It’s exactly been a day since Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa won the floor test in Karnataka and he has already taken control of matters in the state. One of his first orders has been to stop the annual birth anniversary celebrations of the 18th-century ruler of the erstwhile Mysore Kingdom, Tipu Sultan, in the state from this year onwards. This essentially marks the end of the infamous Tipu Jayanti which was being celebrated under the Congress rule and lately under the Congress-JD(S) coalition government.
Officially celebrated for the first time in 2015, Tipu Jayanti has met with strong resistance from local Kannada groups like Tipu Jayanti Virodhi Horata Samithi. BJP which has always remained critical of the radical tyrant had held several demonstrations in the past against the celebrations of Tipu Jayanti, which was ultimately being propagated on taxpayer’s money. Last year, Karnataka BJP unit had called on the Congress-JD(S) coalition to drop the idea of celebrating Tipu Jayanti calling him a “religious bigot”. While HD Kumaraswamy had not attended the ceremony held on 20th November 2018, instead of 10th November which is Tipu’s actual birth date, Congress leaders were seen rejoicing during the celebrations, again giving a shameless exposition of the idea of minority appeasement that runs deep in the grand old party.
Former Bangalore University Vice-Chancellor Thimappa Manchale Suryanarayanarao had explained Congresses decision to swap dates of celebrations, when he said, “The tyrant Tipu’s birthday falls on November 20. November 10 is the day on which he hanged 700 Iyengars in Melkote.” Another source seconds the same fact, “It’s not just the Melkote Iyengars, it’s the Coorgs, who he killed and converted, it’s the Mangalorean Catholics, whose churches he destroyed, and the Nairs of Wayanad and Malabar, who he tried to exterminate. Evidence for this comes from Tipu’s own letters and diaries.”
Tipu Sultan in 1783 during his siege of Palghat Fort had scaled new heights of savagery where “Tipu’s soldiers daily exposed the heads of many innocent Brahmins within sight from the fort for Zamorin and his Hindu followers to see. It is asserted that the Zamorin rather than witness such enormities and to avoid further killing of innocent Brahmins, chose to abandon the Palghat Fort” as documented in works of Col. Fullarton.
Some claims of Tipu Sultan being a freedom fighter is also evidently just deliberate misconception of history and mere figments of imagination. The fact remains that the second Anglo-Mysore battle 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 the 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.
These blatant attempts to celebrate a murderer not only had evident overtones of minority appeasement but also insulted thousands of descendants of the people who were murdered at the whims of tyrants like Tipu. Distortion of history to suit political agenda has been a tool for Congress and their communist protégés to mislead people into hating their own culture and worshiping false ‘gods’. Nonetheless now as the unholy alliance comes to an end and BS Yediyurappa led BJP Government takes charge, this irreverent practice of celebrating a murderer has finally come to an end, marking the end of an ugly pseudo-secular practice.