Why the Coorgs are upset with Tipu Sultan and the Karnataka government’s efforts to honour him - Firstpost
Evidence of Tipu’s deeds in Coorg comes from within his own court. Tipu’s biographer and courtier Mir Hussein Kirmani wrote about Tipu’s exploits in Coorg in his The History of Tipu Sultan, “The conquering Sultan dispatched his Amirs and Khans with large bodies of troops to punish those idolaters and reduce the whole country (Coorg) to subjection. They attacked and destroyed many towns. Eight thousand men, women, and children were taken as prisoners. They were collected in an immense crowd like a flock of sheep or herd of bullocks.”
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Tipu claims he took 40,000 Coorgs as prisoners and forcibly converted them to Islam and incorporated them into his Ahmadi corps.
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According to the Mysore Gazetteer of the time, when Tipu was finally vanquished, only two temples in his kingdom performed daily pujas. The Gazetteer estimates that Tipu destroyed around eight thousand temples in South India.
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Portuguese missionary Father Bartholomew wrote in his book, Voyage to East Indies, “Women and children were hanged in Calicut, first mothers were hanged and their children tied to necks of mothers. That barbarian Tipu Sultan tied naked Christians and Hindus to the legs of elephants and made the elephants to move around till the bodies of the helpless victims were torn to pieces.”
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After the pillage of Calicut, Tipu wrote to his generals: “Almost all Hindus in Calicut are converted to Islam. Only on the borders of Cochin State a few are still not converted. I am determined to convert them also very soon. I consider this as Jihad to achieve that object.”
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Tipu made far-reaching changes to how his kingdom functioned. For instance, he changed the official language from Kannada to Farsi; he renamed cities and towns that had Hindu names; he changed weights and distance measurement to an Arabic system; he changed the calendar, reducing the year to 364 days, and even gave new names for the shorter months, Hindu courtiers, with one notable exception, were replaced. He also exempted Muslims from paying taxes.
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Around 2,000 letters were discovered after Tipu’s death in 1799, written in his own handwriting. In them, Tipu frequently calls Hindus kaffirs and infidels. He also refers to Christians, mainly the British, who need to be cleansed or converted if Islam is to be established in India.