This is not to suggest that the excesses of rulers, or the ruthlessness and violence that they often resort to in situations of war and conflict, should be glossed over by historians. However, history-writing involves questioning one’s sources. Shankaramurthy seems to have relied on the Mysore Gazetteers, not a particularly accurate source on Tipu given that the Gazetteers sought to legitimize not just British rule but also the ruling family of Mysore (the Wodeyars) for whom Haidar Ali and Tipu were usurpers. Following the final defeat of Tipu in 1799 the Company had bestowed recognition on the Wodeyars as the ruling family of a much-truncated Mysore. Incidentally, the Karnataka minister too referred to Tipu as a usurper, one more reason for erasing his memory.

The minister’s remarks raise the very serious question of whether the state can or should intervene to obliterate an entire era of the history of a people to promote a distorted and narrowly sectarian view of the past. Perhaps Napoleon should then find no place in Russian or British history textbooks. The point is that history as a discipline cannot be at the mercy of narrow parochial concerns. What the minister is in fact suggesting is that students should not be equipped to handle that vital tool of the discipline of history: critical enquiry. It is this tool that would allow the student to look at Tipu Sultan, or for that matter any other historical figure, in a critical manner and thereby make a nuanced historical assessment.

... contd.