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The real Tippu Sultan

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The real Tippu Sultan Empty The real Tippu Sultan

Post by Rishi Sun Apr 07, 2013 11:20 pm

Life at Tipu’s court was a dream for our hardy adventurer, but he began to have some misgivings. In his diary entry of January 14, 1799, he writes: “I’m disturbed by Tipu Sultan’s treatment of these most gentle souls, the Hindus. During the siege of Mangalore, Tipu’s soldiers daily exposed the heads of many innocent Brahmins within sight from the fort for the Zamorin and his Hindu followers to see.” Even so, he cast his doubts aside and put up for Tipu’s benefit a dem­onstration of the egalitarian political ideas of France: in 1799, a French paper entitled ‘Proceedings of a Jacobin Club formed at Seringapatnam by the French Soldiers in the Corps Commanded by Francois Ripaud’ was found in Tipu’s palace. It listed 59 Frenchmen in the pay of “citizen Tipu” and described a “primary assembly” of May 5, 1797, to elect a president (Ripaud) and other office-bearers. The ‘Rights of Man’ were proclaimed and the sultan formally received a small delegation from the club.

After this interval, we find another diary entry in which Ripaud is appalled at what he witnessed in Calicut (Kozhikode): “Most of the Hindu men and women were hanged...first mothers were hanged with their children tied to their necks. That barbarian Tipu Sultan tied the 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. Temples and churches were ordered to be burned down, desecrated and des­troyed. Christian and Hindu women were forced to marry Mohammedans, and similarly, their men (after conversion to Islam) were forced to marry Moha­mm­edan women. Christians who refused to be honoured with Islam were ordered to be killed by hanging immediately.” These events were corroborated by Father Bartholomew, a famous Portu­guese traveller, in his memoir, Voyage to East Indies.

Another diary entry of Ripaud says: “To show his ardent devotion and steadfast faith in the Mohammedan religion, Tipu Sultan found Kozhikode to be the most suitable place. Kozhikode was then a centre of Brahmins and had over 7,000 Brahmin families living there. Over 2,000 Brahmin families perished as a result of Tipu Sultan’s Islamic cruelties. He did not spare even women and children.”

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?284803

Rishi

Posts : 5129
Join date : 2011-09-02

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