History can change Politics. In an ideal world the historical background should determine the political scenario. This requires a rational and unbiased discourse as far as the Nation’s history is concerned. Unfortunately in India, history of the Nation is not written on the basis of rationality and an unbiased outlook but political and religious considerations. One such classic example of pseudo secularism where politics determined and rewrote the history of the Nation is the propagation of Tipu Sultan, a despotic monarch who went into a battle with the British purely for his self interest as a benevolent ruler and a legendary freedom fighter.
Tipu Sultan: Fake Freedom Fighter
Off late, the Congress Government in Karnataka has carried out a systematic propaganda and has tried to project Tipu Sultan as a hero of the past. This became crystal clear when the Tableau of Karnataka in the 2015 Republic Day celebrations was centered on Tipu Sultan and has been further corroborated by Karnataka Government’s present plans of celebrating the monarch’s birth anniversary on a official level. The claim of Tipu Sultan being a freedom fighter is a deliberate misconception of history and a mere figment of imagination. The fact remains that the second Anglo-Mysore in which Tipu Sultan went up in arms against the British took place way back in ‘1780’ itself even though the first struggle for independence had started in 1857. Thus, Tipu Sultan was not by any stretch of imagination a participant in the freedom movement for releasing India from the shackles of British rule. He was just a monarch who was interested in safeguarding his own sovereignty. To believe and propagate that he fought for something which had not even materialised during his life span is to live in fool’s paradise.
Tipu Sultan: A despotic ruler
It is an irony that a State Government in a secular republic wants to celebrate the birth anniversary of a ruler who is infamous in historical records not only as a brutal conqueror but also as a religious fanatic and dictator who attempted the ethnic cleansing of Kodavas and other Hindu Communities of southern India and also indulged in mass conversions of Kodavas to the Islamic religion. This is a testimony to the desperate attempts of a dying political outfit for its survival by appeasing a particular religion. This is also an indicator of Congress’ hatred, whether real or superficial for the same religion which Tipu Sultan also hated in his heydays. The celebrations of a despot in Hyderabad and a deliberate attempt to rewrite and manipulate history has set a very dangerous precedent and must be seen as an attack on the secular fabric of the Nation.
Conclusion
Even the Karnataka High Court recently observed while hearing a PIL against the Karnataka Government on the issue of birth anniversary celebrations that Tipu Sultan cannot be called a freedom fighter and he was nothing more than a monarch fighting for his self interest though the Court refused to interfere on the ground that this is essentially a matter of policy and judicial interference as such is not warranted. But this raises an important question are we willing to live in a scenario where the State exchequer money is used for political and religious purposes? This fiasco is nothing but an epitome of the leftist misconstruction of the Indian History where a straightjacket formula is to be applied; every Hindu personality is to be attributed a communal, casteist and despotic character even where there is no evidence and every Muslim personality is to be attributed a benevolent character. Where Muslim ruthlessness is apparent in history records, such records are to be dismissed on the ground of political compulsions.
