Monthly Archives: November 2015

Jashn-e-Urdu and Mushaira at Farooqia PU College

Renowned Urdu poet N.M. Ghouse Khateeb feted

N. M. Ghouse Khateeb Nagmangali, renowned Urdu poet, who was felicitated by Anjuman-e-Urdu of Farooqia PU college in city yesterday, is seen with (standing from left) Prof.Riyaz Ahmed (President), Prof. Mohammed Ziaulla (chief guest), Prof. M. Sayeed Ahmed (Hon. Secretary) and Abdul Jabbar (Principal).
N. M. Ghouse Khateeb Nagmangali, renowned Urdu poet, who was felicitated by Anjuman-e-Urdu of Farooqia PU college in city yesterday, is seen with (standing from left) Prof.Riyaz Ahmed (President), Prof. Mohammed Ziaulla (chief guest), Prof. M. Sayeed Ahmed (Hon. Secretary) and Abdul Jabbar (Principal).

Mysuru :

Anjuman-e-Urdu of Farooqia P.U. College, Tilaknagar, celebrated “Jashn-e-Urdu” at its premises yesterday.

Prof. Mohamed Ziaulla, who was the chief guest, spoke on the contribution of Moulana Abul Kalam Azad to Urdu literature. On the occasion, N.M Ghouse Khateeb Nagmangali, retired lecturer and renowned Urdu poet, was felicitated by the Anjuman-e-Urdu of the college for his contribution to Urdu literature.

Khateeb is a recipient of State- level Adarsh Guru Award (1992), Best Teacher award for Mandya District (1995), Karnataka State Best Teacher Award (1997) and Rajyotsava Award in 2014.

Prof. M.Sayeed Ahmed, Hon. Secretary of the college, read the citation while Prof. Riyaz Ahmed, President of Rifahul Muslimeen Educational Trust (RMET) felicitated Khateeb.

On the occasion, Syed Yaseen, II PU Commerce student received rolling shield for securing first place in Syed Mohammed Memorial Inter-collegiate Essay competition in Urdu. Roshan Banu of Arts received a special prize for scoring highest marks in II PUC Urdu exam.

Prof. Riyaz Ahmed presided over the function which commenced with Qirath by Abdul Hameed of I PU commerce. M.K. Zakir, lecturer in Hindi, recited Nath. Abdul Jabbar, Principal, welcomed. Shahwar Jahan, lecturer in Urdu, presented a report on the activities of Anjuma-e-Urdu. Samreen Banu of II PU Arts, recited Taran-e -Urdu. Shabreen Taj of II PU Science compered. Mohammed Habeebulla of II PU Science proposed a vote of thanks.

Jashn-e-Urdu was followed by a Mushaira. Abdul Rahman Gowher Tarikervi presided over the Mushaira dedicated to elderly poet late Razaq Afsar.

Syed Yaseen, who compered the programme, gave a brief introduction about the rich contributions made by the late poet. He said the late poet’s creative work was published in the form of six books titled ‘Aabshar,’ ‘Aetaraf,’ ‘Shab Chirag,’ ‘Harfe-Abdeda,’ ‘Zaber Jad’ and ‘Ujli Khusbo.’

The poets, who recited their poetic tribute to the late poet are: Dr. Irfan Ahmed Riyazi, Hakeem Sayeed, Mushtaq Sayeed, Khateeb Nagmangali, Gowher Tarikervi and Naveed Ahmed Siddiqi.

Earlier, Samreen and Party rendered Tarane Farooqia composed by late poet Razak Afsar.

source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> General News / Monday – November 30th, 2015

MDFA ‘B’ Division Football League : Mysore Muslims, Lion FC in drawn tie

Dr. P. Krishnaiah, In-charge, Director, Department of Physical Education, University of Mysore, seen kicking the ball to mark the inauguration of the MDFA 'B' Division football league 2015 for the 'Govindaraju Memorial Trophy' at the University Grounds here last evening
Dr. P. Krishnaiah, In-charge, Director, Department of Physical Education, University of Mysore, seen kicking the ball to mark the inauguration of the MDFA ‘B’ Division football league 2015 for the ‘Govindaraju Memorial Trophy’ at the University Grounds here last evening

Mysuru :

Mysore Muslims FC and Lion FC were involved in a 1-1 drawn encounter in the MDFA ‘B’ Division Football league for the ‘Govindaraju Memorial Trophy’ played at the University Grounds here yesterday.

Left-in Sadat scored for Mysore Muslims in the 23rd minute while Younis scored the equaliser in the 50th minute of the game for Lion FC. Muddasir earned a yellow card for Mysore Muslims in the 8th minute for foul play, while Younis of Lion FC also was given a yellow card for foul play in the 69th minute of the game.

Both the teams secured a point each for the drawn encounter.

The tournament was inaugurated by Dr. P. Krishnaiah, In-charge, Director, Department of Physical Education, University of Mysore, by kicking the ball.

K.G. Subramanya Swamy, Chairman, Mysore District Football Association (MDFA), L. Manjunath, Hon. Secretary, MDFA, G.R. Sanjay, Hon. Treasurer, MDFA, Rasheed Ahmed, Governing Board Member, KSFA, T. Puttaraj, Ganesh Singh, P. Narasimhaiah and other office-bearers of MDFA were also present on the occasion.

source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> Sports News / Monday – November 30th, 2015

 

NATION – On the Sultan’s Trail

 

TipuKodaguMPOs30nov2015

In the green, hilly tracts of Kodagu, a small district in Karnataka bordering Kerala, the past is urgent, pressing. A king’s ghost has been summoned again, so his story can be rewritten to suit the age. Tipu Sultan. Perhaps no other Indian king has been mummified by as much subjective judgement. Invariably, he is either a justified villain or an unjustified hero, a tele-serial star or a wanton killer of Hindus. In Kodagu, where Tipu is believed to have put thousands to the sword, a destabilising interrogation of his legacy recently claimed two more lives, over 200 years after the king perished in the British siege of Srirangapatna in 1799. Even as the Karnataka government’s plans to celebrate Tipu Jayanti on Deepavali day—10 days ahead of his date of birth, 20 November—predictably met with opposition from Hindu organisations, the Muslims of Kodagu, many of them descendants of migrants from Kerala, appropriated him as their hero overnight. On the appointed day, the communities clashed violently in the tourist town of Madikeri, the headquarters of the district, resulting in two unfortunate deaths: 65-year-old DS Kuttappa, the district organising secretary of the Vishva Hindu Parishad, was killed when he fell or was pushed from, depending on who you believe, a height during the riot; and 22-year-old Shahul Hamid from Siddapur was shot while returning in a truck from Madikeri. Observers blame the deaths on police and administrative negligence, but the reality of the unrest in Kodagu runs deeper.

From his perch in Srirangapatna near Mysore, Tipu Sultan—and before him, his father Haider Ali—had repeatedly attacked Kodagu in the 1780s in order to secure free passage to Malabar. His incursions into Coorg, replete with the plunder and destruction of temples—a common practice in medieval times even among Hindu rulers—were time and again thwarted by native Kodava warriors, but the region eventually succumbed to the assaults. According to historical accounts, Tipu then ordered ‘both the slain and the prisoners, with the women and children, to be made Musalmans.’ “Kodavas were deeply scarred by Tipu’s excesses but they did not give up. They had their tiri-toks—country guns—and they were skilled at guerrilla warfare. For Tipu’s army, the leeches alone proved a deterrent,” says Addanda C Cariappa, a writer, actor, theatre person and former president of the Karnataka Kodava Sahitya Academy, who is working on a book in Kannada on Tipu Sultan. His pride in the community’s martial heritage and its achievements in the military soon dissolve into alarmism as he talks about the shrinking Kodava population. “We are a dwindling race with a population of just 1.25 lakh. Soon, we will be the Kashmiri Pandits of south India. The religious turbulence of Tipu’s reign is partly to blame,” Cariappa says.

There is no love lost between Kodavas and the erstwhile ruler of Mysore: they will tell you that Tipu was no son of the soil; that he preferred Persian to Kannada and wanted to propagate Islam across south India; and that his epitaph in Srirangapatna and the inscription on his sword commemorate him as a sultan who lived and died for the faith. This, then, was the majoritarian cultural sentiment that formed the backdrop of the Tipu Jayanti celebrations in Kodagu. The Siddaramaiah government has been accused of inciting riots for political gain in a district where all the legislators—two MLAs, KG Bopaiah and Appachu Ranjan, and Prathap Simha, the lone MP from Kodagu—belong to the BJP. Conspiracy theorists go to the extent of alleging that a law-and-order crisis was precipitated by the Siddaramaiah camp to show the new home minister of the state, G Parameshwara, in poor light. Whatever the provocation, the celebrations marked a dark day for communal harmony in the state.

It is dark when we halt at Kuttappa’s house near Madhapur, about 20 km north-east of Madikeri, at the end of a long, snaking drive through banana and paddy fields. The sitting room is bustling with local reporters, Sangh Parivar activists and Kuttappa’s scampering grandchildren. His son Dani wears a dhoti and an unreadable expression. His mother sits unmoving in a corner, her long hair undone,face buried between her knees. “Father knew his life was in danger. But anything could have happened in Madikeri that day and he could not stay away,” says Dani, who works at a factory in Madikeri and is an RSS activist. “They beat him and stoned him, then pushed him to his death. There are eyewitnesses who saw what happened near General Thimmaiah Circle.” The police are awaiting the autopsy report that may throw light on the cause of his death.

On that Tuesday morning, a few thousand people carrying Tipu flags marched towards Town Hall, where his birthday was to be celebrated. The 2,000 policemen who were later deployed to keep vigil over the small district—4,100 sq km of it—had not yet been called in; the district administration was wholly unprepared for trouble. As supporters of the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) and Sangh Parivar activists hurled stones at one another, the situation quickly spiralled out of control and the police resorted to a lathi charge. “The Muslims came armed with stones and swords,” alleges Dani. Soon, he is no longer talking about the death of his father, but building a case against “radical Muslims” who, he alleges, have destroyed the peace of the region.

Kodagu is a peaceable place where enmities that lay buried in the dim mists of the past are not easily kindled. Before the flare-up around Tipu Jayanti, the Sultan’s exploits here were largely forgotten—although, if you visit enough Kodava homes, you will have occasion to pet dogs named Tipu. The last time there was a Hindu- Muslim clash in Kogadu was in December 2001, when miscreants vandalised the Harishchandra temple at Palur, about 20 km from Madikeri. Angry Hindu mobs gathered in town, blocking roads and attacking Muslim worshippers; Section 144 was eventually imposed. Like most riots, the 2001 incident reeked of political opportunism and widened the space between Kodagu’s communities. This is happening again now, thanks to a king who has captured the fancy of a nation in search of heroes. Tipu introduced land reforms and modern banking. He abolished alcohol and donated to temples. He was the last Indian ruler to consistently rebel against the British. Yet, large sections of Kodavas do not hesitate to judge an 18th-century ruler by 21st-century morals. “He killed Hindus and converted them. These people who want to celebrate him—what are they celebrating exactly?” Dani asks.

“The problem is that people think in terms of religion in this country,” says actor and playwright Girish Karnad, who received a death threat on social media after remarking that Bengaluru International Airport would have been named after Tipu Sultan, and not after city founder Kempegowda, had the king been Hindu. “It is not as though our politics has changed in 200 years. We still see leaders using atrocities to build their careers. At least Tipu Sultan did not commit these atrocities against his people. I can’t see how what he did was more condemnable. The people of Mysore were happy with him,” he says.

 

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On the banks of the Cauvery at Ayyankeri, a village 6 km from the temple town of Bhagamandala on the road to Madikeri, is a patch of flat forest land planted with kodampuli (Malabar tamarind) trees. A barbed wire fence separates it from private land where rising water levels have made cultivation difficult; consequently, a lush pastoral meadow stretches all the way down to the river, its waters screened from sight by a thin line of trees. Inside the fence stands a small, rounded black stone with the date ‘13.12.1785’ painted on it, next to the words ‘Holocaust of the Humans’. Visiting what is described to me as the Auschwitz and Jallianwala Bagh of Kodagu, I am struck by the absence of history around it. No one in the neighbourhood has heard of Devattiparambu, the grounds where Tipu Sultan is said to have massacred over 30,000 Kodavas on a single day after inviting them to a feast. Yet, Kodavas like Addanda Cariappa are convinced that this is where the king all but wiped out a thriving, fearless people. Cariappa’s book is to be released on 13 December to commemorate the incident. “We used to call this area periya parambu (big ground). The NCC camped here in the 1950s to build a bridge,” says Abdul Rahman, a villager who owns some land next to the river, speaking in Malayalam. “A couple of months ago, some people from the Codava National Council [which has been campaigning for ethno-linguistic tribal minority status for Kodavas] came and looked around for a place to install the memorial. Since this is forest land, they thought it would be safe here,” he says. Rahman and his neighbours attended the Tipu Jayanti celebrations in Madikeri because they were puzzled at the calumny suddenly hurled at their village. Tipu allegedly converted thousands of Kodavas, whose descendants are now known as Kodava Mappilas. Muslims living in Ayyankeri, however, say their ancestors migrated from Kerala. “We have a mosque here that is said to date back 300 years and there are no records of conversion by Tipu Sultan in these parts,” says Rahman. “Nor is there any proof that this was Tipu’s killing field.”

Was Tipu really a monster of ego and a jihadist? Or could he have liberated India from the imperialists? “How does it matter? Lives have been lost,” says Abdul Naseer, the father of Shahul Hamid. “We have lost our only son.” In a small house with green walls, Naseer and his wife Kulusu contemplate their misfortune. “Shahul worked at a Toyota showroom in Bengaluru. He had come to Siddapur to apply for a BPL card so that we could get a discount on his sister’s kidney stone surgery in Mangalore,” says Kulusu. “He did not know a thing about Tipu. He just hitched a ride back home from Madikeri.” About 300 Muslim youth from Siddapur, Kodagu, attended the event, and most of them have since fled the area fearing arrest. “There are no youth in town today. There is fear. The police keep coming back with inquiries,” says Naseer. Police have made over 60 arrests so far and filed 35 cases. A magisterial probe has been ordered. “The people who killed my son go scot free even now,” Naseer says. He flew in from Dubai, where he works as a driver, when he heard his son had been shot. “I remember thinking, ‘It is a bullet to the head, he won’t make it’,” says Naseer, who has no plans to return to the Middle East. “There is no one to earn for,” he says.

While the Madikeri incident may have been precipitated by an unmindful government decision, there is a discernible trend of Muslim radicalisation in Kodagu, says KB Ganapathy, editor-in-chief of Star of Mysore, a widely- read evening newspaper. “I grew up in Kodagu. Muslim women never wore burkhas until a few years ago. Just two years ago, a women’s college in Virajpet took issue with students suddenly appearing in burkhas. The women in turn asserted their fundamental right to wear them, and eventually the parties came to the compromise that they could wear the burkha till the college gate but no further,” he says. “In this situation, the Congress may well be trying to capture the Muslim vote.”

In Srirangapatna, the anniversary of Tipu Sultan’s death is celebrated with much gusto. Followers waving banners with his emblem—a blazing sun amidst tiger stripes— participate in a procession from his mosque to his grave, where they smear sandal paste on the tomb. “I have attended many of these processions—called urs—and they have been peaceful. It is when you politicise the celebration that problems occur,” Ganapathy says. He has argued against idolising Tipu over other kings who fought the British. “Why doesn’t Mamata Banerjee celebrate the birthday of Siraj-ud-Daulah, the last independent Nawab of Bengal? He lived before Tipu’s time,” the editor says.

Tipu was a multicultural icon, a proto-nationalist who understood the future and respected other religions, says leftist historian KN Panikkar, who wants the country to remember him “not as a Muslim ruler but as a ruler of Mysore who gave us an anti-imperialist legacy”. Must we celebrate kings in democratic India? A king is not a perfection of noble qualities. He may fight an intercontinental cast of foes, but he is first and foremost fighting for his territory. “Freedom as we know it today was not part of Tipu Sultan’s imagination,” says Addanda Cariappa. “Just as it was not part of the imagination of the Peshwas or the Rani of Jhansi. They all fought for themselves.”

‘Happy is the country that needs no heroes,’ wrote Bertolt Brecht. Let us live up to the perils of the era and not drag a long-dead ruler to court with us.

source: http://www.m.openthemagazine.com /  Open / Home> Nation  / by V. Shoba  / November 26th, 2015

VOICES – Tipu Sultan: Noble or Savage?

TipuSultanMPOs30nov2015

In 1791, the Swami of Sringeri Math wrote to his ruler, and most generous patron, to relate a tragic tale of murder, temple destruction and violent iconoclasm.

The great temple, he related, had been attacked by a large armed party of cavalry. The invaders had mercilessly sacked the complex, stealing over Rs 60 lakh of offerings, including the temple vessels and other valuables. But it was not just a matter of looting and plunder— the raiders had deliberately violated the sanctum sanctorum. The idol of the presiding deity, Sarada, had been desecrated and pulled out of its socket.

The Swami knew that his patron was likely to be sympathetic. He was, after all, locally well-known for taking most seriously his role as protector of his Hindu subjects and their places of worship—as had been his father before him. It was the father who had begun the special relationship between the family and Sringeri, writing earlier to the Swami that ‘you are a great and holy personage. It is nothing but natural for everyone to cherish a desire to pay respects to you.’

The son had continued where his father had left off. From the beginning of his reign, he had loaded the temples of his realm with presents, honours and land. Few of his chancery records survive, but from the temple archives of the region we know, for example, that in 1784 he gave a land grant to one Venkatachala Sastri and a group of Brahmins, begging them ‘to pray for the length of his life and prosperity.’ A year later, he sent the temple complex of Melkote 12 elephants and a kettledrum, while also sending a Sanskrit verse recording his grant of lands ‘to the temples and Brahmins on the banks of the Tungabhadra.’ So it continued at the rate of at least three or four major endowments or gifts of money, bells, pensions, villages, jewels or ‘padshahlingams’ per year, for the rest of his reign, mostly in return for requests for prayers, pujas ‘for the success of the King’s armies’ or temple processions.

But it was Sringeri that had always received both the most generous presents, and as a stash of correspondence discovered within the temple in the 1950s bears witness, Tipu Sultan rose to the occasion and wrote a most heartfelt letter in response to the Swami. He put on record his horror at what the Maratha raiding party, led by their general Parasurambhau, had done to his favourite temple during their 1791 invasion of Mysore: ‘People who have sinned against such a holy place are sure to suffer the consequences of their misdeeds,’ wrote Tipu, ‘In accordance with the verse, Hasadbhih kriyate karma rudabhih anubhuyate, those who commit evil deeds smiling, will reap the consequences weeping. Treachery to gurus will undoubtedly result in the destruction of the line of descent.’

Sending a large sum of cash and a consignment of grain ‘for the consecration of Goddess Sarada’ and to ‘feed one thousand Brahmins’, Tipu asked the Swami ‘to pray for the increase of our prosperity and the destruction of our enemies.’ Shortly after this, he sent another note, along with a present of an elephant, writing that ‘wrongdoers to gurus and our country will soon perish by the grace of God! Those who took away elephants, horses, palanquins and other things from your Matha will surely be punished by God. Cloth for the Goddess has been sent through Narasimha Sastri. Please consecrate the Goddess, and pray for our welfare and the destruction of our foes.’

That the Marathas could desecrate a Hindu temple, and that Tipu Sultan could restore it, goes so firmly against all our modern expectations that it is worth examining what was going on here. How exactly could this happen?

The reality is that the pre-modern rulers of India tend to be more layered and complex figures than the one dimensional gallery of angels or devils we sometimes reduce them to. Moreover, they usually tend to behave in a far less straightforwardly sectarian manner than we might imagine. It was quite normal, for example, for Hindu rulers to endow mosques and Sufi shrines within their Kingdoms—as for example the Marathas did in the 1760s when they took over Burhanpur and Khandesh— just as it was not unknown for them to destroy the temples and state deities of their enemies when they invaded neighbouring lands. This was an old tradition, a normal way to humble an enemy and remove the sources of his power.

The Cholas, for example, were especially ruthless in this respect: when they invaded Sri Lanka and attacked Anaradhapura in 993, they sacked the town, plundered the stupas and destroyed all the temples. According the Culavamsa, the Anuradhapura chronicle:

‘They violently destroyed here and there all the monasteries,

Like blood-sucking yakkhas, they took all the treasures of Lanka.

They took away all valuables in the treasure house of the King,

They plundered what there was to plunder in vihara and the town.

The golden image of the Master [Buddha],

The two jewels which had been set as eyes in the Prince of Sages,

All these they took.

They deprived the Island of Lanka of her valuables,

Leaving the splendid town in a state as if it had been plundered by yakkhas.’

They also laid waste the temples of Manyakheta, the Rashtrakutan capital, and according to western Chalukyan inscriptions, did the same in Kalyana, ‘slaughtering women, children and Brahmins’, even raping Brahmin girls, and taking a large black stone guardian image back to Thanjavur, where it was displayed to Rajaraja Chola’s subjects as a trophy of war. Captured Chalukyan women were enslaved and also taken back to Thanjavur where they formed what one scholar has described as ‘reproductive pools’ for breeding a cadre of military men, the kaikkolas, loyal only to the Chola king.

Indeed, places of worship in state capitals often bore the brunt of successive conquests and reconquests: when Warangal fell to the Delhi Sultanate in 1323, the Tughlaqs destroyed the state temple of Svayabhu Shiva and built a congregational mosque in its place as the centre piece of the city they renamed Sultanpur. But then, at the breakup of the Sultanate, at the Hindu reconquest of the city by Kapaya Nayaka in the 1330s, the mosque seems to have been demolished and the temple restored and rebuilt over its ruins.

This was the world—often surprising to our eyes—that Tipu Sultan inhabited, and we have to make an effort to try and understand the mores of the times if we are to make sense of all this.

There is no question that Tipu was ruthless in war. He routinely and brutally converted to Islam captive enemy combatants and internal rebels, both Hindu and Christian, Indian and British, frequently destroying the temples and churches of those he conquered. He did this on a particularly horrific scale in Malabar, Mangalore and Coorg. Portuguese missionaries wrote that ‘he tied naked Christians and Hindus to the legs of elephants and made the elephants move around till the bodies of the helpless victims were torn to pieces.’

When he defeated the British in 1780, of the 7,000 prisoners he captured—one of whom was my ancestor James Dalrymple—around 300 were forcibly circumcised and given Muslim names and clothes. It is also true that he liked, especially towards the end of his reign, to describe himself as a ghazi, a Muslim Holy Warrior. Yet he clearly did not see this as being in contradiction with his duty to protect the lands and temples of his own Hindu subjects. We may see this as a massive paradox. He and his contemporaries did not.

Tipu’s patronage of the Hindu institutions of Mysore was no doubt as much a recognition of political realities, as any inherent liberalism or ‘secularism’. Tipu recruited a large number of Hindu warriors into his army—especially from the Telugu huntsman caste of Bedas or Beydaru—and he employed Brahmins to run much of his administration, particularly the revenue department, under a Hindu prime minister, Purnaiya. The palace coup which brought his father to power had been financed by Hindu bankers.

The Ranganatha Temple in his capital was not just protected but loaded with gifts which are still on display today, as are all the beautiful Vijayanagara-era images, not one of which has suffered from iconoclasm, despite standing in the middle of the capital of a ruler denounced by his British enemies as an ‘intolerant bigot’, a ‘furious fanatic’ who had ‘perpetually on his tongue the projects of Jihad’. In return for this royal patronage and protection, the Brahmin priests of his capital were expected to pray for Tipu’s success, and by studying his horoscope and the stars, to help augur his fortunes. On one occasion after a group of Malabar Christians had sided with the British, he destroyed churches in Mangalore and northern Malabar and gave the magnificent Dutch-cast bells to one of his state temples, the Venkaramana Temple in Nagar.

Yet it was not all realpolitik. Tipu, despite being a devout Muslim, believed strongly in the power of Hindu deities: in his dreams, which he diligently recorded every morning in a dream book which survived the British sack of Srirangapatna, Tipu encounters not only long-dead Sufi saints, but also Hindu gods and goddesses; in one dream sequence, which he saw on 16 November 1798, there are references to him encountering in a ruined temple idols whose eyes moved: one talked to him, and as a result, Tipu ordered the temple rebuilt. Tipu also strongly believed in the supernatural powers of holy men, both Hindu and Muslim. As he wrote in 1793 to the Swami of Sringeri: ‘You are the Jagatguru,the preceptor of the world… in whatever country holy personages like you may reside, that country will prosper with good showers and crops.’

Moreover, it is clear that for all his self-portrayal in his letters to other Muslim rulers such as Zaman Shah of Kabul, or the Ottoman Sultan in Constantinople, as a Muslim ghazi, intent on kafir conversion, his personal beliefs and cosmologies were imbricated with Hindu ideas of holiness and the supernatural: it is recorded , for example, that he made all his troops, Hindu and Muslim, take ritual baths in holy rivers ‘by the advice of his augers’ in order to wash away cowardice and make them superior in battle to the Marathas.

In this deeply syncretic world view, Tipu was a man of his time, and this vision which saw two cosmologies, Hindu and Islamic, profoundly intertwined, was one that he shared with many of his contemporaries: the Maratha leader Mahadji Scindia, for example, was well known at the time for his deep devotion to various Sufi saints.

Where Tipu does stand apart from almost all his contemporaries, however, was in his prescience about the intentions of the British, his profound alarm at the power of their East India Company, and his determination to attempt to root it out of India. He tried to warn other Indian rulers of the dangers of the increasingly arrogant and aggressive Company: ‘Know you not the custom of the English?’ he wrote in vain to the Nizam of Hyderabad in 1796. ‘Wherever they fix their talons they contrive little by little to work themselves into the whole management of affairs.’

It was these British enemies of Tipu who did most to create the image of Tipu so widely held today. In 1799, before sending into the field the largest army the East India Company ever gathered together, the Governor General, Lord Wellesley, began a campaign of vilification against Tipu, portraying him as an aggressive Muslim Monster who divided his time between oppressing his subjects and planning to drive the British into the sea. This essay in imperial villain-making opened the way for a lucrative conquest and the installation of a more pliable regime which would, in the words of Wellesley, allow the British to give the impression they were handing the country back to its rightful owners while in reality maintaining firm control.

It is, however, a truth universally acknowledged that a politician in search of a war is not necessarily over-scrupulous with matters of fact. Until recently, the British propaganda offensive against Tipu has determined the way that most people in India remember him. But as with more recent dossiers produced to justify pre-emptive military action against mineral-rich Muslim states, the evidence presented reveals far more about the desires of the attacker than it does about the reality of the attacked. For recent work by a succession of modern scholars has succeeded in reconstructing a very different Tipu to the one-dimensional fanatic invented by Wellesley. Tipu, it is now clear, was in fact one of the most innovative and far-sighted rulers of the pre-Colonial period.

What really worried the British was less that Tipu was a Muslim fanatic, something strange and alien, but that he was in fact frighteningly familiar: a modernising technocrat who used the weapons of the West against their own inventors. Indeed in many ways he beat them at their own game.

Tactically the Mysore forces were fully the match of those of the East India Company, and Tipu’s sepoys were every bit as well trained by their French mercenary officers as those of the Company were by theirs; indeed the steely discipline of the Mysore infantry amazed and worried many British observers. The Mysore army was strong in those areas where the Company was weakest and the Mysore light cavalry was ‘the best in the world’, according to Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington.

Moreover the sepoy’s rifles and canon were based on the latest French designs, and their artillery had a heavier bore and longer range than anything possessed by the Company’s armies. Indeed, in many respects the Mysore troops were more innovative and tactically well ahead of the Company armies: firing rockets from their camel cavalry to disperse hostile cavalry, for example, long before William Congreve’s rocket system was adopted by the British army. Tipu also developed a large bullock ‘park’ of white Deccani cattle to allow him rapidly to deploy infantry and their supplies through his kingdom, a logistical innovation later borrowed by the British for their wars against the Marathas.

More worrying still for Wellesley, the defences of the island fortress of Srirangapatna were state-of-the-art and designed by French engineers on the latest scientific principles, following Sébastian de Vauban’s research into artillery-resistant fortification designs, as adapted by the Marquis de Montalembert in his book, La Fortification Perpendiculaire. These provided the most up to date defences that the 18th century could offer and also took into account the newly increased fire-power of cannon, bombs and mines, as well as the latest developments in tactics for storming and laying siege to forts. Haider and Tipu even tried to create a navy which by 1766 comprised two ships, seven smaller vessels and 40 gallivats, all commanded by a European sailor named Stannett.

All this made Tipu by far the Company’s most formidable enemy. He was responsible for a unique and catastrophic defeat of the armies of the East India Company at Pollilur in 1780 which led to the slaughter of an entire army and the capture of one in five of all the British soldiers in India: no less than 7,000 British men, along with an unknown number of women, were held captive by Tipu in his sophisticated fortress of Srirangapatna. Many were circumcised and forcibly converted to Islam. Even more humiliatingly, several British regimental drummer boys were made to wear ghagra cholis and entertain the court as nautch girls.

At the end of ten years’ captivity, one of these prisoners, James Scurry, found that he had forgotten how to sit in a chair or use a knife and fork; his English was ‘broken and confused, having lost all its vernacular idiom’, his skin had darkened to the ‘swarthy complexion of Negroes’ and he found he actively disliked wearing European clothes. This was the ultimate colonial nightmare, and in its most unpalatable form: the captive preferring the ways of his captors, the coloniser colonised.

Tipu was just as innovative in peace as he was in war. He tried to import industrial technology through French engineers and experimented with harnessing water-power to drive his machinery. He sent envoys to southern China to bring back silkworm eggs and established serriculture in Mysore—something that still enriches the region today. He introduced irrigation and built dams so that even his British enemies had to admit that his kingdom was ‘well cultivated, populous with industrious inhabitants, cities [including Bangalore] newly founded and commerce extended.’ More remarkably still, he created what amounted to a state trading company with its own ships and factories dotted across the Persian Gulf. He even asked his ambassadors to Istanbul to secure for him the ijara—farm— of Basra so that, like Europeans, he could establish an overseas settlement which would be both a base and a safe haven for his vessels. No wonder the British were terrified when they discovered that ‘Citizen Tippoo’ was in communication with Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he formally invited to visit India to liberate the country and expel the British. He had even sent Ambassadors to Paris along with a draft treaty in which he proposed an alliance to drive the British out of India.

As Christopher Bayly nicely put it, Tipu attempted to fight ‘European mercantilist power with its own weapons: state monopoly and an aggressive ideology of expansion.’ He failed only because the resources of the Company were expanding faster than those of Mysore. British propaganda might like to portray Tipu as a savage barbarian, but he was in fact something of a connoisseur and an intellectual, with a library containing some 2,000 volumes in several languages, and a large collection of modern scientific instruments including thermometers and barometers. The culture of innovation Tipu fostered in Mysore stands record to a man very different from that imagined by the Islamophobic propaganda of the British and the startling inaccuracy of Lord Wellesley’s ‘dodgy dossier’ of 1799. The fanatical bigot and savage was also something of an economic and political visionary.

Tipu knew what he was risking when he took on the British, but as he said himself, “I would rather live a day as a tiger than a lifetime as a sheep.” He duly went down fighting: when Wellesley’s army finally closed in for the kill and surrounded Srirangapatna in mid-April 1799, Tipu resisted with characteristic ingenuity and tenacity. As one British observer wrote, he ‘gave us gun for gun… night time skirmishes were made with desperate exertion… Soon the scenes became tremendously grand; shells and rockets of uncommon weight were incessantly poured upon us from the SW side, and fourteen pounders and grape from the North face of the Fort continued their havoc in the trenches; while the blaze of our batteries which frequently caught fire… was the signal for the Tiger sepoys [Tipu’s élite forces dressed in tiger-striped uniforms] to advance, and pour in galling vollies of musketry.’ It was a brave and skilful defence that ended with Tipu falling, sword in hand, at the breach in his defences near the water gate.

How should we remember Tipu today? He is certainly a complex figure, and it is anachronistic to call him ‘secular’: his was an Islamic state, albeit one run with a Hindu administration and a partially Hindu army, and led by a man who firmly believed in the power of Hindu deities. It is perfectly reasonable for the descendants of his victims—and I can count myself among them—to remember his horrible savagery in victory: in Coorg, Malabar and Mangalore he was responsible for what we today would call war crimes.

 But he was beloved by his own people, as the British discovered to their surprise when they seized his state: ‘numbers of his confidential Hindoo servants who during the war fell into our hands, acknowledged him to be a lenient and indulgent master.’ At his funeral, people lined the streets ‘many of whom prostrated themselves before the body, and expressed their grief by loud lamentations.’ So it is not far-fetched to see him as a brave proto-nationalist. For while it is true that modern ideas of nationalism and patriotism were only in their infancy, he nonetheless firmly identified the British as dangerous outsiders and there is no question he did more than any other ruler of the time to stop them taking over the country.

source: http://www.m.openthemagazine.com /  Open / Home> Quiz> Voice / by William Dalrymple / November 26th, 2015

Four faiths thrive in Falaknuma

FalaknumaMPOs30nov2015

The Coronation Hall at Taj Falaknuma, which has been thrown open for public viewing after months of cleaning and refurbishing, is all set to give visitors a great experience of witnessing four different faiths under one roof. The restoration of the hall was done under the guidance of Princess Esra Birgin and experts from UK. It was in a decrepit condition with the roof falling apart and the carving turning black due to pigeon poop.

It is after several months of cleaning and polishing that fragrance of sandalwood filled the room, allowing one to cross the corridors admiring its art, sculpture and wood carvings. Sharing his views, raconteur Prabhakar Mahindrakar said, “In 1903, when the sixth Nizam Mir Mahboob Ali Khan attended the coronation of King Edward at Dilli Darbar, a lot of artists and craftsmen came to showcase their work at the mela expecting huge sales.

Unfortunately, no ruler took interest in purchasing the works and the artisans were left disappointed, except for the Nizam of Hyderabad who bought this ‘four-religion art’, which was immediately shipped to the city.” The Coronation Hall, which was used by royal women members and the Nizam, has many interesting facts to entice visitors. It took nearly three years for the Nizam to get the single unit art work to be put on proper display at the hall.

The intricate wood carvings are made in sandalwood and rosewood, which have certain unique features that pinpoint to the secular rule which prevailed during the Nizamera. Palace historian PrabhakarMahindrakar said, “The hall is divided into five sections, each dedicated to a distinct faith. The room begins with the Mughal art and is followed by Thai, Buddhism and comes to an end with Hinduism.

The first section of the room has intricate carving of ‘Tree of life’ in sandalwood on both sides of the hall, and on to the right one can also see the replica of ‘Emperor Jahangir darbar’ which was used by the Nizam to look at the city.” Walking down further, one would be welcomed with huge sandalwood arches which depict the temples of Thai monks and other carvings include Yali and peacocks which play a prominent role in Thai culture.

The next is Buddhism arch which depicts the royal life of ‘Gautam Buddha’ on one side and enlightenment and penance on the other side. The last depicts, Hinduism, where there is a replica of Panchavati, the abode of Ram-Sita while in exile along with many other mythological figures related to Lord Krishna, Goddess Lakshmi, Lord Vinayaka and many more.

source: http://www.metroindia.com / Metro India / Home> LifeStyle> Places / by Metro India News / November 28th, 2015

U-19 tri-series: Sarfaraz stars in India’s title win

Preserving his best for the decider, Sarfaraz Khan scored a quick fire, unbeaten 27-ball 59 to fetch the win in just 13.3 overs after the Indian bowlers had restricted the visitors to a modest 116 in 36.5 overs. Deciding to bat first, Bangladesh started faltering from the very start against a disciplined Indian bowling attack.

Sarfaraz Khan was awarded the man of the match for his quickfire fifty. – PTI
Sarfaraz Khan was awarded the man of the match for his quickfire fifty. – PTI

Continuing its unbeaten-run in the tournament, India downed Bangladesh by seven wickets in the final to win the Under-19 one-day cricket tri-series crown here at the Jadavpur university Salt Lake Campus ground on Sunday. Preserving his best for the decider, Sarfaraz Khan scored a quick fire, unbeaten 27-ball 59 to fetch the win in just 13.3 overs after the Indian bowlers had restricted the visitors to a modest 116 (in 36.5 overs).

Deciding to bat first, Bangladesh started faltering from the very start against a disciplined Indian bowling attack. The Indian left-arm spinners Mayank Dagar and Mahipal Lomror caused most of the damage, picking up three and two wickets respectively, finishing off the Bangladesh top and middle order.

Dagar and Loror restrict Bangladesh

Bangladesh was looking at a bigger total when Njmul Shanto (45) and Joyraj Imon (28) set up a 54-run partnership for the third wicket. Subham Mavi picked up Imon in the 19th over as the batsman went for an adventurous flick just to be caught at deep backward square leg by M. S. Washington Sundar. Dagar clean bowled Shanto in the next over to make it 68 for four. Dagar and Lomror ran through the rest of the Bangladesh batting, with Avesh Khan and Mavi picking one each towards the end, to see the visitor’s innings fold up at 116.

India started the chase well but lost its way a bit losing three wickets between the fifth and seventh overs. Rishabh Pant (26), who became the man-of-the-tournament for being the most prolific batsman with an aggregate of 282 runs, and Washington Sundar (12) paired in a 38-run stand for opening wicket. But the two departed in haste playing loose shots and were joined in the pavilion by Amandeep Khare (0) soon after.

Sarfaraz and Bhui put up a 75-run partnership

Sarfaraz joined captain Ricky Bhui in the fourth wicket to resurrect the Indian innings. Khan raced to 51 in 23 balls with a glut of boundaries (7 fours and 3 sixes) and made it the quickest half-century of the tournament. Sarfaraz was most severe against the Bangladesh left-arm spinner Shawon Gazi, who conceded 35 runs in two overs (ninth and 11th over of Bangladesh). Sarfaraz put up an unbeaten 75-run partnership with Bhui (20 n.o.) for the fourth wicket to seal the title for India. He was named the man-of-the-match for his effort.

source: http://www.sportstarlive.com / SportStar Live / Home> Cricket – India / by Amitabha Das Sharma, Kolkata / November 29th, 2015

Israeli academic hails Kerala’s multiculturalism

Says the system preserves the identity of every community

Kerala’s traditional multiculturalism has much to offer to the policy and decision makers in modern times, says Ophira Gamliel from the University of Ruhr, the Israeli academic who has been closely associated with Kerala studies.

Ophira Gamliel says the traditional festivals and performing arts in Kerala are highly structured so as to ensure the collaboration of the various communities at different levels
Ophira Gamliel says the traditional festivals and performing arts in Kerala are highly structured so as to ensure the collaboration of the various communities at different levels

Speaking to The Hindu on the sidelines of the third International Kerala History Conference here on Friday, Prof. Gamliel says a closer look at the multiculturalism inherited by the State would point to a dynamic system which preserves the identity of every community, even as it provides space for each of them to integrate into one system.

“You don’t lose your identity. Even small communities do not get swallowed. Your literature, culture, everything are well preserved. Instead of getting integrated at the personal level, you are integrated at the community level,” she says.

Prof. Gamliel says the roots of this unique system, still preserved, could be traced to the ancient long-distance trade exchanges which were exceptionally different in character from the modern global trade. “Unlike the modern global trade, which is marked by brutal expropriation of resources and labour, the ancient trade between the western coast of India and west Asia was marked by a great amount of cultural and knowledge exchanges at the community level,” she adds.

Documents

The more-than-1,000-year-old Cairo Documents (referring to deals between west Asian traders and those from Kerala) and the 9th century Tharisapalli plates (referring to a grant issued to Syriac Christians of Kerala) are rich evidences to this multiculturalism. “In fact, the Tharisapalli plates are signed in three languages: Persian (in Hebrew script), Pahlavi, and Cufic Arabic,” she says pointing to the efforts taken to preserve the identity of the different trading organisations.

Even the traditional festivals and performing arts here are highly structured so as to ensure the collaboration of the various communities at different levels. Beyond the complexity of what happens on the stage, this underlying structure assured collaboration at the communal level even in performing art forms, she says.

This unique system of multiculturalism should be subject of in-depth research, especially at a time when traditional communities are under threat of being swallowed up in the wave of globalisation, leading to tensions and conflicts at the community and societal level, she adds.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> National> Kerala / by George Jacob / Kottayam – November 29th, 2015

Felicitation

Mysuru, Karnataka :

Rifa-Hul Muslimeen Educational Trust, and Farooqia Educational Institutions, Mysuru, is felicitating city Police Commissioner B. Dayananda on Nov. 30 at 11.30 am at Aiwan-e-Tipu Sultan, Farooqia Dental College Hospital, Farooqia Educational Complex, Eidgah, Mysuru and distribution of Gold medals to meritorious students of Farooqia Institutions.

Dr. Fouzia Choudhary, Chairperson, Karnataka Urdu Academy, Bengaluru, will be the chief guest. Trust President Prof. Riyaz Ahmed will preside.

source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> In Brief / Sunday – November 29th, 2015

Shabana Azmi recalls her ancestral village Mijwan

Lucknow :

Mijwan, a small village in Azamgarh that did not even have a pin code to its name, has empowered the village women such that Hollywood actress Naomi Campbell and several Bollywood actors are clients of their embroidery. Similar stories from the village were shared by Shabana Azmi at the Lucknow Literature Carnival organised by Lucknow Expressions in association with TOI here on Saturday. Mijwan is the village where her father Kaifi Azmi was born and where he founded the Mijwan Welfare Society in 1993, now run by Shabana.

“Students there are now getting English tuitions through Skype by volunteers in America and London,” she said. She also shared how the women are running beauty parlours and organizing fashion shows all by themselves.

Sharing success stories of the villagers, Azmi said people generally undermine the impact of music and theater in personality development. “My mother Shaukat Azmi used to give the girls lessons in theater and there was, and still is, an evident change in their personalities,” she said.

She also claimed that the village now has no girl married before the age of 18 which was possible only after a long struggle to bring about such positive change in the lives of women.

Parallel cinema alive in new avatar’

Maintaining that parallel cinema still survives in India, Shabana Azmi said that it has only assumed a new avatar. Quoting the example of Meghna Gulzar’s Talvar and others like Masaan and Kissa, Azmi said that filmmakers today work on current issues that interest and provoke them. “Parallel cinema does not only mean making films on villages or on feudalism only. The latter has long been left behind. To go out of the formula and have a discourse around it can be called parallel cinema too,” said Azmi.

Kaifi Azmi Academy likely to come up by 2016

The much-awaited All-India Kaifi Azmi Academy in UP might see the light of the day by March 2016, said Shabana Azmi on Saturday. She was responding to a question from the audience at the Lucknow Literature Carnival. She said she was hopeful of the assurance made to her by the UP chief minister. “Last time when I met the CM, he assured me that I shall have the key to the academy by March,” said Azmi. She also added that the CM felt bad Azmi had to make consistent efforts in the matter. She said she wishes to make the academy “a sort of an adda for intellectual arguments, debates and discussions.” Praising the people of the state, she said that UP has a lot of talent which she pines to make a part of her academy. “The advantage of good language, pronunciation and finesse comes as a natural talent to people here,” she said. The UP cabinet had cleared a proposal to provide financial assistance for setting up the All-India Kaifi Azmi Academy in July 2014. UP Rajkiya Nirman Nigam had been appointed nodal construction agency for it.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Lucknow / TNN / November 29th, 2015

Kaifi Azmi Academy likely to come up by 2016

Lucknow  :

The much-awaited All-India Kaifi Azmi Academy in UP might see the light of the day by March 2016, said Shabana Azmi on Saturday. She was responding to a question from the audience at the Lucknow Literature Carnival. She said she was hopeful of the assurance made to her by the UP chief minister. “Last time when I met the CM, he assured me that I shall have the key to the academy by March,” said Azmi. She also added that the CM felt bad Azmi had to make consistent efforts in the matter.

She said she wishes to make the academy “a sort of an adda for intellectual arguments, debates and discussions.” Praising the people of the state, she said that UP has a lot of talent which she pines to make a part of her academy. “The advantage of good language, pronunciation and finesse comes as a natural talent to people here,” she said.

The UP cabinet had cleared a proposal to provide financial assistance for setting up the All-India Kaifi Azmi Academy in July 2014. UP Rajkiya Nirman Nigam had been appointed nodal construction agency for it.

‘Parallel cinema alive in new avatar’
Maintaining that parallel cinema still survives in India, Shabana Azmi said that it has only assumed a new avatar.

Quoting the example of Meghna Gulzar’s Talvar and others like Masaan and Kissa, Azmi said that filmmakers today work on current issues that interest and provoke them.

“Parallel cinema does not only mean making films on villages or on feudalism only. The latter has long been left behind. To go out of the formula and have a discourse around it can be called parallel cinema too,” said Azmi.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Lucknow / TNN / November 29th, 2015