A 50-year-old activist of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad Kutapppa died in the communal clashes at Madikeri, about 250 km from Bengaluru in Karnataka, while protesting the celebration of the birth anniversary of Tipu Sultan, The activist, suffered head injuries during stone pelting, when a pro-Tipu Sultan Muslim group clashed with Hindutva activists at the Thimmaiah circle. Over 30 other activists were injured.

Several organizations, including the VHP had called for a bandh to protest the government-sponsored Tipu Jayanti celebrations.

Historian Dilip Menon says, Tipu, "However, amidst his campaigns, there were also stories of forced conversions of Hindus and destruction of temples which to modern eyes fit too well into a Muslim monarch in a Hindu society frame."

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.”

In a letter to the Nawab of Kurnool, Tipu claims he took 40,000 Coorgs as prisoners and forcibly converted them to Islam and incorporated them into his Ahmadi corps.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.

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.” 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.”

BJP, state media-in-charge Prakash Sesharagavachar, “The need to celebrate Tipu Jayanthi is politically motivated. It is not supported by historical fact, which clearly paints Tipu as a tyrannical ruler.”

Now that it is to be seen how many pseudo secularists cry intolerance. Let us see how many of the self proclaimed intellectuals return their awards. When the victim is a Hindu, it is always brushed aside by these irrelevant pseudo secularists.

By Premji