History, Science and Faith in Islam
89. Resistance and Reform - Tippu Sultan of Mysore –Part 4
By Prof DrNazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
Tippu Sultan, Cornwallis and George Washington, the fateful connections
The situation changed with the arrival of Cornwallis in 1785 as Governor General of the East India Company. The loss of the American colonies had freed British manpower and material resources. These resources were now focused on India and on the Indian Ocean. Cornwallis had made a name for himself in the war against the Americans in their War of Independence, although his surrender to George Washington on October 19, 1781 at Yorktown had tarnished that image. As soon as he arrived in India, Cornwallis started preparations for a final confrontation with Tippu Sultan. Methodically, he proceeded to build a military-political alliance to surround and destroy the Kingdom of Mysore.
It was during this period (1786-1787) that Tippu Sultan sent embassies to the Turkish Sultan in Istanbul, Louis XVI of France, the Shah of Persia, the Sultan of Oman, and Zaman Shah of Afghanistan. With a singular passion for expelling the British from India, he tried diplomacy and sought alliances throughout the Islamic world and the Indian subcontinent.
Through his ambassador to France, Tippu sought a military alliance as well as help with artisans and military engineers. The reply of Louis XVI was polite but evasive. A similar overture to the Dutch for a defensive alliance in 1788 was rejected. In his representations to the Turkish Sultan, he pleaded for military help against the British and sought the title of Padashah. Muslims around the globe looked upon the Sultan as the Caliph of Islam and its guardian. Only he could bestow legitimacy on the sultans and emirs of Asia and Africa. Tippu was successful in earning the title of Padashah from Istanbul but there was no military help. The reasons for this lay in the European politics of the time. The French Revolution (1789) was soon to engulf France, challenging the authority of kings and despots and most of the European monarchs were about to lose their thrones. The Turkish Sultan, not unaware of these changes and as insurance for his own survival, was careful to cultivate the British as a bulwark against the French. In addition, the Russians were aggressive on the northern Ottoman borders, and the Porte in Istanbul was in no position to help an Indian Padashah in his struggle against the British in far-away India.
Tippu’s relations with Persia were cordial. In 1781, during the Second Mysore War, his father Hyder Ali had asked for help from the shah and had received a contingent of 1,000 troops. But post-Safavid Persia was a minor player on the world scene and was itself on the defensive against the Russians in Azerbaijan. Tippu scored some success with the Sultan of Oman who controlled the coastline of Arabia and East Africa with a credible navy. But after some initial success, British diplomacy successfully isolated Mysore, and concluded a Treaty of Friendship with the Sultan of Oman (1798).
The Nizam and the Marathas viewed the rising power of Mysore with jealousy and suspicion, and Cornwallis had little difficulty in forging a confederacy with them against Tippu. Hostilities began when the Raja of Travancore bought two small principalities from the Dutch. These principalities, Cranganore and Ayakotteh, had been held by another raja, the Raja of Cochin, before the arrival of the Europeans. The Portuguese occupied them in 1511, and lost them to the Dutch circa 1600. By 1780, the Dutch were a waning power in India and had their hands full at home with an incipient revolution. By the sale of these two towns, they wished to raise cash to defray the cost of fending off the French in India, but they desired to do so in such a manner that it would embroil Tippu and the British in conflict. The Raja of Cochin had become a tributary of Tippu, and Tippu desired to buy these towns for himself. When the Dutch sold them instead to the Raja of Travancore, friction increased between Mysore and Travancore. As a further provocation, the Raja built fortifications through territories nominally under the control of Mysore. Tippu moved against the Raja, who had an alliance with the British. This provided an excuse for Cornwallis to commence hostilities. Tippu Sultan’s overtures to the French and the Turks for military alliances were construed by the British to be directed against them. It is also possible that Cornwallis had a personal stake in the war, to retrieve his reputation after his losses to the Americans at the Battle of Saratoga and his surrender to George Washington at Yorktown. The British feared a repeat of their North American experience in India. In America, French assistance had helped the colonies win their War of Independence (1776-1783) under General Washington. Was it not possible that the Indians would prevail if they followed the example of Tippu Sultan?
Cornwallis went about his task methodically. In March 1790, he entered into a treaty with the Marathas to attack Mysore from three directions: the Bombay army from the sea, the Marathas from the north, and the Madras army from the east. Not all the Maratha chiefs were sanguine about British aims, but the hawks in Poona prevailed. In July of the same year, the Nizam entered into a similar treaty with the Company. His goal was to recover territories he had lost to Mysore in previous wars. To complete the encirclement of Tippu, the British incited the Nayars of Malabar, the Bibi of Cannanore and the Raja of Cochin. Tippu initiated a diplomatic counter offensive of his own to convince the Marathas and the Nizam to support him or remain neutral. In this game of diplomacy, the British carried the day, and a four-pronged attack against Mysore began in 1791.
The British fielded more than 25,000 troops, including 600 British officers. The Nizam provided 20,000 troops, while the Maratha armies numbered about the same. A supply chain of over 42,000 bullocks and several hundred elephants backed these armies. Cornwallis moved to Madras from Calcutta and personally took command of the operations. The initial military advantage lay with Tippu Sultan. The sustained onslaught from the three enemies took its toll, however, and the Mysoreans reluctantly yielded territory.
The war lasted a full two years. The Fort of Bangalore fell in 1791 after a desperate resistance. Throughout the war, Tippu Sultan tried to make a separate peace with the Marathas and the Nizam. To the Marathas he offered gifts. To the Nizam he appealed in the name of God and the Prophet. But the Marathas were embroiled in their own internal politics. Although they were lukewarm in attacking Mysore, they could not extricate themselves from the alliance. Some Maratha chiefs, like Sindhia, considered a prolonged Anglo-Mysore conflict as a means to furthering their own ambitions to conquer Rajasthan and the Punjab. As for the Nizam, nothing mattered except his own immediate self-interest. The overtures did not succeed. Similar overtures to the French bore no fruit because the French had their hands full with their Revolution (1789). They offered plenty of advice but no military help.
From Bangalore, the confederate armies proceeded south, and overcoming stiff resistance from the defenders, lay siege to Srirangapatam. With his military options exhausted, Tippu sought terms of peace. The British, too, were exhausted and their treasury in India was empty. Besides, British troops were needed at home to meet the growing challenge from revolutionary France. The parties signed the Treaty of Srirangapatam in 1793, by which Tippu Sultan was forced to give up half his kingdom and agreed to pay 30 million rupees to the confederates. Until the amount was paid, he was obliged to give two of his children, Abdul Khaliq and Moeezuddin, as hostages to the British. The taking of children as hostages in war was an act of banditry, not of chivalry, and it was not known in India. But then, the East India Company was there to make money, and not necessarily to practice a soldier’s code of ethics!
The Third War of Mysore contained the military power of Mysore. The British won this war through their superior intelligence apparatus and diplomacy. They were more successful than the Mysoreans in exploiting the internal politics of the Indian courts to their advantage. Cornwallis also proved to be a match for the Sultan in sheer tenacity, and refused to give up even when his army was almost crippled by disease, pestilence and the monsoons. After the war, Tippu reorganized his kingdom, introduced administrative and military reforms, paid back the hostage money within a year, and by 1795 the kingdom was well on its way to recovery.
But the British feared even a Tippu Sultan reduced in strength. Cornwallis tried to renew the confederacy of 1791 with the Nizam and the Marathas, but was unsuccessful because these two Indian states were at each other’s throats, fighting a bloody war over territory in Kardla (1795) in which the Marathas were victorious and the Nizam was thoroughly humiliated. Realizing his vulnerability to the Marathas on the western front, the Nizam threw himself back into the arms of the British.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
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