Tipu Sultan

Tipu Sultan

It is wrong to say that Sultan Tipu was a savage, barbarous and cruel fanatic. He was an industrious ruler who himself attended to every branch of administration. He was not cruel by nature. He was cruel only toward his enemies and he hated the English from the very core of his heart. He could never reconcile himself to co-operate with the English Company. He fought against the British tooth and nail and died fighting, but could not think of coming to a compromise with them. He was inclined towards the French and his preference for them continued all his life.

The English hated him and dreaded him. Accouding to Kirkpatrik, Sultan Tipu was “the cruel and relentless enemy…..the oppressive and unjust ruler and what not.” According to Wilks, Haidar was seldom wrong and Tipu seldom right. Unlimited persecution united in detestation of his rule every Hindu in his dominion. He was barbarous where severity was vice and indulgent where it was virtue. If he had qualities fitted for empire they were strangely equivocal. There is a Mysore proverb that “Haidar was born to create an Empire, Tipu to lose one.”

However, there are other writers who have paid tributes to the intelligence and other qualities of head and heart of Sultan Tipu. According to Mill, “As a domestic ruler, he sustains an advantageous comparison with the greatest princes of the East.” According to Moor, “when a person travelling through a strange country finds it well cultivated, populous with industrious inhabitants, cities newly founded, commerce extending, towns increasing, and everything flourishing so as to indicate happiness, he will naturally conclude it to be under a form of government congenial to the minds of the people. This is a picture of Tipu’s country, and this is our conclusion respecting its government.” Major Dirom remarked thus: “His country was found everywhere full of inhabitants, and apparently cultivated to the utmost extent to which the soil was capable, while the discipline and fidelity of his troops in the field, until there last overthrow, were testimonies equally strange of the excellent regulations which existed in his army. His government, though strict and arbitrary, was despotism of a politic and able sovereign.”

There is not much to condemn the character of Sultan Tipu. His misfortune was that he was that he was pitted against the British Government which had endless resources. He could not find anybody to help him in his hour of difficulty. While the English were able to win over the Marathas and the Nizam on the occasion of the third Mysore War and the Nizam in the fourth Mysore War, Tipu had to fight alone. The French on whom he depended failed him completely.

Milan Tomic

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