Sunday, August 16, 2009

A study of Tipu: His religion and politics

By S Aravindan Neelakandan 'Skanthem'

Already in 1787 Marathas had refused to acknowledge Tipu as a Sultan and would at best address him only as a Nawab. Now the subsequent actions of Tipu projecting himself as a fanatic jehadhi further irritated the Marathas who refused any positive alliance with him. Tipu used the Islamic card as a ploy for gaining recognition among Islamic kingdoms and loyalty from his Muslim soldiers. This attitude entered so deep into the psyche of Tipu that in his dreams he started seeing his political enemies as "Kafirs".

Tipu tried to forge an alliance with the Nizam of Hyderabad citing a common enemy-the enemy of Islam. He reminded Nizam of the time when the "terror of the sword of Bahmuni Sultan freed the territory of Islam from the thorns and brambles of infidel opposition" and asked him to revive that glory by entering into an agreement with him-a Muslim rather than allying with infidels so that they could be "united in repelling and conquering the infidels" and the Muslim population could live in peace.

Fateh Ali Tipu (1750 - 1799) had been hailed by a section of historians and politicians as not just another earliest of freedom fighters but as a pioneer in modernisation and as a visionary. For others he is etched in their historical memories as a fanatical and gruesome villain. What is the truth?

As ever, with all such figures in history, the truth about Tipu remains elusively, in between these two extreme ends of the spectrum and is multi-dimensioned.

This article is an attempt to track down the real motives behind the actions of Tipu and the forces that shaped his career. There are valuable lessons to be learnt from his life - for all Indians irrespective of their caste or creed.

His age
The age in which Tipu lived was a period of great transition in Indian history. Mughal Empire was at its lowest ebb. The Islamic sovereignty over India was giving way to Maratha and Sikh power. And the British as well as other European powers were beginning to make their presence felt in the South. Uncertainty prevailed as to who would become the dominant ruling power in post-Mughal Hindustan. In the Deccan Hyderabad Nizam was an important traditional Islamic ruler. But he was neither powerful nor ambitious. It was in such a situation that a military official from the small feudal state of Mysore had established himself as a powerful and ambitious ruler with great possibilities for the future - his was Hyder Ali, the father of Tipu. Tipu who succeeded Hyder, set his eyes on the Indian scenario. He saw the slowly vanishing Islamic empire at Delhi and he wanted to emerge as the next Islamic empire builder in India. But there was a hitch.

His Lineage, his legitimacy
Despite his flirtations with Hyder Ali against British which ended in a defeat, Nizam of Hyderabad had been careful never to recognise Hyder Ali as a royal personage. He called him in 1779 as a mere Zamindar. So after the death of his father, Tipu realised his vulnerable state particularly in view of his empire-building ambitions. He needed to be recognised as a legitimate Islamic prince- Sultan. So in 1784, two years after his father’s death he approached the Mughal court to get recognised as one of the princes of the Empire. But then the Mughal emperor Shah Alam III, near blind and at the mercy of pro-British Majud-dawalah, who was the acting chief-minister and for all practical purposes ran the affairs of Mughal Empire, refused to recognize Tipu as a legitimate Sultan.1

For his ambitions of territorial expansion, this was a real problem for Tipu. If the news of the inability of Tipu to be recognised as a traditional Islamic prince spread amidst his Islamic soldiers that would dampen their spirits to fight for him. So after a failed attempt to get Marathas address him as a "Badshah", Tipu started projecting him as a soldier in the cause of Islam-fighting against the idolatrous Hindus around him.

Tipu tried to forge an alliance with the Nizam of Hyderabad citing a common enemy-the enemy of Islam. He reminded Nizam of the time when the "terror of the sword of Bahmuni Sultan freed the territory of Islam from the thorns and brambles of infidel opposition"2 and asked him to revive that glory by entering into an agreement with him-a Muslim rather than allying with infidels so that they could be "united in repelling and conquering the infidels" and the Muslim population could live in peace. Nizam was initially inclined to accept the offer but what made him break ranks with Tipu was the mention of matrimonial alliance that Tipu suggested. Contemporary court historian Mir Hussain Ali Khan Kirmani describes the scene:

"-as the sentences of the letter included the mention of matrimonial connexion, Nizam, excited by his folly, became angry and gave these joy dispensing words no place in his envious mind, and considering the term Naik which belonged to the Sultan’s forefathers as discreditable and relationship with him a disgrace ...he turned his face aside from the true path and dismissed the embassador (of Tipu)."3

Generally the Marxist historians and Islamic apologists argue that the atrocities said to have been perpetrated by him, were actually exaggerated by the British to justify their own aggression against the native ruler. For example Mohibbul Hasan states that the atrocities "were allegedly fabricated either by persons embittered and angry on account of the defeats which they had sustained at (Tipu’s) hands."4

His jehad for the title of Sultan
However "Neshani Hyduri" written in praise of Tipu Sultan written by contemporary court historian Mir Hussain Ali Khan Kirmani narrates with unhidden enthusiasm the enslavement of the infidels and their humiliating treatment at the hands of Tipu’s forces:

"The conquering Sultan now therefore appointed and dispatched his Amirs and Khans with large bodies of troops to punish these idolaters and reduce the whole of the country to subjection...in a short time attacked and destroyed many of their towns, returning with eight thousand men and women with their children as prisoners. In the same way Monsieur Lally collected from the Ilaichee Mountains an immense crowd of these wild men, like a flock of sheep or a herd of bullocks and returned with them to the presence".5

The irony will not be last on the reader that Tipu who is projected today as a champion of native freedom did allow his European friends to treat fellow Indians as "a flock of sheep or a herd of bullocks". During his invasion of Travancore Tipu’s men executed his orders and "relieved the shoulders of all the infidels they met, man or boy, from the weight of their heads."6 Kirmani even speaks of Tipu taking "eighty thousand men, women and children" as prisoners of war.7 Many historians dismiss the figures as exaggerated.8 However it begs the question what kind of socio-political environment did force a court historian to record such exaggerated atrocities against "infidels"?

In fact, Tipu himself was very eager to project his wars as religious wars and spread the news that he was promoting Islam through the sword. In a letter dated January 18, 1790, Tipu expressed the confidence that almost all Hindus in Calicut would be converted to Islam and declared his military expedition as "holy war" (Jihad).9 The very next day in a letter sent to one Budruz Zuman Khan after informing him of conversion of four hundred thousand infidels to Islam in the war ravaged areas he exclaimed that for him "religious concerns and the duty of waging war against infidels superceding all other considerations" "10 During his Tamil Nadu expedition (1790), Muslim women "who had given their impure bodies to the lust of men of other religion" were impaled by his order.11

Already in 1787 Marathas had refused to acknowledge Tipu as a Sultan and would at best address him only as a Nawab. Now the subsequent actions of Tipu projecting himself as a fanatic jehadi further irritated the Marathas who refused any positive alliance with him. Tipu used the Islamic card as a ploy for gaining recognition among Islamic kingdoms and loyalty from his Muslim soldiers. This attitude entered so deep into the psyche of Tipu that in his dreams he started seeing his political enemies as "Kafirs".12

His compromises
The alienation of fellow Indian forces because of his misplaced search for pan-Islamic recognition cost Tipu dearly in subsequent years. In 1792 when Lord Cornwallis defeated Tipu in a surprise attack, the latter agreed not only to cede territory to the British and pay them three crore and thirty lakh of rupees either in gold mohurs, pagodas or bullion (of which one crore and thirty five lakh he had to pay immediately and the rest in installments) but also give two of the three eldest sons as hostage to the British for the due performance of the treaty.13 His main anxiety was his recognition as a legitimate Islamic king-from some quarters-for which he was ready to go to any length to achieve that and it was that recognition that eluded him.

However Britishers were not ready to trust Tipu as much as they trusted the Nizam of Hyderabad. Tipu himself proved to be untrustworthy to any of the major forces then acting in Indian political scene. Even his legendary relation with French was not entirely sincere. Even as he was sharing wine with the French, he was writing to British governor-general congratulating "his Lordship" regarding the British victory over the French "who are of a crooked disposition, faithless and the enemies of mankind, may ever be depressed and ruined" and expressing his "firmest hope that the leaders of the English and the Company Bahauder...are the well wishers of mankind, will at all times be successful and victorious"14

His submissions to the Caliphate
Meanwhile in his letters to the Ottoman Caliphate as well as to the king of Afghanistan he sought help by portraying him as an emerging Islamic empire builder in Hindustan and sought his recognition. In seeking diplomatic ties with Caliphate, Tipu had two objectives-both interrelated. One was, as I.H.Qureshi the eminent Islamic historian points out, to confirm and legitimise his title.15

The other was to create a pan-Islamic support for him against his enemies. In order to arouse the Islamic sentiments of the Caliphate Tipu portrayed his conflict as a religious one. He wrote that ten thousand Muslim children had been forcibly converted to Christianity and many mosques and Muslim cemeteries had been destroyed and turned into churches.16 Tipu proposed to Istanbul "cooperation in political and economic spheres" through "trade relations, factory establishments, new arms and naval power." Sultan tactfully refused Tipu all his requests. As far as recognition of his position, Sultan viewed Tipu’s request as one from a lesser Muslim ruler and as an acknowledgement of Istanbul’s primacy as the seat of Caliphate.17 The letter is also important as perhaps the first of its kind in proclaiming the subservience of India’s Islamic sovereignty to that of Caliphate. Azmi Özcan points out that this "was the first and only instance of its kind on the part of an Indian ruler seeking recognition from the Ottoman Caliphs-"18

(To be continued)

(The writer a student of history can be contacted at 441, Kavimani Nagar, Nagarcoil-629 002, Kanyakumari Distt.)

Church and Monks

By MSN Menon

A word to clear up my stand. I have nothing against Jesus, but everything against the church. It has been the source of hatred in the world ever since its inception. It wants to convert the Hindus. It says that Christianity is superior. Dear Reader, here are some glimpses of Christian history. You judge for yourself whether Christianity is superior. - Author

This is what an authority writes on the Christian monks of the second and third centuries: "Whoever wore a black robe was invested with tyrannical powers-temples were turned into tombs of these monks for the adoration of their bones-even of the basest and most depraved of men."

Alexandria, not Greece, was the centre of Greek civilisation. The church naturally wanted to destroy it. A virtuous, beautiful and influential lady was one of its victims. She was the leader of the Neo-Platonists (a kind of Advaitists). A Christian mob killed her in the most brutal manner in 415 AD. She was stripped and cut into pieces and burnt. All for what? For holding a different opinion.

* * *
Christian crimes and brutalities were the worst in Latin America. European adventurers conquered, pillaged and devastated the Antilles, Peru and Mexico. Whole Red Indian populations perished at the hands of these Christian conquistadores armed with the sword and the Bible. The greed for gold led the Spaniards to commit appalling atrocities in their newly conquered territories. "By million upon million whole nations and races were remorselessly cut off," writes Draper (Intellectual Development of Europe Vol. II) The Bishop of Chiape, he says, and recorded that 15 million were exterminated in his time. Draper goes on: "From Mexico and Peru a civilisation that might have instructed Europe was crushed out."

* * *
Was Christianity interested in knowledge? It was not. When the Christians came to power in Rome the barbarous ways of the Romans did not lessen. In fact, they grew. The emperor Theodissius ordered the destruction of the most splendid library in the temple of Seraphis. The job was entrusted to Archbishop Theophilus, a fanatic. In his enthusiasm he destroyed many temples in Egypt.

* * *
The slave trade was the worst crime in human history. It denied humanity to the Negroe. It was perpetrated by Christians and had the blessing of the pope. The trade began in the 16th century and lasted for three centuries. It was called "the commerce in ebony" derisively. Here is a description of the trade: "The Negroes were piled in the holds of the ships as many as they could contain and they remained there without air or light during the passage of several weeks. They died in hundreds. The survivors were sent to sugar and coffee plantations where the overseers made them work under the leash. (Seignobos, History of Medieval and Modern Civilisation) The dead were thrown into the sea so that for centuries this sea route to America was invested by sharks."

* * *
All these show that the highly ethical doctrines of Jesus had no impact on these white men even after 1500 years of Christianity. As in the case of the Mongols, who could not absorb the compassionate doctrines of the Buddha and remained pagan and shamanists, Christian Euroe failed to absorb the spirit of mercy.

Writes one of the great historians of Europe: "They (Christians) might have baptized their children, they might have flocked to the church-all these they might have done and yet they were as far away from the spirit of Christianity as they were from their pagan gods.

* * *
The story of the Inquisition is perhaps the most terrible of all. It was instituted by the Pope himself and manned by churchmen. It shows how the church had no impact on the Europeans.

Lorento, who had free access to the records of the Spanish Inquisition, tells us that more than 30,000 "apostates" were burnt alive and 24,000 were given various punishments by the Spanish Inquisition.

The Inquisition perfected torture. On this historian WEH Lecky says: "What strikes us most in considering the medieval torture is not so much their diabolical barbarity, which is impossible to exaggerate, as the extraordinary variety and what may be termed the artistic skill they displayed- In every prison, the crucifix and the rack stood side by side."

Torture was finally abolished, but not through the remorse of the Church, but by pressure brought on the church by the intellectuals of the age-Montesquieu, Voltaire, Montague and others.

But the Christian societies of Europe and America took to other forms of torture for they initiated new barbarities as masters of the new colonies.

Dear Reader, judge for yourself: can such a religion claim to be superior to Hinduism? Can people who profess such a religion be entrusted with the care of humanity? The answer is No. Mahavira preached Ahimsa 2500 years ago. And it is still a living faith among Jains. Why? Because the Jains are true to their faith.

For 300 years Britain has outsourced mayhem. Finally it's coming home

George Monbiot

Why now? It's not as if this is the first time Britain's representatives have been caught out. The history of governments in all countries is the history of scandal, as those who rise to the top are generally the most ambitious, ruthless and unscrupulous people politics can produce. Pushing their own interests to the limit, they teeter perennially on the brink of disgrace, except when they fly clean over the edge. So why does the current ballyhoo threaten to destroy not only the government but also our antediluvian political system?

The past 15 years have produced the cash-for-questions racket, the Hinduja and Ecclestone affairs, the lies and fabrications that led to the invasion of Iraq, the forced abandonment of the BAE corruption probe, the cash-for-honours caper and the cash-for-amendments scandal. By comparison to the outright subversion of the functions of government in some of these cases, the is small beer. Any one of them should have prompted the sweeping political reforms we are now debating. But they didn't.

The expenses scandal, by contrast, could kill the Labour party. It might also force politicians of all parties to address our unjust voting system, the unelected Lords, the excessive power of the executive, the legalised blackmail used by the whips, and a score of further anachronisms and injustices. Why is it different?

I believe that the current political crisis has little to do with the expenses scandal, still less with Gordon Brown's leadership. It arises because our economic system can no longer extract wealth from other nations. For the past 300 years, the revolutions and reforms experienced by almost all other developed countries have been averted in Britain by foreign remittances.

The social unrest that might have transformed our politics was instead outsourced to our colonies and unwilling trading partners. The rebellions in Ireland, India, China, the Caribbean, Egypt, South Africa, Malaya, Kenya, Iran and other places we subjugated were the price of political peace in Britain. After decolonisation, our plunder of other nations was sustained by the banks. Now, for the first time in three centuries, they can no longer deliver, and we must at last confront our problems.

There will probably never be a full account of the robbery this country organised, but there are a few snapshots. In his book Capitalism and Colonial Production, Hamza Alavi estimates that the resource flow from India to Britain between 1793 and 1803 was in the order of £2m a year, the equivalent of many billions today. The economic drain from India, he notes, "has not only been a major factor in India's impoverishment … it has also been a very significant factor in the industrial revolution in Britain". As Ralph Davis observes in The Industrial Revolution and British Overseas Trade, from the 1760s onwards India's wealth "bought the national debt back from the Dutch and others … leaving Britain nearly free from overseas indebtedness when it came to face the great French wars from 1793".

In France by contrast, as Eric Hobsbawm notes in The Age of Revolution, "the financial troubles of the monarchy brought matters to a head". In 1788 half of France's national expenditure was used to service its debt: the "American War and its debt broke the back of the monarchy".

Even as the French were overthrowing the ancien regime, Britain's landed classes were able to strengthen their economic power, seizing common property from the country's poor by means of enclosure. Partly as a result of remittances from India and the Caribbean, the economy was booming and the state had the funds to ride out political crises. Later, after smashing India's own industrial capacity, Britain forced that country to become a major export market for our manufactured goods, sustaining industrial employment here (and avoiding social unrest) long after our products and processes became uncompetitive.

Colonial plunder permitted the British state to balance its resource deficits as well. For some 200 years a river of food flowed into this country from such places as Ireland, India and the Caribbean. In The Blood Never Dried, John Newsinger reveals that in 1748 Jamaica alone sent 17,400 tons of sugar to Britain; by 1815 this had risen to 73,800. It was all produced by stolen labour.

Just as grain was sucked out of Ireland at the height of its great famine, so Britain continued to drain India of food during its catastrophic hungers. In Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis shows that between 1876 and 1877 wheat exports to the UK from India doubled as subsistence there collapsed, and several million died of starvation. In the North-Western provinces famine was wholly engineered by British policy, as good harvests were exported to offset poor English production in 1876 and 1877.

Britain, in other words, outsourced famine as well as social unrest. There was terrible poverty in this country in the second half of the 19th century, but not mass starvation. The bad harvest of 1788 helped precipitate the French revolution, but the British state avoided such hazards. Others died on our behalf.

In the late 19th century, Davis shows, Britain's vast deficits with the United States, Germany and its white dominions were balanced by huge annual surpluses with India and (as a result of the opium trade) China. For a generation "the starving Indian and Chinese peasantries … braced the entire system of international settlements, allowing England's continued financial supremacy to temporarily co-exist with its relative industrial decline". Britain's trade surpluses with India allowed the City to become the world's financial capital.

Its role in British colonisation was not a passive one. The bankruptcy, and subsequent British takeover, of Egypt in 1882 was hastened by a loan from Roths­child's bank whose execution, Newsinger records, amounted to "fraud on a massive scale". ­Jardine Matheson, once the biggest narco-trafficking outfit in history (it dominated the Chinese opium trade), later formed a major investment bank, Jardine Fleming. It was taken over by JP Morgan Chase in 2000.

We lost our colonies, but the plunder has continued by other means. As Joseph Stiglitz shows in Globalisation and its Discontents, the capital liberalisation forced on Asian economies by the IMF permitted northern traders to loot hundreds of billions of dollars, precipitating the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. Poorer nations have also been strong-armed into a series of amazingly one-sided treaties and commitments, such as trade-related investment measures, bilateral investment agreements and the EU's economic partnership agreements. If you have ever wondered how a small, densely populated country which produces very little supports itself, I would urge you to study these asymmetric arrangements.

But now, as John Lanchester demonstrates in a fascinating essay in the London Review of Books, the City could be fatally wounded. The nation that relied on financial services may take generations to recover from their collapse. The great British adventure – three centuries spent pillaging the labour, wealth and resources of other countries – is over. We cannot accept this, and seek gleeful revenge on a government that can no longer insulate us from reality.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/08/british-empire-colonies-banks-reform

Monday, August 10, 2009

China should break up India: Chinese strategist

Almost coinciding with the 13th round of Sino-Indian border talks (New Delhi [ Images ], August 7-8, 2009), an article (in the Chinese language) has appeared in China captioned 'If China takes a little action, the so-called Great Indian Federation can be broken up' (Zhong Guo Zhan Lue Gang, www.iiss.cn, Chinese, August 8, 2009).
Interestingly, it has been reproduced in several other strategic and military Web sites of the country and by all means, targets the domestic audience. The authoritative host site is located in Beijing [ Images ] and is the new edition of one, which so far represented the China International Institute for Strategic Studies (www.chinaiiss.org).

Claiming that Beijing's 'China-Centric' Asian strategy, provides for splitting India, the writer of the article, Zhan Lue (strategy), has found that New Delhi's corresponding 'India-Centric' policy in Asia, is in reality a 'Hindustan centric' one. Stating that on the other hand 'local centres' exist in several of the country's provinces (excepting for the UP and certain northern regions), Zhan Lue has felt that in the face of such local characteristics, the 'so-called' Indian nation cannot be considered as one having existed in history.

According to the article, if India today relies on any thing for unity, it is the Hindu religion. The partition of the country was based on religion. Stating that today nation states are the main current in the world, it has said that India could only be termed now as a 'Hindu religious state'. Adding that Hinduism is a decadent religion as it allows caste exploitation and is unhelpful to the country's modernisation, it described the Indian government as one in a dilemma with regard to eradication of the caste system as it realises that the process to do away with castes may shake the foundation of the consciousness of the Indian nation.

The writer has argued that in view of the above, China in its own interest and the progress of Asia, should join forces with different nationalities like the Assamese, Tamils, and Kashmiris and support the latter in establishing independent nation-States of their own, out of India. In particular, the ULFA (United Liberation Front of Asom) in Assam, a territory neighboring China, can be helped by China so that Assam realises its national independence.

The article has also felt that for Bangladesh, the biggest threat is from India, which wants to develop a great Indian Federation extending from Afghanistan to Myanmar. India is also targeting China with support to Vietnam's efforts to occupy Nansha (Spratly) group of islands in South China Sea.

Hence the need for China's consolidation of its alliance with Bangladesh, a country with which the US and Japan [ Images ] are also improving their relations to counter China.

It has pointed out that China can give political support to Bangladesh enabling the latter to encourage ethnic Bengalis in India to get rid of Indian control and unite with Bangladesh as one Bengali nation; if the same is not possible, creation of at least another free Bengali nation state as a friendly neighbour of Bangladesh, would be desirable, for the purpose of weakening India's expansion and threat aimed at forming a 'unified South Asia'.

The punch line in the article has been that to split India, China can bring into its fold countries like Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan, support ULFA in attaining its goal for Assam's independence, back aspirations of Indian nationalities like the Tamils and Nagas, encourage Bangladesh to give a push to the independence of West Bengal [ Images ] and lastly recover the 90,000 sq km territory in southern Tibet [ Images ].

Wishing for India's break-up into 20 to 30 nation-States like in Europe, the article has concluded by saying that if the consciousness of nationalities in India could be aroused, social reforms in South Asia can be achieved, the caste system can be eradicated and the region can march along the road of prosperity.

The Chinese article in question will certainly outrage readers in India. Its suggestion that China can follow a strategy to dismember India, a country always with a tradition of unity in diversity, is atrocious, to say the least. The write-up could not have been published without the permission of the Chinese authorities, but it is sure that Beijing will wash its hands out of this if the matter is taken up with it by New Delhi.

It has generally been seen that China is speaking in two voices -- its diplomatic interlocutors have always shown understanding during their dealings with their Indian counterparts, but its selected media is pouring venom on India in their reporting. Which one to believe is a question confronting the public opinion and even policy makers in India.

In any case, an approach of panic towards such outbursts will be a mistake, but also ignoring them will prove to be costly for India.

D S Rajan, is Director, Chennai Centre for China Studies.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

wake up GOI (goverment of India)

Pakistan is having a last laugh in all the recent developments. First out PM gets ridiculed by pakis (that's why I wanted some shrewed person to deal with pakis..more like Mayawati)than the cross border terrorism still countniuing full fledged, if that was not enough the new Chinese bases coming out in POK.

Although this is not the first time that Indian soldiers died in valour and got us win the wars, it's congress goverment to be precise who ridiculed India after independence. Mr Nehru's close lisions with China who like ever communists are stabbed us on our backs and Nehru went depression and eventually died. Nehru not only got craxy people in his cabinet but had real liking for sycophants (like all later gandhi's had)he got K Menon(Vengalil Krishnan Krishna Menonas) defense minister who gave him incomplete information about CHinese aggressions (I doubt if he knew anything)

Before joining the cabinet in 1957 he was appointed first high commissner to England (47-52)and there it was said he used to have sex in his office with his secretary ,although he comes from royal family in Travancore. He is guy who ruined India in the world, he defended China all out in 50's started the non allignment sided with China and gave an 8 hour speech in UN about Kashmir.

I know I am losing the point I want to make about, our congress govermant debacle on diplomacy. Indira Gandhi era was worse than Nehru's but maybe later I'll discuss it. But the naked truth is that India wins all the military battles against Pakistan but loses in diplomacy, it is very well known that Colin Powell was given expensive gifts by Mushraff regime ,so was Rice.

Finally the Reserve Bank of India has estimated the amount of fake currency in circulation at almost 1.7 trln rupees, I hope the GOI does some thing about it, I'm postive about P.C Chidambaram, he will surely take action (he's one of the best Home Minister Congress have given so far)