NATIONALISM TAKES ON THE CHURCH

Questioning the Christian Dogma

The Enlightenment, the intellectual movement that shook Europe, stretches from the 1630s to the eve of the French revolution in the late eighteenth century. In those few years, Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Edward Gibbon, Denis Diderot, and Pierre Bayle, the best-known modern philosophers, made their mark. Most of them were amateurs: none had much to do with universities. They explored the implications of the new science and of religious upheaval, which led them to reject many traditional teachings and attitudes, and it left a spiritual vacuum in the realms of Christianity in Europe, questioning its dogma.

The seeds were sown in the seventeenth century when some people came to think that history was the wrong way around. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was the first to crystallise this thought. Among the many that echoed Bacon, the French scientist Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) put it best in his writings about the vacuum.

Pascal's vacuum was not the spiritual one-In 1646, Pascal learned that an Italian, Evangelista Torricelli, had inverted a long glass tube filled with mercury into a bowl also filled with mercury, and the result was some mercury left standing in the tube with a vacuum above it. Torricelli thought that the mercury in the tube was kept up by the weight of the atmosphere pressing down on the bowl. Both claims were highly contested--at this time, the air was believed to be natural light, and Nature was supposed to abhor a vacuum.

Pascal sided with Torricelli, and he reasoned that if the atmosphere had weight, then less atmosphere should have less weight, and the level of mercury in the barometer should be lower. Accordingly, on 19 September 1648, Pascal engaged his brother-in-law Perier to climb the Puy de Dôme, the tallest mountain in central France, carrying a Torricellian tube with its bowl of mercury all the way up. Sure enough, as Perier climbed higher, the level of the mercury fell. This experiment, which convincingly demonstrated that air has weight, is one of the most famous experiments performed during the period of the Scientific Revolution.

 

John Locke

Bacon was an effective propagandist for the new idea that all old ideas in Europe are suspect. To Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), who was briefly Bacon's assistant, the medieval European philosophy was part of "the Kingdom of Darkness". Superstition and intolerance were at work in this kingdom. (1)

John Locke was a late starter: It was not until he was 57 that he published his main works. the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Two Treatises of Government and the Letter Concerning Toleration, all of which came out in 1689. He was born in the same year as Spinoza and his first 45 years were far from idle. The Second Treatise of Government has been called an inspiration not only for the French revolution but for the American constitution, as well. His essay was heralded particularly in France, as the philosophical counterpart of Newton's Principia, which had been published in 1687. They were the twin prophets of Enlightenment. 

In questions of religion, Locke's idea was that theological doctrines must be answerable to the court of reason: "Reason must be our last Judge and Guide in every Thing." He said that some truths, such as the resurrection of the dead, are "Above Reason". (2) In a tract entitled The Reasonableness of Christianity, published in 1695, Locke argued that nothing in the scriptures was contrary to reason and that God had generously expressed himself in terms that can be understood even by "the poor of this World, and the bulk of Mankind." (3) 

Locke's rationalistic approach to religion did not go as far as that of his contemporary, 25-year-old John Toland, whose Christianity Not Mysterious was published the next year. Toland was condemned in parliament and threatened with arrest in Ireland for asserting that doctrines which were "above reason" were as suspicious as those which were contrary to reason and that Christianity is better off without them. (4) Locke was regularly accused by conservative churchmen of indirectly encouraging atheism in various ways, and of not having enough to say about the Trinity. On the question of religious tolerance, Locke argued for the same sort of freedom of belief that Spinoza had defended: "men cannot be forced to be saved", he wrote in his Letter Concerning Toleration, "they must be left to their own consciences." (5)

The Enlightenment dominated Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries with global effects, including India. While it included a range of ideas centred on the value of human happiness, and the pursuit of knowledge obtained using reason and evidence, in politics, it stood for the separation of Church and State. (6)

Some date the beginning of the Enlightenment to the publication of French philosopher René Descartes' Discourse on the Method in 1637, featuring his famous dictum, Cogito, ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am"). Others cite the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687) as the culmination of the Scientific Revolution and the beginning of the Enlightenment. European historians date its beginning with the death of Louis XIV of France in 1715 and its end with the 1789 outbreak of the French Revolution. Many historians now date the end of the Enlightenment as the start of the 19th century, with the latest proposed year being the death of Immanuel Kant in 1804.

The Scientific Revolution was a series of events that marked the emergence of modern science during the early modern period, when developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy) and chemistry transformed the views of society about nature. It took place in Europe starting towards the second half of the Renaissance period, with the 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus publication De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) often cited as its beginning. (7)

The era of the Scientific Renaissance focused on recovering the knowledge of the ancients and is considered to have culminated in the 1687 Isaac Newton publication Principia which formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation, thereby completing the synthesis of a new cosmology. The subsequent Enlightenment saw the concept of a scientific revolution emerge in the 18th-century work of Jean Sylvain Bailly, who described a two-stage process of sweeping away the old and establishing the new. (8)

Philosophers and scientists of the period widely circulated their ideas through meetings at various places. The Enlightenment undermined the authority of the monarchy and the Catholic Church and paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries. A variety of 19th-century movements including liberalism, communism, and neoclassicism trace their intellectual heritage to the Enlightenment. (9)

The central doctrines of the Enlightenment were individual liberty and religious tolerance, in opposition to an absolute monarchy and the dogmas of the Church. The Enlightenment was marked with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy—an attitude captured by Kant's essay Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment, where the phrase Sapere aude (Dare to know) can be found. (10)

The "Radical Enlightenment" (11) promoted the concept of separating church and state, (12) an idea credited to John Locke. (13) According to his principle of the social contract, Locke said that the government lacked authority in the realm of individual conscience, as this was something rational people could not cede to the government for it or others to control. For Locke, this created a natural right in the liberty of conscience, which he said must therefore remain protected from any government authority.

These views on religious tolerance and the importance of individual conscience, along with the social contract, became particularly influential in the American colonies and the drafting of the United States Constitution. (14) In a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut, Thomas Jefferson called for a "wall of separation between church and state" at the federal level. Jefferson's political ideals were influenced by the writings of Locke, Bacon, and Newton, (15) whom he considered the three greatest men that ever lived. (16)

Nationalism as religion

Hans Ulrich Wehler, a German historian, in his book, nationalismus (2001) has interpreted the collapse of Christianity resulting in a spiritual vacuum along the Enlightenment and secularization process as one of the conditions for the success of nationalism since the end of the Eighteenth Century in Europe. (17)

The criticism of religion during the Enlightenment (Lumières in French), the dissociation between the Church and the State as manifested in the civil constitution of the clergy during the French Revolution, and the loss of religious guidance by large strata of the population, created a “void” in which nationalism could be inserted. Religion as a system of faith and guidance lost its space in Europe. 

According to French historians, The Lumières originated in western Europe and spread throughout the rest of Europe. It was influenced by the scientific revolution in southern Europe arising directly from the Italian renaissance with people like Galileo Galilei. 

The replacement of religion with the nation became possible in Europe because religion and nationalism were going to share some common traits and functions: They would provide myths of origin, saints and martyrs, holy objects, places and ceremonies, a sense of the sacrifice and functions of legitimization and mobilization. The Jacobinical period in France and the anti-Napoleonic wars were the first manifestations of what the French historian Mona Ozouf (1976) has named as “transference of sacrality” from the strict religious domain to the nation. (18) That is how the sans-culottes (lower classes) used to talk about their “Sainte pique”, celebrated the Revolution before the “altars of the fatherland” and left to fight in holy wars. (19) 

Bacon

Elias Canetti (1992), originally from the national and ethnical “melting pot” of the Balkans, insists that the nations can be regarded as religions, and it is mainly during the wars that the national and religious feelings get mixed. Norbert Elias (1989), the historian of European civilization, points out that nation and nationalism are important systems of belief, and eventually regards nationalism as the most important faith of the Twentieth Century. (20) Georg Mosse (1976) emphasized in his book on the nationalization of masses, that nationalism is not only a political and social movement but also utilizes a religious language and religious symbols. In his view, nationalism-socialism is the expression of that osmosis between nation and religion within the political culture. (21) 

However, as early as the origin of the scientific investigation on nationalism, Carlton J. Hayes (1926) found out that nationalism is a religion since it possesses rituals and martyrs and develops a particular national mythology. (22) American historian Eugen Weber (1986) observed that a historian can be regarded as the priest of the nation, for helping to provide nationalism with a historical legitimation.

The works that focus on the nation’s symbolism inquire to what extent this symbolism was borrowed from the existing religions and creeds, or was developed in a confrontation with them. (23) The actors of this process also play a primordial role. The priests and their influence, the intellectuals and their audience, and the political men and their strategies are the factors intervening at the moments of contact between religion and nation. 

Thus, German Emperor Wilhelm II could invoke the divine right as the source of his dynasty and his government, in face of the German defeats: however, during World War I, its legitimacy, inexorably disintegrated.  (24) 

The national States did not act only as factors of communication but tried also to impose themselves as organizing principles of the societies, as sources of legitimacy and as references to civic morality. In this mission, the national States had to face oppositions, among which the strongest were those by the Catholic Church. It opposed the State’s intervention in the systems of education and in the internal operation of the Churches, as well as in the public organization of the consolidating ceremonies, the mythical heroes, and the integrating ideologies. The debates regarding the place of the Churches in national societies were always accompanied by a conflict on who was going to retain the monopoly of interpretation of the past and the present. 

Those fights in Europe were between the State and the Catholic Church, from Portugal to Italy, and from France to the Czech portion of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. There were conflicts between the newly created national States and the Catholic Church, as well as the place of a national movement in face of the Catholic Church in Europe, especially in France, Italy, the Czech portion, and Germany, during the decades that preceded World War I.

Martin Luther

In France, Italy and Czechoslovakia, the State or a laic stream stood, in the course of the Nineteenth Century, against the Catholic Church. (25) This opposition was older in France - during the French Revolution, the revolutionary State forced the clergy to make a civic oath, causing a schism within the Church between the priests that made the oath and those that refused to make it. The opposition between the two loyalties was the origin of the civil war unleashed in Vendee. (26) If under Napoleon, such opposition was attenuated particularly due to an agreement with the Holy See, it exploded again when, under the Restoration, the Monarchy leaned on the Church. But it was under the Third Republic that the conflict between the Church and the State found its most important expression.

The acts of supporting the Republic and standing for political and social progress were equivalent to anticlericalism; the acts of defending the Monarchy and opposing the Republican and, a fortiori, socialist movement were the same as defending the Christian faith and the Catholic Church. Following one of the third French Republic's founders, Leon Gambetta’s word of command: “The clericalism, here’s the enemy!”, the victorious Republicans passed laws to restrict the Institutional power of the Catholic Church (27). With the establishment of the laic, free and mandatory school using educational legislation, the privileged field of activity of the Catholic Church was reduced. In 1880, the hospitals, previously managed by the Church, were nationalized; in 1884, divorce was legalized, and, in 1889, a law decreed that priests should obligatorily render military service, like any other citizen. The practical application of the law of 1905 on the separation between Church and State caused a sometimes violent confrontation between the churchgoers and the police force. (28) The confrontation between the “two Frances” reached its summit.  

In Italy, differently from France, an agreement between the Holy See and the national movement seemed to be possible within the period that preceded the revolution of 1848. However, because the Pope stood on the counter-revolutionary forces’ side, the Church took quarters in its hostility toward the national unity, and the priests who participated in the national unification had to face problems with the ecclesiastic hierarchy. (29) This hostility was expressed on both sides after the national unity. The State responded to the questioning of the government by confiscating the Church’s properties, imposing military service on the seminarians and priests, and refusing to acknowledge the religious marriage ceremony unless accompanied by a civil marriage. The State exercised its right to inspect and consent to the ordination of the archbishops- in 1864, half of the dioceses possessed no archbishops. The Pope’s position hardened when, in 1864, he condemned in his “Syllabus” the “eighty mistakes”, and, in 1870, the Pope’s infallibility was affirmed when he speaks ex-cathedra. 

The issue of the pontifical State’s survival was the major obstacle between the two actors. The representatives of the Risorgimento proclaimed the march over Rome and elevated Rome to a symbol of the recovered national unity. After the Rome of the Caesars and the Rome of the Popes, the Rome of the people should be constructed against the Pope. With those discourses, they provoked and intensified the suspicion of the Pope, who feared that this expansionist rhetoric would lead to the abolition of the pontifical State. That occurred on 20 September 1870. (30) The subsequent decades regarded the papacy, pathetically as a “prisoner inside the Vatican.”  

In the Czech portions of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, only in the second half of the Nineteenth Century, a conflict between the Catholic Church and the national movement occurred. The Catholic Church was divided into a Bohemian and a Moravian Church, which was dedicated to the cult of their regional saints: Saint Wenceslas in Bohemia, Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius in Moravia (31). But it was with the revolution of 1848 that the Czech started to refer, more and more, to Jan Hus, the heretic who was burned during the Council of Konstanz. Hus was regarded as an important character within a European general movement towards progress and an individual religion that was based on ethics. Hus was interpreted as a factor of sacralization of the nation that, with its sacrifice, had permitted the rebirth of the Czech nation. The more the Catholic Church attacked Hus’ doctrines, the more his image gained popularity. Within a period in which the Catholic Church was losing importance, a national interpretation of Jan Hus became relevant. (32) This cult was supported by 250 important intellectuals who, in 1868, left in a peregrination to Constance, where Hus had been burned at the stake as a heretic. 

Jan Hus

The German situation was fundamentally different, for the German empire had been the stage not of an opposition between the national State and Catholicism, but of a struggle between Protestantism and Catholicism; the Hebrew community did not have the same numeric weight. The identification of the German nation with the history of Protestantism, which had already begun before 1871, was reinforced with the victory of Prussia against Austria in 1866, and with the outcome of the Franco-German war. Protestantism could claim to be the Emperor’s faith, which had been defined as Protestant. He stood against the Catholic faith, whose loyalty to the Pope was construed as antinational, and whose connivance with the enemies – often Catholic – of Protestant Prussia was suspected. During the period of the Kulturkampf – the cultural struggle- after 1871, the difference between the Protestant Empire and the Catholic Church exploded. (33)

In December, the clergy was forbidden to criticize the Empire and its constitution ex-cathedra. One year later, Prussia decided to exclude from the School inspection all the Catholics. In the same year, the Jesuits’ houses were closed and their foreign members were expelled from Germany. From that time on, the Catholic priests had to be German citizens and should have studied in the State schools of Theology. The State reserved the right to appoint the archbishops and threatened with financial penalties those who preferred to leave their positions vacant. In this confrontation, the Catholics were perceived as the internal enemies, and it was even affirmed that there was a new confession of faith in the public and private life: struggles occurred between students of different creeds, the inter-creed marriages became more difficult, and consumers chose stores that were managed by merchants of their own creed. (34)  

The Catholic Church refused to comply with the laws, organized movements of protest and refused to participate in the holidays of national celebration. In the organization of the “political circles”, as defined by German sociologist Rainer M. Lepsius, the Catholic environment would eventually organize the majority of the Catholic voters, regardless of their social origin (35). Catholicism found itself in a difficult situation, for it should try to find its place in a national culture defined by the Protestants. Considering that, for a long time, Catholicism had defended a Germany that lived under the domination of Catholic Austria, and it found itself in an uneasy position in face of the victory of Protestant Prussia. Moreover, its social professional composition was damaging to it, for Protestantism was supported by the great majority of the members of the "enlightened bourgeoisie", whose importance was smaller within the Catholic sphere. Because the members of the bourgeoisie had a prominent position within the German national movement, the Catholics had limited space to make their voices heard.

Another trend would constitute the nation as a community of believers, by using Christian symbols to ascribe it to a sacred nature, resorting to the religious liturgy to celebrate it, and developing a history of national redemption. (36) The was a re-interpretation of the national figures and the establishment of civil religion, as developed by Rousseau in 1772 in his “Considerations on the government of Poland”; then there was the national application of the biblical figures, of the saints or of the characters of the Churches’ history.

In the history of the nationalization of religion, the cult of Martin Luther in Germany is important. The reformer was celebrated as a national hero, for having defended Germany against the Pope and Catholicism. The Reformation was celebrated as a pre-history of German national unity. During the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of his birth, on 10 November 1883, forty thousand speeches were allegedly made in Germany about the Reformer’s merits; a Luther Foundation was created to sponsor the higher education of the pastors’ and teachers’ children, and a multitude of monuments was built and inaugurated in Luther’s honour. The reference to Luther and to a Protestant national tradition also helped to differentiate, in history and in the present time, those who favoured the uprising of the nation and those who opposed it. The Middle Ages were regarded as gloomy and ineffective, and the Catholic Church was ultramontane and vassal to Rome. The European countries that were regarded as enemies of the new German nation, such as France, in their majority Catholic, were perceived as “rotten” due to the ultramontanism that prevailed there. With many initiatives and resources, Protestantism succeeded, under the Empire, to promote a “religionization” of the nation and a nationalization of the religion.

The German Catholics responded with the same enthusiasm and with similar arguments. Even in 1848, Ignaz von Döllinger contended that the “only true national Church is... the Catholic Church” (37). Against Luther, the Catholics mobilized, especially after 1848, Boniface, the “apostle of the Germans”, to emphasize that the German nation had been associated, by the time of its birth, with the introduction of Christianity. Boniface, whose name derives from the Latin bonum facio, was celebrated as the one who, during the AD Eighth Century, was assigned by Pope Gregory II with the mission of Christianizing the German provinces. In this missionary action, he was murdered – as the legend has it – by pagans from Northern Germany. The missionary and civilizing action and the martyrdom were, in Boniface’s Catholic perspective, good examples of the longevity of the Catholic struggle for the unity of Germany. 

In France, a similar effort to nationalize a character of the ecclesiastic history occurred when the Republicans tried to nationalize the cult of Joan of Arc, which had great importance within the Catholic Church. As demonstrated by Krumeich (1989), Joan of Arc achieved great popularity among Catholic believers and in popular culture (38).  To the “maid of Orleans”, who had saved the king, the Republicans opposed a Joan of Arc that had been betrayed by the king, by the noblemen and by the Catholic Church, and who had to die to save France. The Republicans placed among the adversaries of Joan of Arc all those that they combated during the Third Republic. The Republicans were successful in ascribing a sacred nature to the national heroes by transferring them to the Church of Saint Genevieve. Such a decision, made during the Revolution of 1789, was abolished during the Second Empire, but renewed under the Third Republic. The entombment of the national heroes inside an ancient church raised a strong reaction from the Catholics, who regarded it as a profanation and a sacrilege. However, in 1855, Victor Hugo - the national poet – was transferred to the Pantheon. (39)

It is surprising to see how the policies of memories and symbols are similar in the four Christian societies. They were based on characters of the past, both to celebrate the longevity of the national unity that had been created by the Christianization of the country – such as Saint Wenceslas, in Czechoslovakia; Boniface, in Germany; Joan of Arc or Saint Louis, in France – Jan Hus, Martin Luther, Giordano Bruno, and a Republican Joan of Arc could serve as an example. In this opposition, the characters of the ecclesiastic history were nationalized and inserted into a historical construction, into an “invention of tradition.” (40) The nation itself was made sacred with those discourses and lost the character of a contingent and historical construction. The nation was not defined in a pluralist, open way, but as a closed, unique and holistic entity. 

Joan of Arc

During the years preceding World War I, in Italy, the Right-wing had tried to attain a commitment to the Catholic Church and avoid manifestations and publications that could be regarded as anti-clerical. The attitude of the Catholic Church was changing as well. With the encyclical Rerum Novarum, the Pope signalized a relative openness toward the modern world and allowed the national Churches to set out for a policy of commitment with the laic National States (41). This did not produce deep effects in France, where the Catholics had eventually adopted the national symbols such as the tricolour flag and the commemoration of July 14, but where the separation between the Church and the State of 1905 unleashed new conflicts and increased the rupture between the laic Republicans and the Catholic believers. Only World War I allowed the Catholic Church to participate in the defence of national unity and the “sacred” cause of the nation, without eliminating the fundamental differences between the “two Frances”. (42)

Tipu ties up with the French

While Europe was in conflict with the Church, in 1794, surprisingly, the despot Muslim king of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, allegedly founded the (French) Jacobin Club in Seringapatam, had planted a Liberty tree, and asked to be addressed as 'Tipu Citoyen,'" which means Citizen Tipu. (43) Helped by French republican officers, he founded the club for ''framing laws comfortable with the laws of the French Republic."

One of the motivations for French Emperor Napoleon's invasion of Egypt was to establish a junction with India against the British. Bonaparte wished to establish a French presence in the Middle East, with the ultimate dream of linking with Tippoo Sahib. (44) Napoleon assured the French Directory that "as soon as he had conquered Egypt, he will establish relations with the Indian princes and, together with them, attack the English in their possessions." (45) According to a 13 February 1798 report by Napoleon's chief diplomat and cleric Charles Maurice Talleyrand: "Having occupied and fortified Egypt, we shall send a force of 15,000 men from Suez to India, to join the forces of Tipu-Sahib and drive away the English." (46) Napoleon was unsuccessful in this strategy, losing the Siege of Acre in 1799 and at the Battle of Abukir in 1801.

But, In a 2005 paper, historian Jean Boutier argued that the club's existence, and Tipu's involvement in it, were fabricated by the East India Company in order to justify British military intervention against Tipu. (47)

Ignorance in England

The majority of textbooks on British history make little or no mention of the English Enlightenment, although they do include coverage of major intellectuals such as Joseph Addison, Edward Gibbon, John Locke, Isaac Newton, Alexander Pope, Joshua Reynolds, and Jonathan Swift. (48) Freethinking, a term describing those who stood in opposition to the institution of the Church, and the literal belief in the Bible, can be said to have begun in England no later than 1713 when Anthony Collins wrote his "Discourse of Free-thinking", which gained substantial popularity. This essay attacked the clergy of all churches and was a plea for deism.

The reasons for this neglect were the assumptions that the movement was primarily French-inspired, that it was largely a-religious or anti-clerical, and that it stood in outspoken defiance of the established order. (49) After the 1720s, England could claim thinkers to equal Diderot, Voltaire, or Rousseau. However, its leading intellectuals such as Gibbon, (50) Edmund Burke and Samuel Johnson were all quite conservative and supportive of the standing order. The reason given was that Enlightenment had come early to England and had succeeded such that the culture had accepted political liberalism, philosophical empiricism, and religious toleration, positions which intellectuals on the continent had to fight against powerful odds. Furthermore, England rejected the collectivism of the continent and emphasized the improvement of individuals as the main goal of enlightenment. (51)

In England, during the last decade of the Eighteenth century,  the pattern of English thought got altered profoundly. Responding to the dual impulses of the French revolution and the evangelical revival, educated Englishmen changed their attitudes toward both political and religious questions. In politics, a Trory emphasis on traditional institutions superseded the Whig insistence on traditional rights as the framework for debate on public issues. In religion, emotional Evangelicalism began to compete with rational Christianity of the late Eighteenth century for the allegiance of the educated population. These changes in the political and religious views in turn modified the hitherto dominant ideas in other spheres of thought and thus set a cultural pattern which persisted well into the nineteenth century. (52)

In the period of transition in England, the least studied development was the growth of public concern about the relation of science to religion. This most perplexing nineteenth-century problem had caused Englishmen little anxiety in the years before 1790. The orthodox opinion then assumed that science and religion were complementary, not contradictory, and that scientific investigations would confirm the literal truth of the religious writings. English scientists for the most part acknowledged this religious mission and carefully organized their findings to accord with the scriptural account of the origin of the earth and its inhabitants. According to Charles C Gillispie, Eighteenth-century English scientists were influenced by rationalist ideas and began to express the religious applications of their work in "the language of convention rather than of ardent conviction." (53) 

Scientists and theologians were united in that "peculiarly English phenomenon, the holy alliance between science and religion". (54) 

It is in this world of contradictions that the East India Company Writers in India tried to place Indian scriptures.

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1. Gottlieb, Antony, The Dream of Enlightenment, Allen Lane, 2016, p xi
2. ibid, p 116
3. ibid, p 117
4. ibid
5. ibid
6. Zafirovski, Milan (2010), The Enlightenment and Its Effects on Modern Society, p. 144
7. Juan Valdez, The Snow Cone Diaries: A Philosopher's Guide to the Information Age, p 36
8. Cohen, I. Bernard (1976). The Eighteenth-Century Origins of the Concept of Scientific Revolution. Journal of the History of Ideas. 37 (2): 257–88.
9. Eugen Weber, Movements, Currents, Trends: Aspects of European Thought in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1992).
10. Gay, Peter (1996), The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, W.W. Norton & Company
11. Israel, Jonathan I. (2011). Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750–1790. Oxford University Press. p 10-11
12. ibid, pp. vii-viii
13. Feldman, Noah (2005). Divided by God. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, p. 29: "It took John Locke to translate the demand for the liberty of conscience into a systematic argument for distinguishing the realm of government from the realm of religion."
14. ibid, p 29
15. Sorkin, David. Hayes-Robinson Lecture: Enlightenment and Faith: Debates among Protestants, Catholics and Jews in Eighteenth-Century Europe, 2008, p. 10
16. Susan Manning, Francis D Cogliano, ed., The Atlantic enlightenment, 2008, Routledge p. 14
17. Heinz-Gernhard Haupt, Religion and Nation in Europe in the 19th Century: Some Comparative Notes, Estudos Avancados, 22 (62), 2008
18. Ozouf, M. The Revolutionary Party: 1789-1799. Paris: Gallimard, 1976, quoted in Heinz-Gernhard Haupt, Religion and Nation in Europe in the 19th Century: Some Comparative Notes, Estudos Avancados, 22 (62), 2008, quoted in Heinz-Gernhard Haup
19. Martin, J. C. Violence and Revolution: Essay on the Birth of National Myth, Paris: Seuil, 1996
20. Elias, N. Studies on the Germans: Power Struggles and Culture Development in 19th and 20th Centuries. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1989. quoted in Heinz-Gernhard Haup

21. Mosse, G. L., The Nationalization of the Masses. Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic War to the Third Reich, Frankfurt: Campus, 1976. quoted in Heinz-Gernhard Haup
22. Hayes, C. J. H. Essays on Nationalism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1926
23. Temps Modernes, v.550, May 1992, quoted in Heinz-Gernhard Haup
24. Haupt H G & Langewiesche, D ed. (2001, 2004), ) Nation und Religion in Deutschland. p.293-332.
25. Burleigh, M. Earthly Powers. The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe from the French revolution to the Great War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005 (2005),
26. Martin, 1996, quoted in Heinz-Gernhard Haup
27. McManners, John (1972), Church and State in France-1870-1914, Oxford, p.2327-58
28. Mayeur, Separation of Church and State (1966), quoted in Heinz-Gernhard Haup
29. Papenheim, Margot, 2003, p.202-36, quoted in Heinz-Gernhard Haup
30. Verocci, G, 1997, Places of memory, Characters and dates of United Italy, p.89, quoted in Heinz-Gernhard Haup
31. Hroch, The Europe of Nations, 2005, p.55, quoted in Heinz-Gernhard Haup
32. Schulze-Wessel, 2004, p.135-50, quoted in Heinz-Gernhard Haup
33. Burleigh, M. Earthly Powers. The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe from the French revolution to the Great War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005 (2005), p.311 ss
34. Kuhlemann (2004), p.27-63, quoted in Heinz-Gernhard Haup
35. Laube, 2001, p.293-332, quoted in Heinz-Gernhard Haup
36. ibid, p.302ss
37. ibid
38. Winock M, 1997, p.4427-73, quoted in Heinz-Gernhard Haup
39. Ben Amos, 2002, Funerals, Politics, and Memory in Modern France, 1789-1996. Oxford University Press, 2002
40. Burleigh, 2005, p.365
41. Hobsbawm & Ranger, ed, (1992), Invention of Tradition, Cambridge
42. Mollenhauer D, 2004, p.228, quoted in Heinz-Gernhard Haup

43. Conrad, Sebastian (2012). Enlightenment in Global History: A Historiographical Critique. The American Historical Review. 117 (4): 999–1027
44. Watson, William E. (2003). Tricolor and Crescent: France and the Islamic World (2003), Praeger Publishers
45. Amini, Iradj (1999). Napoleon and Persia, Mage Publishers

46. ibid

47. Boutier, Jean (2005). "Les "lettres de créances" du corsaire Ripaud. Un "club jacobin" à Srirangapatnam (Inde), mai-juin 1797". ( The "credentials" of the corsair Ripaud. A "Jacobin club" in Srirangapatnam (India), May-June 1797". The Learned Indies, Les Indes Savantes.

48. Peter Gay, ed. The Enlightenment: A comprehensive anthology (1973) p. 14

49. Roy Porter, "England" in Alan Charles Kors, ed., Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment (2003) 1:409–15
50. Karen O'Brien, English Enlightenment Histories, 1750–c.1815 in José Rabasa, ed. (2012). The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 3: 1400–1800. Oxford, England: OUP. pp. 518–535
51. Roy Porter, The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment (2000), pp. 1–12, 482–484.
52. Gillispie, Genesis and Geology, Cambridge, 1951, p 10, quoted in Norton Garfinkle, Science and Religion in England 1790-1800: The Critical Response to the Work of Erasmus Darwin, Journal of the History of Ideas, (June 1955) vol 16, no 13p 376-388
53. Morris Quinlan, Victorian Prelude, New York, 1951, W L Mathieson, England in Transition,1789-1832, London, 1920
54. Basil Willey, The Eighteenth Century Background, (New York, 1941, p 136)

© Ramachandran 

TIPU SULTAN DEFEATED AT ALUVA

Jihad and Genocide in Malabar

Ramachandran

14. Astrologers Played with his Mind

The defeat at Nedumkotta in Travancore made the superstitious Tipu Sultan consult more astrologers and diviners, since a danger to his life soon, had been predicted. He was defeated by the Travancore forces when he broke the Nedumkotta lines and reached the mouth of the Periyar River at Aluva (Alwaye).

The Marxist and Islamic historians have tried to paint Tipu as a secular Sultan by dropping the names of certain Hindu officials of Tipu. It was difficult for him to get learned Muslims for such jobs; Tipu also began appeasing Hindus, after his debacle at Nedumkotta. Thus the Mysore temples and the Sringeri Mutt got grants and lands. Brahmin astrologers had told him that he would be a Badusha if he won the battle with the British. His high officials like Poornaiah and Madanna got those seats not because of secularism, but out of Tipu's superstition.

Lewis Rice who wrote History of Mysore after going through various official records satiated thus:

" In the vast empire of Tipu Sultan, on the eve of his death, there were only two Hindu temples having daily pujas within the Srirangapatanam fortress. It is only for the satisfaction of Brahmin astrologers who used to study his horoscope that Tipu Sultan had spared those two temples. The entire wealth of every Hindu temple was confiscated before 1790 itself mainly to make up for the revenue loss due to total prohibition in the country."

If Karthika Thirunal Ramavarma, popularly known as Dharmaraja (1724-1798) of Travancore was not there, the Hindus of Malabar would have faced a total genocide; Malabar would have been an Islamic country. Dharmaraja gave asylum and protected the Hindus who had fled Malabar during the invasion of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan.

Since Tipu's defeat has been subdued in the pseudo-secular historical sphere, it has to be retold. When Tipu's invasion was looming large on the horizon, Dharmaraja removed the Paravur, and Alangad princes and bought their principalities. He bought Kodungallur and Pallipuram forts from the Zamorin. He sent the powerful Dewan Ayyappan Marthandan Pillai and the armed forces Commander Eustachius De Lannoy to Cochin and built the 48-kilometre-long Nedumkotta, from Kodungallur to Anamala, to block Tipu from entering Travancore. Tipu was defeated at Alwaye, without any help from the nearby Kochi king.

Srirangapatanam Fort

Kochi had become a vassal of Tipu, by paying an annual tribute. Dharmaraja got a lover from the Zamorin family, which had fled Malabar: the Sanskrit scholar Manorama Thampuratty, who had been a guru to even Nambudiri males.

Dharmaraja had ascended the throne after the death of his uncle Marthanda Varma, in 1758. He had a Malabar connection and was the son of the princess of Kolathunadu, who was adopted to Attingal in 1718. While he became the king, the threat of the Ettuveettil nobles and Kayamkulam king was at its peak. When Dharmaraja was just four years old, his father, Kilimanur Keralavarma had been killed in an attempt by the Kayamkulam king. Dharmaraja had to flee from Haripad to Budhanur Brahmin ruler, Vanjipuzha Adhikari.

Travancore's story as a powerful Hindu kingdom began with Marthanda Varma, who inherited the kingdom of Venad (Thrippappur) and extended it to Travancore during his reign (1729–58). After defeating a union of feudal lords and establishing internal peace, he expanded the kingdom of Venad through a series of military campaigns from Kanyakumari in the south to the borders of Kochi in the north during his 29-year reign. This led to the Travancore-Dutch War (1739-1753) between the Dutch East India Company which had become an ally of some of these kingdoms and Travancore.

In 1741 Travancore won the Battle of Colachel against the Dutch East India Company, which resulted in a complete eclipse of Dutch power in the region. In this battle, the admiral of the Dutch, Eustachius De Lannoy, was captured and the Dutch dismissed him to Travancore. De Lannoy was named Captain of Travancore Raja's bodyguard and later Senior Admiral ("Valiya Captain") and he modernized the Travancore Army by introducing firearms and artillery. Travancore became the most dominant state in Kerala by defeating the mighty Zamorin in the Battle of Purakkad in 1755. Ramayyan Dalawa, the Prime Minister (1737–1756) of Marthanda Varma, played an important role in the consolidation and expansion.

At the battle of Ambalapuzha, Marthanda Varma defeated the union of the kings deposed and the king of Cochin.

Consolidation

After Marthanda Varma consolidated his position, neighbouring countries tried for a treaty. From 1755 onwards, a part of Kochi was with Marthanda Varma. Though Varma signed a treaty with Kochi in 1756, he refrained from helping Kochi, which was under Dutch Suzerainty. The barons of Kochi were under Zamorin's henchmen. The Dutch ditched Kochi when the Zamorin promised to cede Chettuva, which he had seized from the Dutch earlier.

The Kochi king met Dharmaraja and begged him to have an alliance, with Hindus. A treaty was signed between them, in 1761, at the Sthanu Murthy Temple at Sucheendram, in the presence of Hindu religious leaders. Then, Dharmaraja gave orders to Ayyappan Marthandan Pillai and de Lanoy to rescue Kochi from the clutches of Zamorin.

When Pillai's army reached Paravur, the Paravur ruler fled first to Kodungallur and then to Mapranam, near Irinjalakuda.The Kochi army consisted of Nairs from Kavalappara and Perattuvithi. The Zamorin force was routed at Mapranam and they retreated to Trichur. From there, they went back to Kunnamkulam, and Chelakkara camps.

De Lannoy confronted the Zamorin forces at Kodungallur. It fled to Trichur via Chettuva and Enamakkal Lannoy joined with Pillai's force and they together reached Chelakkara. They defeated the Zamorin force, which then crossed the northern border and fled. When the Travancore force reached Kunnamkulam, the Zamorin army there, retreated to Ponnani.The Zamorin yielded to the pressure for a treaty when De Lannoy decided to march to Calicut. The Zamorin went all the way to Padmanabhapuram to sign the treaty; it was decided that Zamorin pay Rs 1.5 Lakh as war expenses. Paravur and Alangad rulers were retired and the principalities were amalgamated into Travancore.

Then began the building of Nedumkotta or the Big Fort.

The idea to build the fort was one Marthanda Varma nurtured. Varma had deliberately left Kochi without conquering, it as a buffer zone, between Travancore and Malabar, according to Dutch documents.

The Dutch began to spy for Travancore when they were defeated at the Colachal battle. They didn't allow a safe passage for Hyder Ali to Travancore when it was asked for. Hyder demanded war expenses from Kochi and Travancore, alleging that giving asylum to his enemies was an act of war. He died without fulfilling his wish to conquer both Kochi and Travancore.

Hyder had sent epistles to Cochin and Travancore through the Dutch Commissioners and demanded acknowledgement of his suzerainty. The Dutch were successful in concluding an accord with Hyder not to molest Cochin on the condition of paying two lakhs of rupees and eight elephants. The Raja of Cochin accepted the suzerainty of Hyder. But Travancore Raja objected on the ground that he was already a tributary to Arcot Nawab Muhammad Ali and he could not afford to subsidize two suzerains at a time. At the same time, Travancore feared an attack from Hyder. This was reported by the Raja of Travancore to the Governor of Bombay, Charles Crommelin. He gave expression to the fear "Hyder Ali may attack my kingdom also and my reliance is entirely on the ancient friendship with the Company, to them I will transfer 3000 candies of pepper […] on condition that the English Company will supply me with money and warlike stores and that the Company will defend my kingdom at my expense". (1)

Since Travancore resisted his conditions, Hyder wanted to invade that territory. However, the monsoon that had set in by that time on the Malabar Coast averted his plan to attack Travancore.

March to Malabar

Revolts began in 1788 in Tipu's vassal states. Tipu marched to Malabar and Coorg to confront it. Hindus were forcibly taken en masse to Srirangapatnam and converted to Islam. Hindus including the Zamorin family and Christians fled Malabar.Tipu asked Kochi to claim Paravur and Alangad.Kochi king delayed by saying he would try to persuade the Travancore king to become a vassal of Tipu. Tipu sent his messengers to Travancore, with a Khareeda. Travancore King received them in the presence of the East India Company. Tipu saw the presence of the British as an insult; he led his army in 1789 to Kochi, alleging, that the building of the Nedumkotta in his vassal state was illegal. He could not cross into Travancore.

The strength of the Travancore Nair Army was greatly reduced after several earlier battles with Hyder Ali's forces. The death of the Dutch-born commander De Lannoy in 1777 further diminished the morale of the soldiers. The death of Makayiram Thirunal and Aswati Thirunal in 1786 forced the Travancore royal family to adopt two princesses from Kolathunad. As the threat of an invasion by Tipu Sultan loomed large, Dharma Raja tried to rebuild his army by appointing Raman Pillai as the Dalawa (Dewan) and Kesava Pillai as the Sarvadhikaryakkar.

Tipu had planned the invasion of Travancore for many years, and he was especially concerned with the Nedumkotta fortifications, which had prevented his father Hyder Ali from annexing the kingdom.

But the situation changed very much in favour of Rama Varma Dharmaraja when he was included by the British ‘as a friend and ally’ of the Company in the Treaty of Mangalore, after the Second Anglo-Mysore War. As a shrewd politician, Tipu quickly adjusted himself to the altered situation. Instead of an aggressive policy of ‘demanding vassalage’ from Travancore, as Hyder Ali did, Tipu’s policy was to appease the Travancore Raja and win him over by settling peacefully the outstanding disputes with him. Quoting Tipu’s letter to Rama Varma, Islamic historian C K Kareem comments: "The request here was for alliance and not for vassalage, clearly unfolds the shift of Mysorean policy".On the other hand, Rama Varma who was confident of ‘English support’ not only ignored the friendly overtures of Tipu but also continued his hostile activities breaking there by the provisions of the Treaty of Mangalore, to which he was also one of the signatories.

Dispute over Nedumkotta

A dispute arose between Tipu and Travancore Raja with respect to the strengthening of defensive lines by Travancore at Travancore – Cochin boundary by the Nedumkotta. Rama Varma extended the Travancore Lines through the territory of Raja of Cochin up to the Fort of Cranganore, thus cutting the small Kingdom of Cochin into two unequal divisions. Tipu demanded the demolition of these lines as they sheltered the hostile elements from Mysore and moreover, Cochin was his vassal state. The Raja refused to demolish them and it became a serious point of dispute. Tipu asserted his right to remove them as these lines stood in the territory of his tributary, the Raja of Cochin; and the Travancore Raja felt justified in not removing them as they had existed long before Cochin had passed under Tipu’s suzerainty. Tipu was already furious by the asylum provided by Travancore Raja to the fugitive chieftains of Malabar and his secret aids in encouraging the rebellious elements in Malabar. Apart from the question of lines, the purchasing of the two Dutch forts, Cranganore and Ayikotta, by the Raja added fuel to the fire. Ayikotta was a military post on the northern extremity of the narrow island of Vypin on the Malabar Coast and Cranganore about two miles from Ayikotta. Travancore Raja's purchase of these two places became the ultimate cause of the Third Anglo-Mysore War.

Towards the end of 1789, Tipu Sultan marched his troops from Coimbatore. Tipu's army consisted of 20,000 infantry, 10,000 spearmen and match-lockmen, 5,000 cavalry and 20 field guns.

Travancore purchased the strategic forts of Cranganore and Ayacottah from the Dutch to improve the country's defences. The deal was finalized by Dewan Kesava Pillai and three Jewish merchants under the instruction of Dharma Raja and Dutch East India Company Governor John Gerard van Anglebeck. Travancore also held a treaty with the British East India Company, under whose terms two battalions of the Company army were stationed at the Travancore-Cochin frontier. Both Tipu Sultan and Governor John Holland of Madras objected to these purchases because the forts, though they had long been in Dutch possession, were in the Kingdom of Cochin, which was a tributary state of Mysore.

Both Cranganore and Ayikottah were strategic places coveted by both the Raja and Tipu. It was Tipu who initiated the negotiation with the Dutch for the sale of these places and when they were about to close the deal, the Travancore Raja intervened. The British Madras Government also did not encourage the Raja to purchase them, as it would lead to unnecessary complications. Despite the warning, the Raja proceeded to acquire these places without consulting the Company any further in the matter. On 31 July 1789, the sale was effected, but the English were unaware of these transactions until August 17 when George Powney, the Resident at Travancore, wrote to Holland, the Governor of Madras. The forts were sold for three lakh Surat silver rupees. The Jewish merchants David Rahaboy, Euphram Cohen and Anta Setty acted as sureties of the debt. The Dutch preferred the Travancore Raja to Tipu for the sale, because the Dutch relations with Tipu were not happy. The Jewish merchants in the area, who were highly influential, felt that their trade would be in danger if Tipu were to acquire these places.

The Raja, the Dutch and the Jewish merchants all found themselves in dread of Tipu. The Raja of Cochin indirectly supported this deal, though he pretended to be on Tipu’s side. C K Kareem guesses: "The Cochin Raja wanted to be free from the vassalage at the earliest opportunity as any other ruler would desire. Therefore, his relation was always shady and full of intrigue."

But in the Cochin State Manual, C Achutha Menon sets down the reason for Cochin Raja's antagonism towards Tipu: "With all this, his subjection to a Mohammedan usurper of Mysore was felt as an irksome burden by Cochin".

In his correspondence with the governor–general and Governor of Madras, the Travancore Raja openly admitted that he had his negotiations with the English and had purchased these forts from the Dutch with the knowledge of the Company. George Powney, the Resident of Travancore, was censured by Lord Cornwallis for his unjustifiable conduct in conniving with the Raja in these transactions. (2).

Nedumkotta Battle

Although Tipu was enraged by the sale, he waited for five months, hoping that the English might solve the dispute amicably. The Madras Government was anxious not to offer Tipu any excuse for war, but Cornwallis gradually changed his policy. When nothing happened for five months, Tipu marched towards the Travancore lines hoping that at least his presence would make the Raja change his mind. Travancore Raja remained firm and the first clash of arms took place on 29 December 1789. Tipu invited Powney, but the change of Governor at Madras had altered the entire situation. Tipu attacked the Travancore lines. The war was on, and according to oral history, the Cochin Raja fled to Cherthala and stayed at the Anjili palace, inside the Velorvattam temple compound.

Kesava Pillai (Raja Kesavadas) was appointed as the Commander-in-Chief of the Travancore Army. To boost the strength of the armed forces, several thousand young militiamen were called up from all over the kingdom. The forts of Cranganore and Ayikotta were repaired and garrisoned. Tipu sent a letter to the King of Travancore demanding the withdrawal of the Travancore forces garrisoned in Cranganore Fort, the transfer to him of Malabar lords who have been sheltered by the king, and the demolition of Travancore ramparts built within the territory of Cochin. The king refused Tipu's demands.

Sriranganathaswamy Temple

Twenty-four years after his father Hyder Ali had attacked Kochi, Tipu began a march to conquer Kochi and Travancore. The Mysore army entered the Cochin kingdom from Coimbatore in November 1789 and reached Trichur in December. On 28 December 1789, Tipu attacked Nedumkotta (northern lines) from the north, causing the Battle of Nedumkotta. The Mysore army under Tipu was repulsed. Tipu's army consisted of 20,000 infantry, 10,000 spearmen and match-lockmen, 5,000 cavalry and 20 field guns.

A number of Mysorean soldiers encroached into Travancore jungles, ostensibly to apprehend fugitives, and came under fire when discovered by Travancore patrols. (3). On 28 December 1789, Mysorean troops attacked the eastern part of the Travancore lines and captured the ramparts as the Travancoreans retreated, but were eventually stopped when the Travancore force of 800 Nair soldiers made a stand with six-pounder guns (4). Travancore reinforcements arrived during the four-hour battle, and they inflicted heavy casualties on the Mysoreans, who lost 1000-1500 soldiers and fled in panic (5). Several Mysorean troops were captured as prisoners of war, including soldiers of European and Maratha origin (6). Travancore forces recovered the sword, the palanquin, the dagger, the ring and many other personal effects of Tipu Sultan from the ditches of the Nedumkotta and presented them to the ruler of Travancore. Some of them were sent to the Nawab of Carnatic at his request.

After Nedumkotta Battle

According to Mohibul Hasan, approximately two months after this incident, on 1 March 1790, 1,000 Travancore troops advanced onto Mysore territory, where they were stopped and pushed back with considerable losses by Mysorean troops. On 9 April 1790, a similar attempt was made once again by 3,000 Travancore troops on Mysore territory, however, they were once again stopped by Mysorean troops and repulsed.

In the march towards Travancore after the Nedumkotta Battle, it is said that Tipu's 400 horsemen drowned in Periyar. His commander Kamaruddin Khan requested Tipu to climb down from the palanquin. Khan fell down, held Tipu's legs, and begged for a retreat. The loyal soldiers held Tipu on their shoulders and swam to safety. The palanquin, bed and sword became the victory trophies to Travancore. It is said that Tipu limped to his last after a fall in a ditch at the mouth of the Periyar.

On 12 April 1790, Tipu decided to attack the Travancore lines and within approximately three days was able to breach three-quarters of a mile of the lines: On 15 April 1790 he took approximately 6,000 soldiers and advanced on the Travancore position. The Travancore troops were taken by surprise and fled. On 18 April 1790, Tipu arrived within one mile of Cranganore and erected batteries. On 8 May 1790, Tipu successfully occupied Cranganore. Soon other forts such as Ayikotta and Parur surrendered without fighting. Tipu destroyed the Travancore lines and reached all the way to Varapuzha (Verapoly).

He destroyed the wall at Konoor Kotta or Kottamuri and advanced further. He filled trenches for a few kilometres to enable his army to move forward. He destroyed many temples but he didn’t touch the mosques. He finally reached the Periyar river banks at Aluva and camped there. The Travancore forces regrouped, but the onset of monsoons prevented Tipu from moving south.

According to Logan, Tipu's army crossed the Periyar River from Kodungallur to Varapuzha, where it was confronted by the Travancore army under Raja Kesavadas. Tipu lost 4,000 men and his commander Ali Baig was hacked to death. Tipu's army retreated to Chettuva, and he got reinforcements from Mysore and Coimbatore. The Mysore army again crossed the river. At this crucial hour, a French emissary met Tipu and informed him that an English naval contingent under Head Lingley was on its way from Mumbai, to support the Travancore Army. Tipu assessed that the Navy would confront him from the north at Kondungallur. The Travancore guns were waiting in the South. It was the Arabian Sea in the West, and the Periyar River in the East, and The Periyar was flooded in the untimely rain showers. Tipu escaped to the Northern bank and he was informed that an army under General Medows was on its way from Trichy, to capture Srirangapatna. He left the Ttravancore theatre of war.

The folklore says a small group led by Ayyappan Marthandan Pillai and Kali Kutty went upstream and managed to break the walls of a natural dam at Bhoothathankettu causing heavy flash floods downstream of Periyar River. All the ammunition and gunpowder of Tipu's army got wet and became inactive. He was thus forced to return. Information that the British army was planning an attack on Srirangapatnam hastened Tipu's retreat. Kalikutty became a character called Kunchaikutty Pillai, in C V Raman Pillai's novel, Ramaraja Bahadur. Kalikutty got the honorific Pillai after this adventure. The character is roughly based on Vaikam Padmanabha Pillai.

The defeated Tipu, writes P K Balakrishnan, while retreating, saw a nutmeg plant at Chalakkudy, which he took to Srirangapatanam. He had planted Fir trees in the capital. (7).

The Kochi royal family fled to Vaikam when Tipu reached Alwaye.

Travancore Dewan T Madhava Rao later assessed that it was the Nedumkotta that blocked Tipu's entry. Tipu could unleash destruction, arson and looting only at Angamaly, Alwaye, Varapuzha and Alangad.

Mysore actions against Travancore brought it into further conflict with the British Empire and led to the Third Anglo-Mysore War. Tipu told the Madras Governor Edward Holland that he got defeated at Nedumkotta because his army concentrated on finding the people of Malabar who had sought asylum in Travancore and Kochi. Thus, Tipu himself admitted that he lost a Jihad.

Ruins of Nedumkotta

Tipu was in the habit of writing several letters a day and those letters prove that he was a fanatic.

Tipu wrote to Abdul Khadir on 22 March 1788:

“Over 12,000 Hindus were honoured with Islam. There were many Namboodri Brahmins among them. This achievement should be widely publicised among the Hindus. Then the local Hindus should be brought before you and converted to Islam. No Namboodri Brahmin should be spared.”

Tipu wrote to his army Commander at Calicut Hussain Ali Khan, on 14 December 1788:

“I am sending two of my followers with Mir Hussain Ali. With their assistance, you should capture and kill all Hindus. Those below 20 may be kept in prison and 5,000 from the rest should be killed from the tree-tops. These are my orders.”

This instruction could not be adhered to by the Mappilas fully, because the British intervened to stop the genocide.

He wrote to Budroos Usman Khan on 13 February 1790:

"Your two letters, with the enclosed memorandums of the Naimar (or Nair) captives, have been received. You did right in ordering a hundred and thirty-five of them to be circumcised, and in putting eleven of the youngest of these into the Usud Ilhye band (or class) and the remaining ninety-four into the Ahmedy Troop, consigning the whole, at the same time, to the charge of the Kilaaddar of Nugr…" (8).

Tipu wrote to the Afghan King Saman Sha:

"we should come together in carrying on a holy war against the infidels, and for freeing the region of Hindustan from the contamination of the enemies of our religion (Hindus)".

Tipu wrote to Sayyid Abdul Dhula on 18 January 1790:

"With the grace of Prophet Mohammed and Allah, almost all Hindus in Calicut are converted to Islam. Only on the borders of Cochin State a few are still not converted. I am determined to convert them very soon. I consider this as Jehad to achieve that object" (9)

Tipu wrote to Bekal Governor Budroos Usman Khan, on 19 January 1790:

"Don't you know I have achieved a great victory recently in Malabar and over four lakh Hindus were converted to Islam? I am determined to march against that cursed 'Raman Nair' very soon (reference is to Rama Varma Raja of Travancore State who was popularly known as Dharma Raja). Since I am overjoyed at the prospect of converting him and his subjects to Islam, I have happily abandoned the idea of going back to Srirangapatanam now" (10).

The Raman Nair mentioned here is Dharmaraja.

After the third Anglo-Mysore war, Major Alex Dirom found Tipu's seal:

"I am the Messenger of the true faith."

"I bring Unto you the Edicts of Truth."

"From CONQUEST and the Protection of the Royal Hyder comes my tide of SULTAN and the world under the Sun and Moon is subject to my Signet."

Portuguese traveller Fr Paulino Bartholomew wrote in his travelogue, Voyage to East Indies (1772 ) :

First, a corps of 30,000 barbarians who butchered everybody on the way… followed by the field-gun unit under the French Commander, M. Lally… Tipu was riding on an elephant behind which another army of 30,000 soldiers followed. Most of the men and women were hanged in Calicut, first mothers were hanged with their children tied to necks of mothers. That barbarian Tipu Sultan tied the naked Christians and Hindus to the legs of elephants and made the elephants move around till the bodies of the helpless victims were torn to pieces. Temples and churches were ordered to be burned down, desecrated and destroyed. Christian and Hindu women were forced to marry Mohammadans and similarly, their men were forced to marry Mohammadan women. Those Christians who refused to be honoured with Islam were ordered to be killed by hanging immediately. These atrocities were told to me by the victims of Tipu Sultan who escaped from the clutches of his army and reached Varappuzha, which is the centre of Carmichael Christian Mission. I myself helped many victims to cross the Varappuzha River by boat.

The report of Major Fullarton, who fought Tipu at Mangalore states:

(During the siege 1783) Tipu”s soldiers daily exposed the heads of many innocent Brahmins within sight of the fort for Zamorin and his Hindu followers to see. It is asserted that the Zamorin rather than witness such enormities and to avoid further killing of innocent Brahmins, chose to abandon the Palghat Fort... It was not only against the Brahmins who were thus put in a state of terror of forcible circumcision and conversion; but against all sections of Hindus. In August 1788, a Raja of the Kshatriya family of Parappanad and also Trichera Thiruppad, a chieftain of Nilamboor, and many other Hindu nobles who had been carried away earlier to Coimbatore by Tipu Sultan, were forcibly circumcised and forced to cat beef.

Lewis B. Boury quoted in P.C.N. Raja: (11)

To show his ardent devotion and steadfast faith in the Muhammaddan religion, Tipu Sultan found Kozhikode to be the most suitable place. It was because the Hindus of Malabar 'refused to reject the matriarchal system, polyandry and half nakedness of women' that the 'great reformer' Tipu Sultan tried to honour the entire population with Islam.

Tipu's proclamation against Nairs in 1788:

"From the period of the conquest until this day, during twenty-four years, you have been a turbulent and refractory people, and in the wars waged during your rainy season, you have caused a number of our warriors to taste the drought of martyrdom. Be it so. What is past is past. Hereafter you must proceed in an opposite manner, dwell quietly and pay your dues like good subjects and since it is the practice with you for one woman to associate with ten men, and you leave your mothers and sisters unconstrained in their obscene practices, and are thence all born in adultery, and are more shameless in your connections than the beasts of the fields: I hereby require you to forsake these sinful practices and be like the rest of mankind; and if you are disobedient to these commands, I have made repeated vows to honour the whole of you with Islam and to march all the chief persons to the seat of Government."

P A Syed Muhammad, the historian wrote that Tipu's invasion was similar to that of Genghis Khan and Timur ( Muslim Charithram).

The prominent royal families, who have migrated from Malabar and settled in Travancore are 16:

Neerazhi Kovilakam(Changanacherry), Lakshmipuram Palace (Changanacherry ), Ennakkad Gramathil Kovilakam (from where Communist leader George Chadayammuri found his life partner), Paliyakkara(Tiruvalla), Nedumparampu, Chempara Madom, Ananthapuram Kottaram (Haripad), Ezhumattur Palace, Aranmula Kottaram, Varanad Kovilakam, Mavelikara, Murikoyikkal Palace, Mariapilly(Kottayam), Koratti Swarupam, Kaipuzha Kovilakam, Kottapuram.

Prominent Historian Ilamkulam Kunjan Pillai has recorded that with the forcible conversion of Hindus by Tipu, there was a steep hike in the Muslim population in Malabar. According to Vadakkumkoor Rajaraja Varma, Tipu enjoyed in destroying temples and adorning the idols with the heads and entrails of cows. He spared the two temples inside the Srirangapatanam fort because he believed in astrological predictions.

The list of temples attacked by Tipu:

Thaliparanm, Thrichambram, Thali,

Sree Valliyanat Kavu,Thiruvannur,Varaykkal,Puthur,Govindapuram,

Thalikunnu,Thirunnavaya,Thiruvangat,Vadakara,Ponmeri,

Chalakudi,Mannumpuram,Kalpathi,Hemambika,Kachamkurissi,Palakkad Jainatemple,Keraladeeswaram,Thrikandiyur,Thriprangat,

Kodikunnu,Thrithala,Panniyur,Sukapuram,Edappatt Perumparamp,

Maranelira temples of Azhvancheri,Vengeri,Thrikulam,Ramanattukara,

Azhinjilla,Indianur,Mannur,Venkidangu,Parambathli,Panmayanad.

Maniyur Masjid was a temple; Ponnani Thrikkav temple became Tipu's arsenal. The Jaina temple at present Sulthan Bathery became Tipu's gun godown, and hence it acquired the place name, Sultan's Battery. Its original name was Ganapathivattam.

In 1789 Tipu sent Gulam Ali, Gaji Khan and Darvedil Khan with troops into Coorg by way of Siddhesvara. where they took up strong positions and seized grain, men, women and children while burning houses that they pillaged. They set fire to the Padinalkanadu temple. Later the 'Malayalam' (Malabar region) people joined the Coorgs. Tipu sent Gulam Ali into Malabar but en route, Gulam was attacked by the Coorgs. Gulam managed to reach Malabar where he burnt down the Payyavur temple and attacked that region.

That same year (1789), when Tipu was marching against the Nairs at Calicut who had become rebellious, he heard of another rebellion in Coorg. He sent a force towards Coorg under Burhan ud Din and Sayed Hamid. Tipu himself crossed the Tamarasseri(Tamrachadi) Ghat and entered the Malabar region. There he ordered some of the inhabitants to be converted (made Asadulai), placed Officer Ghafar in command there and had a wooden fort or stockade built.

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1. Quoted in C K Kareem/Kerala Under Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan

2. N. A. D., Fgn. Pol. Sec. Proc., Dec. 15, 1789; p. 2882, Cornwallis to Powney

3. Mia Carter, Barbara Harlow (31 December 2003) /Archives of Empire: Volume I. From The East India Company to the Suez Canal p. 174

4. Mohibbul Hasan (2005) History of Tipu Sultan 

5. John Clark Marshman (1863) / The History of India, p. 450 

6.Veeraraghavapuram, Nagam Aiya (1906) /  Travancore State Manual

7. P K Balakrishnan / Tipu Sultan

8.W. Kirkpatrick /Select Letters of Tipoo Sultan /  London 1811

9. K.M. Panicker /Bhasha Poshini, August, 1923

10. K M Panicker    

11. Raja PCN /Religious Intolerance of Tipu Sultan 

© Ramachandran