Scores of people paid tributes to 18th century controversial Mysore ruler Hazrath Tipu Sultan (1750-1799) in Karnataka's Srirangapatna on his 270th birth anniversary.
This included Congress legislator Tanveer Sait who paid tributes to Tipu Sultan in Srirangapatna. "Though the BJP government discontinued Tipu Jayanthi from this year owing to opposition from its legislators and right-wing groups, Sait, cadres and religious leaders paid tributes to the erstwhile king by offering flowers and a shawl (chadar) to his tomb at Gumbaz in Srirangapatna," party's state unit spokesman Ravi Gowda said.
Thousands of Muslims celebrated it along with Prophet Mohammed's birthday on Eid-Miladin-Nabi across the southern state amid tight security.
Tanveer, a four-time lawmaker from the Narasimharaja assembly segment in Mysuru, is also chairman of Tipu's Saheed Wakf Estate in the state's cultural capital. Inayath ur Rahman Rizvi, Shahi Imam, Masjid e Aqsa, Gumbaz, prayed and read some verses of the Holy Quran.
There were no celebrations in Kodagu district of Karnataka.
The celebrations, which were held by the state government from 2015, were discontinued this year after an interim order was passed by the BJP-led government on July 30, just days after the party came to power in the state. In the first year of celebration, two persons were killed in Kodagu district after violent clashes.
The order by the BJP-led government was challenged in the Karnataka High Court and on November 6, the high court's division bench, headed by Chief Justice Abhay S Oka and Justice S.R. Krishnakumar, directed the state government to reconsider its July 30 cabinet decision and respond by third week of January 2020. The bench also said that private celebrations of Tipu Jayanti were allowed and asked the state government to place on record the order cancelling Tipu Jayanti celebrations in the state.
The previous Congress government revived Tipu Jayanthi in November 2015 and continued till 2018 when it was in the 14-month coalition government with the Janata Dal-Secular (JD(S)) till July 23 despite opposition by the BJP then.
The ruling BJP and its right-wing allies consider Tipu a tyrant, religious bigot and anti-Hindu who forcibly converted hundreds of Hindus to Islam and persecuted those who opposed. Every year since 2015, the BJP ran a campaign criticising Tipu for killing Kodavas and Mangaluru Christians, and pillaging temples in south India.
The opposition Congress, however, claim Tipu was a valiant hero, secular and a freedom-fighter who fought the British to protect his kingdom and its people from the invaders.
The developments also come at a time when Appachu Ranjan, the MLA of Madikeri in Kodagu, has petitioned the Karnataka Education Department to remove all references to Tipu Sultan in textbooks printed in the state.
With IANS inputs