It was the summer of AD 1399 that disaster struck a small principality of southern India. Mahisuru, which later went on to become Mysore, had lost its chieftain and was vulnerable to the machinations of a cunning upstart. At around the same time, two young aspirants left their ancestral home in Dwaraka, Gujarat and proceeded southwards in search of fame. Yaduraya, the elder of the two aspirants, was destiny s chosen man, to lead a valiant attack against the vile upstart, rescue the family in distress, wed the princess and assume the lordship of the place. This event marked the birth of the Wodeyar Dynasty.
This book is part of a series of books aimed at disseminating the accurate history of India drawn from the primary sources. History writing, especially about the medieval Muslim rule has been fraught with political correctness, controversy, and in several cases, downright falsification. This has occurred mostly with official state patronage. As a result, any attempts to correct this course has been virulently opposed with the result that most urban-educated Indians have now internalized a politically correct version of Indian history. The history of Tipu Sultan too, stands as a glaring instance of this distorted historical narrative. Indeed, we have seen, read, and heard about a lot of people claiming to be freedom fighters and receiving pensions from the Government. Several of these worthies would not have been born before Independence yet they succeed in such blatant manipulations. There are instances of portraying certain rulers and chieftains as true heroes who fought against the British Empire. One such ruler happens to be Tipu Sultan. Tipu Sultan is widely known as the Tiger of Mysore. Indeed, the image of Tipu battling a tiger barehanded crosses the mind whenever his name is mentioned. But is this the truth? Was Tipu Sultan truly the warrior as he has been portrayed? What exactly is his record of fighting the British? Was he really a freedom fighter as is widely claimed? Sandeep Balakrishna in this well-researched book, explores both the myths and the truth surrounding Tipu Sultan. A must-read for those who wish to learn the true story of Tipu Sultan.
Did the illustrious Hoysala king, Vishnuvardhana, create a fictional tale about his dynasty’s founder? Is Bengaluru’s Kadlekai Parishe a wholly British invention with no roots to the City’s founding years? Acutely aware of their inferior status in the royal hierarchy, did the Wodeyars use the origin stories they had fabricated two centuries earlier to enter into matrimonial alliances in north India? Is the greatest icon of temple-building in Karnataka, Jakanacharai, a mere legend? Did Ramanuja, the famed Vishishtadvaita philosopher, order the disfigurement of the Gommateshwara statue to achieve narrow religious ends? The construct of Indian history is embellished with its fair share of assumptions and glaring omission of facts; much of it infused with bias. To add to the conundrum, many a time, our forebears in Karnataka devised their own version of events that were often steeped in legend. This propensity for myth-making tossed accuracy into a grey area, which gave birth to a wealth of enigmas in its wake. Backed by insights from esteemed scholars, this book aims to separate fiction from fact. Unlock the hidden truths behind hoary myths and legends shrouded in the mists of time. The reality of history as you know it will stagger you.
Devotional Sovereignty: Kingship and Religion in India investigates the shifting conceptualization of sovereignty in the South Indian kingdom of Mysore during the reigns of Tipu Sultan (r. 1782-1799) and Krishnaraja Wodeyar III (r. 1799-1868). Tipu Sultan was a Muslim king famous for resisting British dominance until his death; Krishnaraja III was a Hindu king who succumbed to British political and administrative control. Despite their differences, the courts of both kings dealt with the changing political landscape by turning to the religious and mythical past to construct a royal identity for their kings. Caleb Simmons explores the ways in which these two kings and their courts modified and adapted pre-modern Indian notions of sovereignty and kingship in reaction to British intervention. The religious past provided an idiom through which the Mysore courts could articulate their rulers' claims to kingship in the region, attributing their rule to divine election and employing religious vocabulary in a variety of courtly genres and media. Through critical inquiry into the transitional early colonial period, this study sheds new light on pre-modern and modern India, with implications for our understanding of contemporary politics. It offers a revisionist history of the accepted narrative in which Tipu Sultan is viewed as a radical Muslim reformer and Krishnaraja III as a powerless British puppet. Simmons paints a picture of both rulers in which they work within and from the same understanding of kingship, utilizing devotion to Hindu gods, goddesses, and gurus to perform the duties of the king.
Although the princes of India have been caricatured as oriental despots and British stooges, Barbara Ramusack's study argues that the British did not create the princes. On the contrary, many were consummate politicians who exercised considerable degrees of autonomy until the disintegration of the princely states after independence. Ramusack's synthesis has a broad temporal span, tracing the evolution of the Indian kings from their pre-colonial origins to their roles as clients in the British colonial system. The book breaks ground in its integration of political and economic developments in the major princely states with the shifting relationships between the princes and the British. It represents a major contribution, both to British imperial history in its analysis of the theory and practice of indirect rule, and to modern South Asian history, as a portrait of the princes as politicians and patrons of the arts.
This historical atlas is devoted primarily to India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, while also covering Napal, Bhutan and Ceylon/Sri Lanka. The maps are accompanied by text which illuminates recent political, economic, social and cultural developments.
