Madikeri's BJP MLA Apachu Ranjan has written to the Karnataka Education Department seeking the removal of references to Tipu Sultan from state syllabus school textbooks.
In a letter to the state Primary and Secondary Education Minister S Suresh Kumar, Apachu urged him to remove lessons pertaining to Tipu Sultan, the former ruler of Mysore kingdom.
Speaking to TNM, Apachu says that Tipu Sultan has been glorified as a freedom fighter. "He is not a freedom fighter and this is something that the textbooks have said. This information is wrong and we want an expert committee to look into this. Tipu has converted many people in our area and looted temples here (in Kodagu)," Apachu said.
In the letter, Apachu urges the Education Department to "stop glorifying Tipu" in textbooks printed in the state. "Tipu Sultan was concerned about expanding his kingdom and his religion but he has not fought for the freedom (of the country). We cannot call him a freedom fighter," reads an excerpt from the letter.
The letter also argues that Tipu was not a freedom fighter by contending that he supported the French and persecuted Kodavas in Coorg (now Kodagu) and Christians in Mangalore (now Mangaluru).
Apachu alleges that Tipu converted tens of thousands of Christians in Mangaluru, and questioned how he could be called a freedom fighter. In the letter, Apachu also alleges that Tipu was against Kannada since the language used in his kingdom was Persian.
Tipu Sultan ruled the erstwhile Mysore Kingdom from 1782 to 1799 and was involved in multiple battles against the British East India Company for territory in modern-day South India. The controversy over his reign comes three months after the BJP government decided to cancel Tipu Jayanti celebrations this year. The celebration has been held every year in November since 2015 when the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government officially celebrated it for the first time.
Every year since, on the days leading up to the celebration, BJP and pro-Hindu groups ran a campaign claiming that Tipu Sultan had persecuted Kodavas and Christians. However, the Congress government led by then CM Siddaramaiah had continued to celebrate it.
Tipu Jayanthi celebrations by Karnataka government in 2017
BJP leaders had earlier celebrated Tipu Sultan and taken part in celebrations honouring his memory but after the state-sponsored celebrations were introduced in 2015, party leaders have stood opposed to the former Mysore kingdom ruler.
Critics, however, condemned the notion that books should be modified to suit one version of history over another. Tipu Sultan has to be remembered in history. "This demand (of not having him in textbooks at all) is absurd since Tipu made contributions across many fields and they cannot be erased,” says Chandan Gowda, a professor of Sociology at Azim Premji University.
The Kodavas, an ethno-lingual tribe, consider themselves to be the original inhabitants of Kodagu. Sections of the Kodava community contend that Tipu Sultan captured 80,000 to 100,000 prisoners and sent them to Srirangapatna where they were forcibly converted to Islam around the year 1792. Srirangapatna was once the capital of Mysore kingdom under Tipu Sultan's rule and is home to many monuments related to Tipu including the tombs of him and his family.
The opposing view contends that Tipu was working in the interests of expanding his kingdom and that the numbers of conversions were exaggerated. "Tipu forcibly converted people only in Coorg and Mangalore, both of which were outside the Mysore Kingdom and which the British were trying to take over. Tipu was working to ensure that people in these regions did not work with his enemy, the British. He felt for example that the Christians of Mangalore might not be loyal to him due to their shared faith with the British. His motivation for conversion needs to be understood within the political context of that time", Chandan explains.
"Today, people in Mangaluru and Kodagu can say they don't have fond memories of Tipu Sultan. But now, these regions are all part of one state - Karnataka - and so, the point is not whether Tipu should be taught or not - he should be taught, of course - but about how he must be understood today, about the care needed for understanding the military realities of empire building in Indian history in general. Could the Vijayangar empire have been built without the loss of lives? Why isn't anyone raising questions about who its rulers killed to retain their power?," he asks.
This view is supported by Gazetteers published by German Missionaries including Hermann Friedrich Moegling. Writing in the Coorg Memoirs: An Account of Coorg and of the Coorg Mission published in 1855, more than 50 years after Tipu's death in 1799, Moegling states, "The whole population of Coorg maybe estimated as 25,000 to 26,000. They have much increased in numbers in the last twenty years...In former days they [Kodavas] seem scarcely ever to have mustered more than 4,000 or 5,000 fighting men."
The controversy over Tipu Sultan's persecution of Kodavas however still lingers on today. Apachu Ranjan has called for an expert committee to study Tipu's contributions in Kodagu and make changes to the history represented in school textbooks. He adds that he will provide documents to back up his claims.