History, Science and Faith in Islam
90. Resistance and Reform - Tippu Sultan of Mysore-5
By Prof. Dr Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
Tippu Sultan invites Napoleon Bonaparte
The eruption of the French Revolution provided a fresh opportunity for Tippu Sultan and set the stage for a final showdown with the British. The American Revolution had provided a model for the overthrow of the monarchies in India. The powerful writings of French philosophers like Voltaire had paved the way for a changed intellectual paradigm. In July 1789, a French peasant mob stormed the Bastille, freeing the political prisoners. Their leaders declared the sanctity of the political rights of man and demanded the abolishment of oppressive feudalism.
In October of the same year, a Paris mob took over the royal palace, and forced Louis XVI to adopt their revolutionary manifesto. Special privileges of the feudal lords were abolished, universal male suffrage introduced, representative government established, public education encouraged, and promotion by talent and merit instituted in place of influence and birth. The Revolution turned bloody when it sought to regulate the Church. In the ensuing turmoil, Louis XVI and the French nobility went to the guillotine.
What had started as a revolution based on Voltaire’s rational thought had turned into a bloody dictatorship by 1792. As the Revolution spread across Europe, France was militarized with a million Frenchmen under arms. England declared war on France (1793), and a dashing artillery captain named Napoleon Bonaparte rose to become the commander of the revolutionary forces and, ultimately, the head of the French state.
Tippu Sultan was aware of these revolutionary changes sweeping Europe. The cry of “liberty, equality, fraternity” was in consonance with his own existential vision for India. Among all the rulers of 18th century India, only Tippu could see the possibility of a free India, without the domination of Europe. And towards this possibility, he directed his energies, and in the final stage, gave his life for it. On a different plane, he saw the threat to Islamic civilization from European domination and sought to alert the Turks in Istanbul, the Arabs in Oman and the Afghans in Kabul to this danger. It was this vision, backed by a single-minded determination to achieve it, more than the inherent capability of a small state like Mysore that made the British fear him.
The French Revolution considered it a global mission to liberate the world from the oppression of despots. The monarchies of Western Europe fell one after the other, even as the consolidation of the revolution turned it into a dictatorship. In 1798, after overrunning all of Western Europe (except England), Napoleon landed in Egypt, and easily defeated the Turkish garrisons there. His global plan was to march from Egypt to Syria and from there to Iraq, sail from Basra to the west coast of India and evict the British from the Indian Ocean. Aware of these galactic changes, Tippu Sultan sent an ambassador to Napoleon in 1798, with a proposal for a joint attack on the British in India. The grand plan was for Napoleon to land on the Malabar coast, and after evicting the British from Madras, advance upon Bombay, and proceed from there to Bengal. Thus, Tippu’s vision embraced not just Mysore, but the entire Indian subcontinent, and the Islamic world beyond.
Tippu also sent a similar proposal to the Ottomans in Istanbul and to Zaman Shah in Kabul. The Turkish sultan, himself under pressure from Napoleon’s armies, rejected Tippu’s request, and instead advised him to cooperate with the British against the French. Zaman Shah responded positively and moved with a large force from Kabul taking Lahore in 1798 on his way to Delhi. But British diplomacy fanned Shi’a-Sunni disturbances between Persia and Afghanistan, Persian forces moved towards Qandahar and Zaman Shah had to withdraw from Hindustan to tend to matters at home.
Napoleon, impressed with the reputation and determination of Tippu Sultan, wrote to him in 1799:
“From Bonaparte, Member of the National Convention, Commanding General, to the Most Magnificent Sultan, our greatest friend, Tippu Saheb: You have already been informed of my arrival on the Red Sea, with a large and invincible Army, full of a desire to deliver you from the yoke of England. . . I request you to inform me by way of Muscat and Mocha as to your political situation . . . I would further wish you could send some intelligent person to Suez or Cairo, someone in your confidence, with whom I may confer . . . May the Almighty increase your power and destroy your enemies”.
The letter was to be delivered to Tippu through the Sheriff of Mecca, but was intercepted by agents of the British in Aden and never reached Mysore. Meanwhile, Napoleon was defeated by Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar (1799), and the Ottomans stopped the French in Syria. Napoleon withdrew to France. Mysore became a casualty of the Napoleonic Wars. Convinced that Tippu would never give up his dream to rid India of the British, they resolved to eliminate him. The aggressive new Governor General Wellesley needed no fresh provocation to renew hostilities. A new alliance was struck with the Nizam, who was always ready to grab at any straw thrown at him by the British. But the Marathas, alarmed at the growing power of the Company, refused to join this time. More importantly, the Company’s agents “bought off” most of the senior officers of Tippu Sultan. The Finance Minister Mir Saadiq was a principal turncoat. Others who were under varying degrees of British influence were the divan Poornayya and the army commanders Qamruddin and Sayyid.
The Third Mysore War had greatly reduced the boundaries of Mysore and provided more convenient jumping off points for an invasion. Treason at the highest level denied the Sultan accurate information about enemy troops. In March 1799, a force of 20,000 Company troops, and an equal number from the Nizam, backed by a host of support and supply troops invaded the land of Tippu Sultan and quickly overran the Fort of Bangalore. Resistance from the Mysore infantry was stiff, but by April 4, 1799, the invaders reached the capital of Srirangapatam and laid siege to it.
(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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