In news
Tipu Sultan, king of erstwhile state of Mysore is at the centre of controversy in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation(BMC) over attempts to name a garden after him in Govandi, a suburb in Eastern Mumbai.
A brief note on the issue
- The revamp of the two-acre garden, plagued by encroachment and anti-social activities, at Saahi Naka, near Deonar Dumping ground is about to complete in December.
- The BMC is spending around Rs 2 crore on the project .
- According to the proposal, in January 2021, Rukhsana Siddique from the Samajwadi Party had written a letter to the Markets and Garden Committee to name the garden after Tipu Sultan as he was a freedom fighter.
- Many right-wing organisations and BJP leaders have met the Mumbai mayor to change the garden’s name.
Note: the name of Tipu Sultan was also in news as the state government of Karnataka had cancelled the annual event of Tipu Jayanti celebrations observed in Karnataka.
About Tipu sultan(1750-1799)
- He was the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore in southern India.
- He was born in 1750, Devanahalli, Karnataka.
- Tipu resisted the East India Company’s conquest of southern India.
- He had inherited the throne from his father Haidar Ali, who had driven out the previous Hindu dynasty.
- In 1767 Tippu commanded a corps of cavalry against the Marathas in the Carnatic (Karnataka) region of western India, and he fought against the Marathas on several occasions between 1775 and 1779.
- War between Mysore and Maratha ended with the treaty of Gajendragad.
- He was the pioneer of rocket artillery.
- He introduced sericulture in Mysore on a large scale and maintained records about the cultivation of sericulture.
- Tipu established banking networks and cooperatives, where capital was raised from the public (similar to banks inviting deposits), the principal held on an annual basis and returned with interest (or `nafa’).
- He established trading houses for Mysore products worldwide, including places like Puducherry , Kutch, Karachi, Oman, Baghdad and Constantinople.
His fight against the British
- Both Tipu Sultan and his father used their French-trained army in alliance with the French in their struggle with the British.
- At the age of 15, Tipu Sultan supported his father in the first battle of Mysore against the British in 1766.
- During the second Anglo-Mysore War he defeated Col. John Brathwaite.
- He succeeded his father in December 1782 and in 1784 concluded peace with the British and assumed the title of sultan of Mysore.
- In 1789, however, he provoked British invasion by attacking their ally, the raja of Travancore led to the third Anglo- Mysore war.
- The war ended by the signing of Treaty of Srirangapatna, between Tipu Sultan and Lord Cornwallis.
- In this treaty, Tipu ceded half of his territories and two of his son’s as a hostage of war.
- The governor-general, Lord Mornington (later the marquess of Wellesley), launched the fourth Mysore War.
- Shrirangapattana, Tippu’s capital, was stormed by British-led forces on May 4, 1799, and Tippu died leading his troops in the breach.