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Tipu Sultan, died
young. On 4 May, 200 years ago, he was killed in battle with the British. Very
few of India’s kings chose to fight the Europeans. And, fewer still, died at
their hands. Tipu was one of those precious few. Even during his lifetime he was
outstanding. He stood above the shoulders of the rest and he gazed well into the
future, well beyond his epoch and times. In this he was unique among India’s
peers. Living at a time when Indian society began to show up gaping cracks in
its feudal order, Tipu used his might to further weaken decadent feudalism. He
reflected the spirit of the Renaissance on Indian soil. And, as Engels would say
of the great personalities that emerged on the eve of the bourgeois revolution
in Europe, Tipu Sultan similarly had "the fullness and force of character that
made him a complete man". Ruling from Srirangapatna, the capital of his kingdom
of Mysore in the last decades of the eighteenth century, Tipu reflected and
infused all those nascent tendencies which best brought out the prospects of
India’s transition to capitalism. It was with this fire that he fought the
British.
Anti-feudal Reform
Son of Haidar Ali, a
stable-hand who seized the reins, Tipu and his father undertook an extensive and
thoroughgoing campaign against the feudal warlords. Called palegaras, these
warlords, who were several hundred in number, located themselves in hill forts
and plundered the products of the peasantry. They obstructed the flow of trade.
And, they engulfed the region in a regular and internecine war. The palegaras
were an embodiment of the decadence of the feudal system. During Haidar’s time
itself, more than 250 palegaras were eliminated and their armies liquidated.
Tipu did away with several more. Thomas Munro, later Governor of Madras
Presidency, said: "The effects of this violent regulation was to hasten the
extinction of the class of ancient proprietors or landlords...... Francis
Buchanan, the intelligent colonialist who was deputed to conduct a comprehensive
survey of the Mysore kingdom on the fall of Tipu, said that with this measure:
"the feudal system was broken". Historian, Asok Sen, says: "The old
landlords were robbed by Tipu of all their power and influence. Their estates
were annexed by the government and the latter’s direct relationship with the
peasantry was the hallmark of the new system." On the question of the
elimination of the palegaras, all historians, colonial or national, are
unanimous in their opinion. Tipu had eliminated a social sore. The palegara
warlords were destroyed as a class. And, it was for the first time in the
history of India that such a vital layer of the feudal social order was wiped
out without a trace. Tipu and his father had dealt a devastating blow at
feudalism. The liquidation of the palegara class constituted the core of the
anti-feudal reform of Tipu Sultan.
The mathas and
temples were targeted next. The mathas were elaborate temple-centred
institutions of the Brahmanas and Veerashaivas. They owned extensive tracts of
land. The mathas and temples were exempted from paying any taxes to the state.
But all this changed during the reign of Tipu. Tipu’s Land Revenue
Regulations made it mandatory for the leading district officers to "resume"
and "annex" temple and matha lands. And in places where the annexation was lax,
a tax was imposed over what had been rent-free or manya lands of the Brahmana
and Veerashaiva priesthood.
A third aspect of the
anti-feudal reform was the passing of a new set of rules which marginally dented
the power of the Patel and Shanbhoga, the two feudal representatives at
the level of the village.
The land that was
seized from the palegaras, mathas and temples was handed over to the peasantry.
There is enough evidence to show that the beneficiaries of the land reform were
tenants and bonded labourers. Further, the peasantry was encouraged to expand
the area of agriculture, bringing a good deal of wooded country under the
plough. Tipu had an army which was about 1.5 lakh strong and a militia
undertaking local police duties wlfich was in equal number. All functionaries of
the army and the police establishments were given land. Soldiers also received a
regular pay. The kingdom was said to have more than 39,000 tanks. Water for
irrigation of the lands below the tanks was conducted by the Nirgunty, drawn
invariably from a Dalit caste. The Nirgunty was, as a rule, awarded with land in
the command area of the tank, in addition to an annual payment for his labours
as the regulator of water. It is estimated that nearly 15% of the total
population of the Mysore kingdom of the time, or nearly five lakh people, were
peasants who owned their own private plots of land. This category of free
peasants broke the land monopoly of the feudal classes. The anti-feudal reforms
created the conditions for the emergence of a class of landless agricultural
labourers and thus had a far-reaching impact on agrarian relations. They began
to draw the curtains on the old order of feudalism and generated new conditions
of semi-feudalism. Tipu granted not a single jaghir during his reign. He was
perhaps the only unrepentant king, in the history of Karnataka, not to have done
so. He eliminated a powerful layer of the feudal order — the warlord palegaras,
and circumscribed the powers of the temples and mathas. Yet, as his reforms were
only reforms "from above", they lacked a thoroughgoing character and stopped
short of an overhaul of the agrarian order Despite his reforms, Tipu continued
to rely on the landlord class within the village — the Patel and Shanbhoga — who
continued to have political authority at the village level which could be
overthrown completely only through class struggle of the peasantry. In other
words, Tipu’s agrarian reform modified feudalism to semi-feudalism. And this,
even by its own merit, was indeed a great change.
Penetration of Capitalist Relations
During Tipu’s reign
there were at least 24 major embankments across rivers and the canals from these
barrages irrigated the fields; the plan to build a 70 feet high dam was
commenced a few months before his death; and, there were anything more than
39,000 tanks and more than 16,000 wells for irrigation. Colonial administrators
such as Lewis Rice later estimated: "The whole extent of cultivated Mysore
appears to have been in the proportion of three-eighths wet to five-eighths of
dry cultivation." In other words, more than 35% of the total cultivated area
was irrigated. This provided a good basis for the rapid commercialisation of
agriculture. Tipu took a personal interest in the introduction of new plant
varieties such as mulberry, quality sugarcane, wheat and plantains. A reflection
of the extent of commercialisation was to be found in the fact that all taxes,
including the agrarian tax, were collected only in cash.
The mercantile
policies of the state encouraged the development of merchant capital. Tipu
launched an embargo on all trade with the British. No single commodity and not
even the pettiest trader was allowed to venture into his kingdom from
territories colonised by the British or the vice-versa. Thus he protected the
local market most ferociously, preempted the development of comprador tendencies
in the economy and gave full play for the development of non-comprador
mercantile capital in his kingdom. A visible feature of commerce in his kingdom
was that the state itself undertook a good part of the overseas trade and held a
monopoly over certain items of internal trade. Tipu Sultan issued his
Commercial Regulations to shape the conduct of state and non-state trade. He
established 28 commercial depots in his kingdom and 18 outside, including in
foreign countries such as Muscat, Karachi and Baluchistan. The state had a fleet
of nearly 100 merchant ships to conduct its seaborne trade. Tipu and his father
Haidar, were great road builders. The Cochin State Manual has recorded: "All
the great roads in the state ... were constructed during this short
period......" Historian, CK Kareem, writes: "In the South, Tipu Sultan
is, therefore, considered to have been the greatest of road-builders in the
eighteenth century".
The Mysore kingdom is
supposed to have had, according to British estimates, 180 towns. The total urban
population of the time is estimated to have been 7. 5 lakhs or 21% of the total
population of the kingdom. This is comparable with Irfan Habib’s estimates of
Mughal India, which showed an urban population of about 15%. The seven major
cities of the time, Srirangapatna, Bangalore, Nagar, Sira, Bellary, Chitradurga
and Dharwad together had a population of about 5 lakhs. The rate of decadenal
growth of the urban population of Bangalore was 16%, which is a pretty high
figure, and far outstrips the overall decadenal growth of the population.
The late eighteenth
century showed up the Banajigas as the national merchant. The Banajigas were a
Kannadiga mercantile caste who established a state-wide network of operations
and trading posts and they rose with the rise in the textiles market. They
developed a firm hold on the different sectors of the textile industry and they
began to venture into new fields, the freightage of goods being one of them.
Production for the
market was undertaken at different levels. The putting out system which came to
the fore in the fourteenth century was surpassed. Capitalist cooperation had
come into existence during the turn of the seventeenth century and capitalist
manufacture came to be established during Tipu’s reign. Capitalist cooperation
was to be found yielding to capitalist manufacture not only in the urban centres
but also in agriculture, particularly in the production of jaggery by the rich
peasantry. Francis Buchanan’s elaborate and minute documentation provides us
with ample evidence of the existence of capitalist manufacture in such diverse
fields of the economy such as textiles, iron, oil, salt, glass, wool, sugar and
dyestuff. The capitalist owners of these units of manufacture employed from 12
to 35 workers under various contractual agreements of wage payment. Simple
calculations of the data provided by Mark Wilks demonstrates that there were a
few hundred such units of capitalist nianufacture in the kingdom.
But it was Tipu
Sultan’s state-owned workshops or karkhanes which took up the production of
military and related goods that displayed the use of machinery to achieve
production of scale. His mints were mechanised and turned out coins of
precision, comparable with what was produced in Europe at the time. A big paper
"mill" was established in Srirangapatna. The Bangalore fort was supposed to have
had an "equipment factory", a "foundry for brass cannon, a machine for boring
them, another for musket barrels, which will bore a hundred and thirty at
once......" Further, evidence states: "A great number of iron ordnances
.... were in general cast in Tipu’s own foundry where a degree of perfection, it
is stated, had been attained in every stage of the process. And even what was
then the recent invention of boring guns perpendicularly had been introduced,
the machinery being kept in motion by water." It was not surprising that
Tipu asked his ambassadors who visited France in 1798 to procure the steam
engine.
Tipu had built a
library containing books in mathematics, physics, chemistry, botany, animal
breeding, medicine and warfare. He had developed experimental farms in Bangalore
and Srirangapatna. He had researches conducted in the improvement of military
hardware and their mass production. In fact the missiles or rockets, capable of
travelling up to 1.5 kms which the Mysore army so effectively used against the
British, were invented and developed in the foundries of Haidar Ali and Tipu
Sultan. A good nwnber of contemporary and later sources have acknowledged this.
The result of all
these developments: the elimination of the palegara class, the consolidation of
the modem state, protection of market, the unification of most of modern
Karnataka, the penetration of capitalist relations of production, the knitting
together of the various territories through an extensive transportation network,
etc — all these aspects led to the emergence of a home market. There was a
territorial specialisation within the home market in agriculture as well as
industry. And, as the rule of Haidar and Tipu progressed, this specialisation
continued to increase. An organic connection emerged between agriculture and
industry. And a unified home market emerged based on such a regional
specialisation. This home market had Bangalore city as its pulsating industrial
centre. The Kannada nationality was maturing into nationhood.
Sword
Against Colonialism
Tipu was a witness
to, and an embodiment of, all these progressive developments. He was unlike the
feudal kings that Indian history had all along seen. He could see the potential
of the unfolding home market. And that was what he sought to protect. A poet, a
man of letters, a historian, a calligraphist, a physician, a statesman, a
warrior and a military theoretician. Tipu combined all these traits.His
patriotism stemmed not from feudal moorings. He viewed things as a merchant and
increasingly as a capitalist.
Haidar and Tipu were
unflinching in fighting the British. They marked out their enemy clearly. Tipu
sheltered the French revolutionaries and on the success of the French
revolution, he heralded it with a 21-gun-salute in Srirangapatna. He wore the
red beret and took on the title of Citizen Tipu. He had read the French
philosophers. Tipu supported the American war of independence and he not only
sent letters but also money to Benjamin Franklin in a show of solidarity.
The British made so
many entreaties asking for his loyalty in exchange for his throne. He refused
all of them without a second thought. On the ramparts of the Srirangapatna
fortress in May 1799, as he witnessed the conduct of the war, he was reported to
have repeatedly said: "I would rather live two days as a tiger, than 200
years like a sheep".
Tipu and Haidar
fought four long wars with the British. Two they lost, two they won. They were
the first of Indian kings to have defeated the British army at war. Together
they ruled for 37 years. A third of all their time was spent in driving away the
British. Tipu said: "To quarrel with our subjects is to war with ourself.
They are our shield and buckler; and it is they who furnish us with all things;
preserve the hostile strength of our empire, exclusively for its foreign
enemies."
A short time after
Tipu’s martyrdom on 4 May 1799, Thomas Munro summed up the implication of this
victory for the British. He wrote: "The gradual conquest of India might have
been considered as certain when Bangalore was taken; for when the Mysore power
was broken, there was no other that could resist us."
This defeat in 1799
was a turning point in the British colonialsation of India. The British had
killed their most hated enemy. But the genuine patriotism of this martyr, is a
true source of inspiration for the Indian masses. Tipu manifested aspirations of
the old democratic revolution. Today the masses of India are fighting for the
New Democratic Revolution. Tipu contended with feudalism and died fighting
colonialism. These very same enemies weigh down on us today — feudalism and
imperialism.
Hindutva forces have
been fervently trying to denigrate secular Tipu as a Muslim zealot. The Hindu
communalists have been saying that Tipu’s was an ordinary achievement, becoming
of any commonplace king.
Among the various
books that Tipu wrote or commissioned into writing, was his Register of Tipu
Sultan’s Dreams written in his own hand. The 3 8 dreams that he has recorded
describe his passion to defeat the British. Beatson, a colonial officer, on
reading this book said: "...the destruction of Caufirs (meaning the English)
were subjects of a sleeping (no less than) that of his waking thoughts."
Beside his throne Tipu installed a lifesize toy. It showed a tiger at the throat
of a prostrate British officer. It was so constructed, that with the turn of the
handle, the tiger would growl and the officer would let out shrieks. This toy
remained an amusement for his guests. His hatred for the British was
thoroughgoing. Despite the attempts of the Hindutva distorters of history, Tipu
remains a patriot par excellence.
Today, Tipu can still
invoke admiration and hatred. This only means that he is relevant because the
enemies he attacked still remain the enemies of the Indian people.
It is 200 years now, yet the sword of
Tipu Sultan, the martyr, can still glisten !
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