[History] How Tipu Sultan Treated The Royal Family of Wodeyars in Mysore

A few years back I visited Mysore. As anyone would, I loved the Mysore Palace – It is indeed the most beautiful one I have ever seen - and also saw the museum. Got to know about the royal Wodeyar family for the first time. Now I just happened to find an article about how Tipu Sultan dealt with them. It is disturbing:

***

Tipu, a bundle of contradictions, is an enigma and a modern historian’s biggest puzzle. His ascent to power was accidental. Tipu's father Haidar Ali was bought as a slave by the Maharaja of Mysore. But in a series of fascinating events where the Machiavellian Haidar ran with the hare and hunted with the hounds, he ended up overthrowing his own benefactor and usurping the throne of Mysore from the Wodeyars in 1761. Haidar was shrewd enough not to dispense with the Wodeyars who had been ruling Hindu-majority Mysore since 1399.

So the Maharaja became a titular puppet—orders would go in his name, trophies of war were submitted to his feet, yet everyone knew where the real power rested. Tipu, though, had no reason for such diplomacy and dispensed with this appendage. He assumed complete sovereignty over Mysore, which became Sultanat-e-Khudadad, or the Kingdom of God (Khuda), and he, its Sultan. The members of the erstwhile royal family, led by the matriarch Rani Lakshmi Ammanni, who was carrying on low-intensity conspiracies against the usurpers, were put under house arrest. Tipu’s insecurities are evident in his actions, as also his writings, assiduously jotted down in his own hand in a diary. The names of places were Islamized, new coins minted, Persian replaced Kannada as the court language, old palaces, forts and bridges were destroyed and reconstructed in the same place—all in an obvious attempt to obliterate every trace of Wodeyar rule and stamp his own.

When Tipu was unable to capture the pradhans of Rani Lakshmi Ammanni, who were carrying on negotiations on her behalf with the British, he ordered the public hanging of around 700 members of the Pradhan community, the Mandyam Iyengars—men, women and children—in broad daylight, and that too on Diwali. So much so that to this day some Mandyam Iyengars observe Diwali as a day of mourning.

You may also like to read more on Tipu Sultan:

Tipu Sultan’s Religious Intolerance And Forced Conversions

Tipu Sultan and His Failed International Alliances