in the past and are likely to occur in future too as anywhere in the world. They should be dealt with as such. Let us take them one by one...........

The murders of writers:The rationalist Mr. MM Kalburgi was shot dead in Karnataka, a Congress ruled Government. Mr. N. Dabholkar, another rationalist, was shot down on 20th August 2013 in Maharashtra at that time ruled by the Congress and the NCP; where were these writers at the time? Both incidents need to be condemned in no uncertain terms. It is the responsibility of the State government to maintain law and order and provide security to a vulnerable target of attack. .....Bleach no. 1 for the intolerance brigade.

Similarly, the Dadri incident took place in Uttar Pradesh, which is ruled by the Samajwadi Party. UP police in its interim  report says that Dadri lynching was a spontaneous, isolated, case, and they do not see any conspiracy. ....Bleach no. 2 for the intolerance brigade.

Then the Dalit children burning case: The forensic division of the Haryana Police has in their report to CBI, revealed their findings that the fire was an inside job The house was found locked, and empty fresh kerosene bottle was retrieved  from under the cot and matchstick from window sill. So it was not even the upper caste to blame for the arson, least of all any government. ....Bleach no. 3 for the intolerance brigade.

Now the Gulam Ali blocking. It was Shiv Sena at it and the BJP took steps against it, offered security for smooth running of the function. The BJP fought its alley to protect freedom. ....Bleach no.4 for the intolerance brigade.

Inking episodes: Well known that it was the work of misguided Shiv Sainiks, BJP condemned it and arrested the culprits. On Engineer Rashid,  it was by an obscure Hindu Sena and the culprit was booked. In fact ink throwing and slipper throwing at leaders have been galore in the past.across parties: Yoga guru Baba Ramdev, Lal Krishna Advani, Ex PM Mohan Sing, Sharad pawar, ex Finance minister Chidambaram, Omar Abdullah, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, AAP leaders Kejriwal,Yogendra Yadav, Kumar Vishwas,  all have been the targets of either ink throwing, shoe throwing or even downright slapping of face. ....Bleach no. 5 for the intolerance brigade.

So it is total bleaching of the Intolerance brigade, lock stock and barrel!

Even without all these glaring facts staring at every one with eyes to see, one can leave aside the writer-historian section of the brigade.  Because writers are, if any thing, highly subjective people where stark objectivity takes lesser precedence. History is always his or her story of history. But not the scientists, for whom the empirical factor must be proved and repeatably provable. How 'Dr' P M Bhargava is going to escape from his self-closed closet of a bloomer political commitment and remedy his self ejection from the real scientific community is something he has to grapple with the rest of his life.

And now pit these few unreal, nonissues, with the 5000 sikhs who were massacred in the one and only genocide in Independent India in the wake of Indira Gandhi's murder, the hundreds who perished in riots during Congress regimes, the more than 30 books banned, including the Satanic Verses by  Salman Rushdie, and An Area of Darkness by  V. S. Naipaul and The Lotus and the Robot by Arthur Koestler, the thousands of Kashmiri pundits driven away from Kashmir, the hand chopping of TJ Joseph in Kerala, and a lot lot more, all in Congress led regimes! And speaking of bans, the cow slaughter and beef eating were banned by the Congress much earlier. Were these hypocrites hiding their conscience in their pockets to conveniently take it out now?

 "Politics by other means" now dictates an alternative strategy. Combine the three crimes, camouflage the truth and throw all of them in the basket of present Central Government," - so aptly and succinctly summarized Arun Jaitley.

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