From: "Ryan Dunch" <Ryan.Dunch@UALBERTA.CA>
To: <H-ASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, June 09, 2011 4:27 AM
Subject: H-ASIA: Tipu Sultan and his view of Islam (response)
> H-ASIA
> June 8, 2011
>
> Tipu Sultan and his view of Islam (response)
> ************************************************************************
> From: James Frey <freyj@uwosh.edu>
>
> Colleagues,
>
> Regarding the interesting discussion about Tipu Sultan's views of Jihad,
> I would like to note a few little-known aspects of the Anglo-Mysore
> Wars, some of which are discussed in my book Men Without Hats:
> Dialogue, Discipline, and Discontent in the Madras Army, 1806-1807 (New
> Delhi: Manohar, 2007), published under my former last name, Hoover.
> ISBN 81-7304-725-1.
>
> Haidar Ali's wars against the East India Company also were fought
> against a "Muslim" ruler, the Nawab of Arcot, Muhammad 'Ali Wallajah.
> Given that the French were on the side of the Mysoreans, there were
> Muslims and Christians on both sides, although, as the cranky Abbe
> Dubois and other contemporaries have noted, most Europeans in India in
> the late 18th century were only nominally Christian, and most East India
> Company cantonments and civil lines did not yet have chapels or resident
> padres. Moreover, a very large number of the Company's Indian soldiers
> were Muslim, especially in the cavalry regiments, while Indian
> Christians, although present in the Madras Army, were discouraged from
> serving in the Company's forces except as musicians. Given the complex
> and diverse nature of the Mysorean armies, a simplistic characterization
> of the Anglo-Mysore Wars as a clash of religions is highly problematic.
> It is true that Tipu Sultan made use of the courtly language of jihad
> to justify some of his actions, especially in northern Kerala, but as
> Kate Brittlebank has noted, this was standard procedure for 18th century
> Muslim rulers in South Asia.
>
> It is interesting to note that in some instances Muslims who were not on
> Tipu Sultan's side took a very dim view of him. Nizam 'Ali Khan, for
> instance, spurned proposals for a marriage alliance between Tipu's
> family and the "legitimate" house of Asaf Jah. We must remember that
> Haidar Ali was a usurper, and that most other Muslim rulers were
> extremely wary of Tipu Sultan, especially after his formal displacement
> of the Wodeyar rulers of Mysore. The Muslim residents of Vellore,
> moreover, were treated with extreme severity by Haidar Ali's besieging
> army in the 1780s, and the legend of a local Sufi saint recounts how he
> was harassed and even put to death (repeatedly, so the story goes) by
> Haidar Ali's soldiers - that is, until they apparently realized that
> they were dealing with an individual protected by Allah. One of the
> reasons why the British eventually imprisoned Tipu Sultan's family in
> Vellore was because the Mysoreans had very few friends among the Muslim
> inhabitants of the town. Finally, Muslim soldiers who were killed
> fighting for the Company against Tipu Sultan received the honors of a
> shahid, as they were thought to have fallen defending the interests of
> the Nawab of Arcot against a Mysorean ruler, who was considered by some
> to be a heretic. At least one Company sepoy who died in the wars was
> even buried as a pir, and his dargah still exists in Chennai.
>
> While Tipu Sultan certainly received distorting treatment at the hands
> of the popular British press, it is too simplistic to dismiss all
> British writing about Mysore and its rulers as propaganda. Having
> worked closely with many of the relevant primary sources, I can attest
> that quite a few documents enter into a fairly extensive and
> surprisingly even-handed analysis of Tipu Sultan's character and
> policies. Some British officials even admired Tipu Sultan as a clever,
> energetic, and tenacious enemy. What emerges is a sense that Tipu
> Sultan was a complex and dynamic individual with remarkably strong
> leadership skills, but also with certain weaknesses that could work at
> cross-purposes with the more practical aspects of his personality.
> Hence, we should not be surprised if the full array of Tipu Sultan's
> policies presents some contradictions. Some of his religious ideas, to
> be sure, may seem unorthodox by today's standards, but late 18th century
> Islamic society in India was very different from the Deoband-inspired
> Islamic society of later colonial and post-colonial South Asia.
>
> Prof. James Frey
> History Department
> University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh
>
>
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