Historian Vikram Sampath on Tipu Sultan, Hindu Genocides, and Karnataka Politics | Dostcast

I think tipu Sultan is a historian's Enigma freedom fighter and so on I don't subscribe to that he sends a Emissary all the way to the Calif the Ottoman cff and says I am the true Muslim ruler I have killed so many cfirs I have burned so many things you know temples and churches so you call me the badsha of Mur and there was Hector mro who was the hero of buar and placy Wars who had defeated the mugal emperor the naab of aad the naab of Bengal he literally throws his weapons into a water

tank in kanchipuram and runs away to save his life so that was the kind of Terror that Hayer and his son in those first two Wars brought on the British what are some of the first steps he takes to show the fact that he's in fact an a deeply radical Islamic ruler had the Mand mangar in myor 700 of them men women and children were ruthlessly slaughtered on the day of naraka chaturdashi before Diwali even to this day while all of us celebrate Diwali that group does not celebrate diali he started his own calendar system

called The maudi calendar many people talk about this too that fine ation Works palaces forts which the V rulers had built over centuries they would all be demolished and in its place you build another just to stamp your authority over it he was a very very Vivid dreamer it is said that every day he would wake up and actually spend about 2 hours in his toilet he would sit and write these uh dreams down which he saw the previous night in fact I got some of those dreams even psychoanalyzed CU dreams are thank you vikam

once again for being on those cast thank you VRA such a pleasure to be back within 6 months within six months the last time we met in faridabad and we spoke about waiting for Shiva yes your last book and we spoke about your work for preserving archival Indian music yeah we will talk about it at the end right now we're talking about tipu Sultan you've written uh you know a book that is as good as a murder object is a historical book to pass through and hopefully it becomes a reference books in many libraries and

whatnot a few important questions to set context before we dive into tipu Sultan's life right I will start with my rudimentary understanding Of him as memory serves you think about TPU Sultan in India you think about Freedom Fighter Indian uh Freedom Movement good guy one of the many people remembered that's it you forget there you stop there yeah then you have uh in the preface of the book you've got Shashi Tor right who writes this it may well be impossible to resolve the contradiction between the Visionary Indian resistance hero to British conquest and the widely

reviled murderer of thousands of Hindus and Christians but uh Vikram gamely tries but one feels that Vikram is holding an 18th century Warrior to 21st century standards right so I'm I assume that Shashi is throwing the Congress line where they have tried in the past in Karnataka to maybe Champion him as a hero right let's start there wh why this contradictory confusing statement about TPU sultan well uh I don't think Dr Tor came from that standpoint because uh he's a thorough gentleman and a great scholar and he actually went through the entire book to give

his uh you know endorsement of it uh that contradiction about where to you know bucket tipu Sultan into which uh Bracket I think it exists not only with uh the Congress or with Dr T or anybody else but a lot of Indians because as he mentions as I always mention I think tipu Sultan is a historians any uh for every for everything that you say about him there's an equal and opposite uh you know anecdote that you can come up with uh my whole grows with a lot of people who call him as you also

said freedom fighter and so on I don't subscribe to that uh view at all he was a very brave Soldier and extremely anti-british uh of which there can be no doubt to actually deny him that bravery or that uh you know almost visceral hatred that he had for the British I think that would be very disingenous with history so So to that extent I I do concede that but what other adjectives and qualifiers can we put to him thereafter is something that we need to uh you know look into I then I think then we

arrive at a difficult territory because there is a whole uh discussion in pop culture where people talk about uh thank you people talk about has this aged Dell right where you often have people historians like yourself or even in pop culture like they Will analyze a song from the 50s which many people think is perhaps sexist in today's terms is often a reflection of those times right so when you when what Dr turu is saying is you can't hold this 18th century Warrior to 21st century standards no that is true because I mean I I

qualify that too that you know with kingship there is inherent violence and we're talking of a premodern era when the Hindu rulers were also violent in and in Wars like it even now I mean you have a you have the in the Middle East you have what's going on in Russia Ukraine uh common civilians become collateral damage in any war that is no doubt and um you know premodern kingship was intrinsically linked with violence particularly against uh citizens that is a given but I think problem with people like tipu Sultan uh is when there is

an added element of religious targeting Bas you target a particular Community or group of people specifically on the basis of their religious identity then that's a double whammy you know in in addition to the normal violence that war entails you're also targeting them on the basis of religion and in fact the United Nations definition Of genocide is just that uh your intent to Target even intent to Target is defined as genocide um to where you're specifically looking out for people who have a certain identity it could be religious it could be linguistic it could be

racial uh and so in that to that extent uh tipu Sultan becomes the problem there because in addition to regular violence of War he specifically targeted people who didn't subscribe to his faith in this case Hindus and even Christians uh in Southern India we will talk about his dichotomy because on some you also mentioned in the book that there are grants that he gives to Temples he often has priests doing japas and mantras for him he's a very superstitious man right but before that to set context for modern day karnataka's culture modern day politics um

you earlier mentioned in the book that India in general has a delic Centric history problem right so as a son of Karnataka soil what made you pursue writing this book and then why is this person relevant for people from Karnataka contemporary South India and the rest of the country H that'll be a long answer that's fine we in a podcast that's the advantage in Television they would have told me to stop Midway uh so why I wrote this book this book has been in the making it's been germinating in my head for um close to

10 15 years now uh in fact I owe my entire foray into writing uh to tipu Sultan in a very you know unintended way because um there was a sword of tipu Sultan I think you were too young you were not even born then it it just got auctioned in the UK for 3.4 crores no not the sword I'm talking of the serial which used to come on dur dasan those days I'm sure you were not born then to see uh that just I'm underscoring how old I am compared to you so there was Sanjay

Khan's the sword of tipu Sultan on dur dasan and um all over if you those who saw they' remember among your viewers that there to highlight hayar Ali tipu's father and tipu hayar had user the throne from the maharajas of myour the vadiar um and to show them haar and tipu in a good light the vadiar were shown in an extremely derogatory fashion in that serial the Maharaja was shown like this you know obese [ __ ] who's dancing with the code dancer the Maharani one of those typical Vamps you know always conspiring and Conniving

against uh tipu uh and he was almost shown like this you know uh hyper secular you know Monarch who's who's having openads being read in his court he's treating everyone with lot of uh care and concern and even then it had caused a lot of furor uh several malali uh associations had written to the then INB Minister uh Congress Minister upendra I think who asked him to reconsider sitaram goyel G had written an entire book tipu Sultan was he a hero or villain where he had documented these details uh and in Karnataka so there was

also this uh Studio where he was shooting had caught fire and Sanjay Khan's face had got burnt and a lot of Canada media here was saying oh it's a curse of the V for the kind of bad portrayal he had shown so I was then I think a boy of just 12 or 13 years of age studying in middle school and somehow these protest these uh you know talk of this Cur CSE and all something it did to me I wanted to know the truth behind the false portrayal only of that one Maharaja and Maharani

and from then on began several unending trips to myor and it was really Destiny's uh call because my family had nothing to do with myour per Se uh so kept going there meeting members of the royal family historians archivists and collecting everything and putting it together in the form of a log book of sorts as as a boy of 12 as a boy of 12 yeah and it became a family project in fact for my parents for my maternal grandmother we all kept going I tortured them too I could read Canada those days I learned

it much later what was the intent it was to document tipu's life specifically only that Maharaja and Maharani was interested in IMI krishnaraja vadiar and his wife the very sashas Rani of myor called Maharani Lakshmi Amman so uh it was just their lives I wanted to document in a in a personal log book of sorts I could paint and sketch those days so I would also sit in the palace and make portraits of the maharajas and all of that and it was completely for personal you know the joy of Discovery the joy of just going

on a self-motivated also self-funded project uh which was what was very um you know it was a it was an intellectual high for me it was never with the intention that one day this is going to become a book or I'm going to become a historian or anything and that Madness actually continued For 10 long years uh even while I was in the midst of my board exams my engineering entrance and all of that and even after I got into my corporate job there was a my bug had bit me and from just that one

king and queen the interest then graduated to the entire family and they were one of India's longest ruling Royal houses they ruled for 600 years from 1399 till the time India got freedom in 1947 and I was quite alarmed to know that there was not a single book written in the modern times on the entire span of their rule uh covering their political the social economic cultural history of myor which is also in a way a history of the uh making of modern Karnataka because particularly the later vadiar um it is on their uh you

know hard work their kind of sacrifice that Karnataka especially Southern Karnataka or Bangalore um you know has the strong social economic uh you know engine that it became and also the cultural osmosis that they brought in so this was a book that was I think waiting to be written uh and I was just chosen to do that and that's how by chance Serendipity uh 2008 my first book came out splendors of Royal myour the untold story of of The warar now in that obviously um 40 years was the user pation period and the subtitle of

this book is also called inter egum uh which means exactly that uh an interwell or an intermission where a regular government is overthrown and a user pation occurs so 40 years is all that father and son hayar and tipur ruled and that also becomes one of the most important epochs in Indian history because myor was the last Bastian of resistance uh to British colonialism uh and and it took the British 40 years and four Anglo myour Wars to actually subjugate this province which also speaks something about the resistance that was offered and uh I think

that period has a lot of lessons for us today in India uh because as I said after that we became steadily our decline to a slave country was uh you know propelled so I was very keen to zoom in on those 40 years and since then itself I wanted to write a book on tipu Sultan but um you know lots of things happened uh in Bangalore I think when the book came out I was 26 or 27 years old uh didn't know the landmines and the sharks that are there in the world of Indian history

writing there was A lecture quite close to where we are sitting today here in indan nagar in Bangalore where I was giving a talk on the internum period And I was just reading out certain letters written by tipu himself you know he's telling his command go to cikat go to Malabar this region kill so many people and also gloating to some of them saying I have converted 4 lakh Infidel or kafirs to Islam I was just reading these out not even making my interpretation and suddenly a civilized audience that was gathered in that room got

up in protest some of them and there were paper rockets that were thrown at the podium and I was quickly ushered backstage the the talk had to be aborted uh I was taken away to safety but my poor father was sitting in the first row and somebody I think some there was some Tipo fan club or whatever that is went and thrust a pamphlet in his uh hand and also told him that you have an only son and if you want him to live long ask him to mind what he speaks and so obviously that

led to uh we don't come from a political family we don't have political Ambitions even today normal middle class people trying to make our living so to get these Kind of uh you know unintended threats was quite something and incidentally just 2 3 weeks later I think I had written some article on the dians of myour in which it had started with Paya who was also tipu's danan and in that there was some references to tipu Sultan and that again created a fewo and right here in Bangalore in the Heart of the City in mg

Road these protesters had gathered in front of the newspaper office which had carried that article and the editor harly called me saying there lots of protests and they're asking for your apology I said no Over My Dead Body I'm not going to give an apology to anybody because what I've written is based on facts uh if they have a problem with it let them come come out with a counter article and the editor was willing to do that she said you know whatever space has been given to Vikram to write that article I'll give you

two times the space more word limit you write a detailed rebuttal I think an intellectual counter to a book or an article is another book or another article not Street side protests and so on but obviously they were not the kinds who were going to write and people say print doesn't Have power like those days it still had today it doesn't the the Artic the print media I mean but let me interject but you know and then they they actually burned my fig right in the Heart of the City and the editor had actually called

me and she had even sent me a picture of that uh burning eff of mine it was badly made fig to be honest so it didn't and I'd actually made that burning fig my orot profile picture there was those days only or I remember or before you talk about our Gap yes but uh obviously that incident where my father you know faced and what this FG burning caused my mother who didn't keep to great health I think she was extremely hassled and she uh extracted a promise from me that I will never talk about tipu

Sultan in public after that and I actually lived up to her promise I didn't uh you know speak about him write about him thereafter because unintendedly it was causing so much of heartburn at home uh unfortunately we lost her in 2018 and after that I thought you the promise you have made to a person if the person himself or herself is not there the promise is also infructuous so I broke the promise and decided to write this Mammad Book 15 years of dilas all of that has come out in this and you you asked why

is it relevant or why is it important uh it is important because he becomes such a polarizing figure in India and Indian politics even to this day the Congress the BJP both playing their own set of politics for and against uh him uh we are in a state where uh you know 10 years ago you had tipu Janti the birth anniversary of tipu Sultan celebrated on 10th of November every year and and uh in what under what conditions section 144 has to be imposed where more than four people cannot gather two people getting killed in

police firing in Miker in KK um various communities you know who still have that intergenerational trauma in memory of what he did to their ancestors coming out in protest including the Christians in mangore um all of that happening on one side and then the BJP obviously seizes the chance to counter them and in run up to the 2023 State elections they came up with their own set of uh you know absurd fiction where they said uh you know there were two GAA Chieftain called URI GAA and nay GAA who were the ones who killed tipu

and not the British and this was done To get the wal Lia vote in the elections which is a dominant community in in South K in that belt now they have an alliance with the JDS so JDS brings the GAA uh you know vote in South Karnataka and old myo region has been the place where the BJP has been traditionally not so strong so to get that vote you know you create a myth uh there there's not a single reference of these GAA Brothers anywhere in in history books neither British historians nor my's own historians

have ever talked about him so imagine a political party just creates this uh absurd myth and it was left to the uh you know the the voala um Swami G or somebody from the mut to ask the BJP to stop this and not use their Community for uh their Petty politics and that's when that uh issue died its natural death otherwise till then in the media in print media in electronic media every day we were people were discussing about URI GAA and njay GAA two people who didn't exist so I think in the midst of

all of this where you have a 18 century Monarch who becomes the topic of such strong contestations electoral you know fights between people and political parties are Milking this issue you know to their advantage by creating sto or creating this uh highly polarizing environment of celebrating him and all that I think I thought then that it's a as a historian it's my burden it's my responsibility to bring the facts to the table a historian's role is to just illuminate the archives uh common person need not have the kind of patience or the interest or the

skills to go and uh feret those details out so we are postmen who will bring these things out of the archives and lay it Bear for the Discerning reader to make up his or her mind after reading these 900 Pages if someone still thinks tipu was a freedom fighter Patriot so be it if someone gets reassured that he indeed was a zealot and a bigot then so be it too wow first of all I must say it is dangerous to be a historian especially when I I I had no idea like I think you don't

mention this exactly that the the the leading up to this book is is a journey with personal skill in the game and tragedy yeah and loss because you're your mother since she forbid you to do this I can't imagine what you must have felt all these years especially like I can't imagine sitting in a room And just delivering a lecture and having people get riled up for someone who's been dead for so long yeah it shows you that a lot of my viewers a lot of people from India are so unaware about the political undercurrents

that historical figures bring in Maharashtra you've got shivaji uh chhatra shii Maharaj shagi Maharaj of course of course before I get hit right in I did not know that tiu Sultan is such a polarizing figure but I'm just wondering so if there is this bjb narrative which says that you know supposedly these two fictional figures defeated TPU Sultan thereby establishing that it was actually you know one Community or one religion over the other what is the other side what what are the what do the TP apologists roughly look like what what do they stand for

so I don't know uh if you go around Bangalore even now I'm sure the weaponization of tipu is complete in several areas you would see uh you know his photograph um you know along as icons along with uh Mother Teresa Dr ambedkar so he's almost in that same league there are uh you see autoa on the back of that you have uh photographs of him you have that uh you know portrait of him fighting A tiger and as I said the since the time of this tipu jti I think he started of course now it's

no longer in Vogue at least by the government of Karnataka so individuals doing it is perfectly I mean their choice nobody can stop anyone in a free country uh but for the government to use taxpayers money to be doing this at least that thankfully has stopped so he's invoked time and again I mean uh there was so much of controversy when the new Bangalore airport uh came up um there were people including literatur like Girish karnad who were batting for naming that airport after tipu uh because he was born there in DHI a little away

from the uh airport so uh and of course he said let's not name him after kimpe GAA now again GAA vote so when the Congress disowned Girish karnad after that he had to apologize yeah the common citizens of Bangalore like all of us um you know how far the airport is from anywhere in sort of part of the city at all it's almost close to Hyderabad a lot of us would want uh a multimodal fast uh you know uh rapid transport system to the airport we care two Hoots whether it is named after tipu or

someone else but this is what Uh you know governments political parties sadly some so-called intellectuals also want to uh you know distract attention from the real issues that matter uh bangaloreans want a high-speed Metro to go right into the heart of the airport like it is in Delhi or even the hitro airport uh it takes me two hours to get to the airport from my house or they should construct a UL Channel like the English Channel yeah and for the the the hypocrisy VR is that uh the D har place where tipu was born if

you actually go there there it's a it's in a mess there is hardly any uh you know anything made up there uh there's no one to guide you through it's just a broken part of some Fort Old Fort and there's nothing to commemorate that so all these so-called politicians who spend crores of taxpayers money on this jantti and other things if they spend that much to actually preserve some of the monuments associated with him or when you go to shanga Patna uh which was his capital the last day of tipu a kind of a walkth

through uh an audio guide walk through saying this was where the British entered this was where the breach in the fort was uh affected this was where he died I Mean that would be so much more educative and also important if you really want to perpetuate his memory and Legacy I think that is more important uh things to do and that is the tragedy and the irony we as a nation don't care too much about our history don't care too much about preserving uh monuments artifacts anything of the past but we make uh sacred cows

pun intended on all these people of the past you can't write a objective biography of chatrapati shivaji or Dr ambedkar or EV ramaswami otherwise called perar and people like this because uh you know there'll be a hate mob ready to Lynch you down so yeah so let's see I hope my breaking my promise to my mother she's there in some Heaven protecting me from any problem that might I hope doesn't arise because for every claim I make uh I think 150 pages of the book are end notes and bibliography so for every claim I make

there's a source that I uh have citations for so yeah talking about mobs so before I even read the book I was just trying to understand what is the context of this tipu Janti particularly right for me as someone coming from the north I heard it for the first time yeah so In 2015 a vhp leader died during the tipu jantti in kodagu and then in Shiva MOA am I saying that right sh sha MOA in A procession in October 2023 four people were injured a few hours later you know when the mob was dispersed

a Muslim youth heightened tensions by using his blood to inscribe the words share T yeah right to me it seems like why why is he like I don't understand how did it get so bad and why is it not covered more often I've seen similar skirmishes for example in the north there is a Raja called Raja miir Bo so guar and rajputs for a brief while last year were fighting tooth and nail to establish whose Raja was it really MH and they made you Instagram videos cursed each other abused each other to establish historical Supremacy

it would not change anything but was simply many people got injured it was ugly yeah right that's that's the irony I mean as I said we his his fort here is crumbling his Armory is uh where he used to have this uh ammunition and all made uh many of them have been destroyed in sangap Patna just because you wanted to lay a railway line or something like that so preserving uh you know uh objects and elements Associated with a character and actually having some research work done on him or her uh I think that is

a better way of commemorating someone than actually taking people's lives in today's uh context but yes as I said the weaponization of history and historical figures uh it's not limited only to tiu Sultan there are so many others and that is where I think genuine uh historians and Scholars need to come in uh because the owners is on us to set the record straight um and I think truth is the best disinfectant so you know once uh information is laid out you can make your mind uh either way I don't even want to I've never

in all my books never tried to pre judge or sit in judgment for the reader that is infantilizing the reader let them make their mind uh after reading the facts which speak for themselves yeah because I don't think a book that big can be polarizing you really have to pass through all kinds of complexity and nuances yes and that's what makes him interesting he's a as I said he's an enigma uh and you know uh I always in my previous books on saer Etc I would love to see see history not just as a dry

catalog of facts from birth to death of a Person uh people human beings are complex they as complex as we are and there are certain Universal emotions love hatred Envy jealousy an 18th century ruler would have the same emotions as you and I today have 18th century jealousy hatred is not different from what it is today so uh looking at the arch of a person's life through also what were the experiences of that person's life which led him to do what he did or at least make a uh you know intelligent guess or estimate of

that uh almost psychoanalyzing the person um that's what I've always tried to do it it it the complexity of human mind and actions uh really interest me more than the dry cataloging of facts so even here I've kind of tried to get under the skin and the mind of both Hayer and tipu who are very fascinating characters read them for what uh what they bring to the table as complex human beings and they're as complex as you me or anyone else talking about psychoanalysis you mentioned in the book that his father Heather yeah had a

horrific childhood where at some point he was even I'm assuming burned or tried to like he was containing a steamed cauldron of some sort no in a kettle drum a Naga and nagada And beaten on uh a huge so he emerged from a severe traumatic childhood to usop the throne from the Warriors let's let's go here let's go to haer's history um first this particular incident to drive home the kind of generational trauma he will then inflict on his son perhaps um but then the sorry sorry you so patient I can't say the word for

something yeah so Heather's father I mean his ancestors were supposedly from the north some say from Punjab that part of the subcontinent and then they settle down in Northern Karnataka which is where his father fate Muhammad he gets into the service of the nawab of s and when in 1721 is when H historically s is what today it is s only s okay yeah so in Karnataka so and uh uh you know his um uh in 1721 is when Hayer is born and quite easily the astrologers actually predict that uh this boy is going to

bring the death of his father and so a lot of his relatives uh advise him to get the baby killed uh by give it giving it poison milk uh but fat Muhammad refuses to do that uh he uh lets the Child live but in a perverse you know manifestation of the same prediction uh when hether is four years old is when his father dies In battle um and there is a he owed a lot of money to somebody else called Abbas Kuli Khan and to get that money uh back Abbas Kuli Khan sends his armies

they raid fat Muhammad's house uh take away all that is there and these two boys hather is four years old then and his elder brother shahabas is about 8 years old and both these boys are then put into this big Kettle drum and beaten upon uh till the time you know they almost exhausted and faint uh there to get as much money uh from the family and at that very very difficult uh situation was when his mother majida beam she runs away from the place and makes her trip all the way to srirangapatna to meet

the Maharaja of myour and plead with him for Mercy for her fatherless sons and the Maharaja then takes pity on the boys and pays off the data and also assures the family that he will take care of these two boys and when they come of age they will be employed in the myuran service and he lives up to the promise uh both brothers get uh you know a position of a junior rank officer in the myour Army little did he know little did he know so hayar makes his first uh you know entry into the

myo political firmament In 1749 uh in what is called The Siege of Dean Hari again near the airport today um and from then it took what 12 years in just 12 years this man manages to have such a dream run uh run of M ations and conspiracies and all of that running with the hair hunting with the hounds he'll probably put all our modern politicians to shame in the kind of wiess that he had and manages to overthrow the same benefactor who actually saved his life and in 1761 is when the usurpation happens where the

V is deposed how is what's the exact details of the usurpation does he slowly uh gain military power till he one day um seizes the thr Throne like so it's a long uh Journey uh where that time that's why a substantial part early part of the book I also devote to the politics of uh you know the time uh the sou Southern India is in a huge political chaos at that time you had Wars of succession to the naam's throne in Hyderabad to the arot nawab um you know in Tamil Nadu and the British and

the French also get into these uh Wars you had the karnatic wars which raged then you had duple Robert Clive all of them playing their role there and myor also becomes obviously a Participant to this but by then the myor firmament had become so weak uh the V ruler who was there Krishna Raj vadiar II um he literally let power you know pass off into the hands of uh his chief his commanders called dala d rajaya and n rajaya the two brothers and they had you know literally emasculated U the the the king and the

throne and all and Corruption embezzlement of funds all that was at an all-time high and in the course of this war that happens uh karnatic War there's a Siege of Tali and to get tii which is today tii Tali uh myour you know under Naraj it's involved in this really you know Reckless Campaign which fle you know really drains off its treasury completely everybody loses in this war my's treasuries treasury is really exhausted naraja loses all his credibility the only person who makes the maximum hay while the sun shown was Hayer uh you know he

loots uh the the armies he creates his own uh little standing army he he comes into contact with the French he uses the French to uh build his uh you know little army that he have and slowly he comes to catches the attention of the Maharaja who is quite impressed by uh you know his Valor In the war and so step by step by step he's Rising the ladder of political success in myour he gets dindigal as a fgar so his access of influence slowly starts expanding and in a manner that uh these people Naraj

especially was his uh political Mentor but once nanaj fell uh you know out of the favor of the Maharaja even nanaj is quite astonished to see Hyer just drops him like a hot potato without even bothering uh to stand by his mentor so wherever the me the end is all mattered the means was not something important but the the that time the myor uh Court also was full of cons is full of you know political flux nraj who was the uh Dalai he's also the king's son-in-law uh you know his daughter is married to the

king and despite that he tries to go and uh assassinate the Maharaja right in the middle of the Court there's Bollywood drama the uh his own daughter who is the uh wife of the king comes and stands uh you know in protection of her husband saying to go and kill my husband so all this drama is happening there uh and in the midst of all this this mchan man uh manages to find uh the best opportunities for himself and he succeeds so I Think in terms of leadership skills in terms of uh diplomacy statecraft and

how you need to maneuver your way to your advantage when everything around you is in a flux I think haer's uh story gives us that uh insight and towards the end when his power starts improving quite a bit then it is then that the royal family realizes that oh my God we were actually TR ing this man and he's becoming too big for his boots and at very late in life they try to affect a palace coup against Hayer uh through one of haer's own accompli called Kanda uh so he and the Queen Mother they

conspire they try all this but that also fails because right then is the 1761 uh third battle of panipat uh and the maratas who had been called in to help the royal family to uh expel hather they are unable to come on time and so again Destiny's Child he was Destiny's Child where right things happen at the right time and he manages to come back and there's an open court where uh the king literally he he tells the Maharaja very clearly uh I'm happy to go away from this place provided you clear all my dues

and the dues ran to almost the revenue of the kingdom and the treasury is everything is almost empty and So he says uh in in Li of that then I will become the dictator the sarvadhikari the dictator of the kingdom and you be the puppet ruler you will be given some kind of money for your upkeep but Pur correct exactly and the royal family you know had no other option the King was signing his own uh you know obituary but he was he had only himself to blame for that and then they also request him

that you know Kanda who was your man who now helped us in this operation please treat him uh you know mercifully and hayar says oh don't be worried about that I will treat him as endearingly as I treat my parot uh so they are thought that okay he's going to take very good care of him little did they realize that he actually kept his word literally yeah like a parrot Kanda was put in an iron cage uh and fed only milk and rice for the rest of his life and in the heart of Bangalore in

one of the bazaars was when I mean he he was a public spectacle people could come and see and mock him and he died inside that cage and he would depoc there only like everything yeah everything and he died there and uh even several decades later people said in the bang Bazars we had this huge iron cage in which there were bones and the even his body was not even given a funeral so when he said I will treat him as endearingly as my parrot little did anyone realize that he was going to take it

so literally man I think modern politics has become so boring where of course we're in a exactly we're in such a civilized world but it's it's you you in a time when you get to enact like the most absurd public theater yeah for your own joy and also to send a message to your enemies yeah uh what I'm wondering is you know the what was the king's name sorry the v krishnaraj v krishnaraj vadiar it also shows you when the administrator is weak and blinded or unaware there are so many traitors and usurpers hiding in

the shadows waiting for their turn it's also such a good example for modern day rulers and administrators to have a firm grip on their Kingdom their Treasury and any usurpers and to cut down anyone who is too ambitious correct right because so so then let's just jump further in at what point are the warriar reinstalled I know I'm jumping right ahead but I sort of want to understand at what point do they figure out You know we can still regain power no they never gave up because uh so he deposed the king uh but hather

had a sense of real politic he knew that uh the people of the myor Kingdom uh a Hindu majority Kingdom uh had lot of love and regard for this uh Hindu who has come down from you know 300 years 400 years by then and so to completely depose him was something that he he did not want to or could not afford to do so what he did instead was something which served him the best he kept the vodar as a figurehead ruler so trophies of War would be G and gone and submitted to his feet

fans would come out in his name everything I am the Obi and servant of the Maharaja but everybody knew where the real power lay and he to once this Krishna V dies one of his children uh is put on uh the throne he was okay to tolerate the new king till the time that person came of age when he could have his own children uh or if he had a mind of his own uh he was trying to assert himself or try to uh you know contact enemies to uh get rid of him immediately uh

without a whff of uh delay um suddenly you know glass of milk would go to the king's uh Chambers in the night and the Next morning you realize that the king is dead it was poison milk scent and it came from Hayer so and then there would be a Sharad of installing a new puppet uh on the throne so you keep that as a figurehead by the time they become teenagers or they they they can have children of their own that person is terminated so so it is that kind of Game of Thrones uh which

he played but uh and and the royal family was kept under strict surveillance vigilance all of this uh and it is in this very difficult situation that you had krishnaraj V's Widow lakmi Amani who managed who was literally kept in house arrest uh she started negotiating with the British uh to you know get put her family back uh and she employed two people who belong to the my mandum AAR community and they were called the my pradhans tyal ra and Naran ra and they used to carry her messages uh all the way to Madras to

the governor of Madras the British governor and that kept happening all through and that also I mean there are stories as to how when tipu came to power he said there's no need to keep this uh stupid person on the throne uh I am the Supreme King why should I give uh you know uh obes sence To someone who has no power so he abolished uh the title of the Maharaja he became the Supreme uh ruler he called my and no resistance to him from the from the public people had no option it was like

so much of violence so much of uh because his father and him had Consolidated so much power so much by then that it wasn't it was difficult to do anything this was 1782 when he becomes and he makes myor Islamic Kingdom sarar kadad and the vodar is further relegated to the background and this Maharani she's she's unable to go beyond her uh private Chambers the only outing she would have is to go to a temple called the K wenat TRNA Temple uh in the palace complex and despite that I mean she would uh hide these

letters that she would write to the British in the Puja thali and take it to the uh Temple and there while offering puah uh by slate of hand and a wink and so on these letters would be passed on to the priest and he would then make uh those letters uh you know take those letters to these pradhans who take it to Madras so they kept these missions going uh and in the second Anglo myour War the third myour war the vodar emissaries tried to get the kingdom Back but they got it only after the

last Anglo myour war in 1799 when tipu Sultan was killed uh in srirangapatna and then the The Divided myour is then parceled off among the victors the maratas the nazams the British and the old royal family is reinstated so that's why it's an internum it was just a 40-year intermission after which the original government comes back to Power right the when when you talk about the interum period let's zoom out for a bit and uh think about in these 40 years the the four Anglo myour Wars that t fought his father fought none of the

wars no he fought two Wars he the first two Wars and my scripted unprecedented victories in those Wars uh from a state where as I mentioned it had become such an emasculated Kingdom where anyone who attacks the kingdom you're just buying them off paying uh large sums of money from there to the fact to have a fighting fit army to build a Navy uh to have these rockets and so on to uh cause Terror in the opponent Camp haer's you know fora in the first and the second angur were spectacular in the first Anglo myour

War he goes to the very Gates of Madras uh and which was a British seat Of power Fort St George and the British could have been exterminated from India at that time had he been a little more uh you know aggressive but you said that uh since my was The Last Stand from 1760 to 1799 every other state had been coped by the British this was the last no by then yeah you had placy happenening Bengal had fallen aad had almost capitulated uh the main seats were all gone the maratas were the biggest uh uh

you know um what do you say opponents but after PESA madav R's death uh the marata poity itself in Pune was a mess because you had his uncle ragunath ra Raga who kills the new PESA Naran ra there is Nana fnav who comes in there's a council of ministers the barabai who carried on the administration so the maratas were as it is weak uh especially after madara's untimely death so and it was a matter of time before the maratas also were defeated did much later 1818 uh but I said the last Bastion of resistance because

it was so difficult to subjugate myor as compared to the maratas who later capitulated very easily so in the first two Wars uh so as I said the do you want me to turn uh the AC down a little no that's fine okay Okay so in the first two Wars uh the success that hather got was really spectacular he made the British sign a very humiliating treaty to end the first myour war in 1769 uh and then the second angur war too I mean the kind of successes but where the Sun Also participated it was

several of those commishes uh tipu Sultan LED uh under his father's leadership uh in the SE second Anglo myour War you had something called The Battle of Poore uh where um you know Colonel Bailey of the British army the kind of uh you know defeat that man received it is actually uh monumentalized in tipu's Palace in srirangapatna a huge propaganda art painting where you know the L on uh the French officer on shanga Patna and Bailey on the other side so it's called Li Bailey yudha and so that's where you know hayar and tipu are

like this Macho men coming on an elephant and a horse and Bailey is shown like this effeminate person sitting in a penquin and twiddling his thumbs uh so uh and there was Hector Munro so Hector Munro who was the hero of Bucker and placy Wars who had defeated the mugal emperor the nawab of aad the naab of Bengal he literally throws his uh you know weapons into a Water tank in kanchipuram and runs away to save his life uh in Madras so that was the kind of Terror that Hayer and his son uh in those

first two Wars brought on the British in fact the East India Company's stock price tumbled uh you know hugely and shock waves went all the way to London in the British Parliament this was being discussed the court of directors uh you know had gave a very tough time to the uh governor General Hastings and others saying what the hell is happening in myour and you're going after disaster after disaster and the to tipu's credit uh you know he concludes the second Ango myor War to complete Advantage for himself because right in the midst of the

war hather dies in the second Anglo myour war in 1782 he kill in battle no he he has a back cancer and he actually dies in the war camp and tipu the the owners of it comes on him and so since the war had already been fought for so long he concludes it brilliantly he uses great statecraft he uh has sieges the British almost in Mangalore for several months and they're reduced to pitiable condition of actually eating rodents and all of that to survive within Mangalore for really this Is this is despite the fact that

they have uh reinforcements in practically every other state of the country they managed to cut everything uh that's that was tpo's statecraft then to ensure that uh they didn't they were literally starving for Provisions uh so from the uh Consignment would come he would intercept it Midway from Madras whichever from the sea Roots uh anything comes replenishments for the Army he would manage to intercept and the to just get done with this War the British signed yet another extremely extremely humiliating treaty called the Treaty of Mangalore in 1784 and this perhaps VRA is the last

document where an Indian power had an upper hand when it uh signed a treaty against the British So to that uh effect I think he he inherited the kingdom and showed great promise uh at the start but after that there was a steady downfall I'm going to use a jenzi term to probably understand the difference between Heather and his son TPU see Heather is not old money exactly he he he was from the streets right and he usurped the throne and became king T was born with generational wealth like many would say t was the

son of the new king And then the king himself the sultan right yes so tipu's childhood is filled with palaces and richness and a kind of religious fervor that he I don't know how he gets TPU becomes the larger figure and Heather is sort of ignored barring the fact that you've written a book where you also give equal weightage to his father right how does the son outow the father and uh where does this religious fervor come from because I'm going to use some passages to describe it later on but he becomes a devout Muslim

yeah and he wants to I think going read this out you said TPU had immense antipathy for non-muslims and considered it his um religious duty to inflict a holy war or Jihad against them yeah yeah so uh I mean Hayer given his troubled childhood the kind of circumstances we spoke about he never got education all his life uh the only literary achievement of his life was to learn to sign the first alphabet of his name which was her and beyond that but he was multi he spoke effortlessly he could speak Canada marati Tamil Telugu hindustani

all these languages even a bit of English and French uh he knew none of nothing of Persian and Arabic but he wanted his Sons tipu and a younger brother called Karim to get the best of education and he puts them under some Mai he obviously doesn't know he's not educated himself to know what they're learning so a couple of years later he does a mock examination of the sons and he's aass by what his son you know uh is speaking and he loses es his temper on the mai and the Sun and then rules that

you know what sort of uh religious bigotry has been snuffed into my really into my son's mind and so his father was more secular than then TPU I wouldn't say secular but he didn't have he didn't think of religion and Faith so much he was hardly a devout Muslim himself he was an opportunist yeah for him the faith came secondary as long as he had his thirst for power quenched he didn't matter you know what else happened um and that is there SE in several anecdotes of that kind so he's supposed to have dismissed the

mai and said at this rate my son is going to become a good mullah but not a great ruler and so just dismiss him and stop feeding these religious bigotry into his head so I think the seeds of that were sown very early in tipu's life which Is what germinated and so even in his library in srirangapatna which the British captured after his death there are lots of other good books of on various subjects but a significant section is on Jihad on uh what mujahidin has to do what a gazi needs to do a religious

Warrior uh in fact the military treaties that his Confidant uh Z abidin Shust rights is called the fatul mujahidin which talks about uh the the various aspects of holy war or Jihad that um they had to fight but as you said ha had no care for you know what religion people followed in fact there is another anecdote in the book uh where you know the ranganatha Swami temple in Shri rangap Patna There's A procession of the D that is going in front of a Islamic Seminary uh and like it happens now some of them came

from there and started belting stones on the rat uh so first day the Hindus were got scared and they were dispersed the next day they came better armed with their clubs and weapons and they managed to push through defeat these people and the procession went past now the P Zada of that Seminary he was very angry he goes to Hayer and complains saying this is what these people did to me he hears the Whole story and asks him who who cast the first stone he said we did it said then obviously you what do you

expect from the other side they will also retaliate and hit you back so he says but how can they do this I mean how can we allow idolatry to flourish in a Muslim Kingdom so he turns back and says who told you this is a Muslim Kingdom I am but a servant of the Hindu Maharaja and and and the P Zada is so angry he say I this is the case I'm going to leave sangap Patna and go he said you can be my guest go where you please and so he in a huff he

goes away to Madras he's not happy there he wants to come back and Hayer doesn't allow him to come back so there's so many such anecdotes in fact the Dutch um governor also records that Hayer had stopped the slaughter of cattle uh Cows and Bulls and all in the Kingdom because uh they were sacred for the Hindus uh he allowed the dasara procession which is such a famous Festival even now in my to carry on unabated uh there so all those as so he was a real politic he was steeped in real politics yeah you

make him sound like a very pragmatic man pragmatic very cunning uh he knew that if his power has to uh you know last he Had to take the Hindu uh Hindus along he couldn't afford uh to you know um belittle their faith and so on and so some of his closest Associates were all Hindus including puraya who was his danan and when hayar dies in the middle of the War uh in the war camp Pura was the one who managed to keep that new secret because imagine right in the middle of the war when the

enemy is right there if you got to know that uh you know the king itself had died it would create an alarm in the Army and so on so Paya manages to Stage such a drama that time that as if large chests of gifts are coming from the cff uh and SE and every day there's a mock parade happening nagardas are you know beaten bugles are blown to say that the he's he's alive and and he's receiving these giftss and sending them back in one of those chests his dead body is also kept and taken

back to sangap that's so smart yeah till the time so tipu was at that time away in Malabar in North Kerala crushing a rebellion there so till he came someone had to hold the fort so Paya who was a Hindu who was a madwa Brahman actually was the one who um you know kept the fort literally um uh safe it's quite a thing that this Man himself turns a traitor under tipu uh because of and for which tipu himself was responsible man I I I love that you've transported me back to this this era it's

so fascinating what you do you know I'm thinking about this sun fighting off a campaign in Malabar unaware that his father is dead it's it's very much like running a family business today where you all have to fight out various different fires yeah I guess then the real question is so you know the SW the the seeds of religious fever turning into Zeal and idolatry and bigotry are swn in tpo's childhood yeah then at what point does he start enacting out and it and mass does he start doing it when his father dies what are

some of the first steps he takes to show the fact that he's in fact an a deeply radical Islamic ruler hellbent on creating his State and further mode the rest of the country possibly yeah into an Islamic uh country right so I mean even while he was young as I said though Hayer had banned the killing of cattle as a young boy this guy would go hunting specifically to kill uh oxen for which Hayer had been so incensed with him he had given him U solitary confinement as punishment For several days no one was allowed

to even talk to him even food had to be you know passed on from under the like a jail under the door you pass on the food to him and hather constantly rued among his confidants that what all I have built with so much of uh you know hard work my son is going to squander it away because he doesn't have the tact he doesn't have the wisdom he thought very lowly of his son's intelligence and that is documented time and time again in fact the father son Dynamic you know in Psychology terms you have

father wounds and I think that leads to you becoming uh a different man when you grow up so uh in fact even William Kirkpatrick Who U translates some of these dreams and letters from Persian the tipu had written he also says maybe you know the harsh punishments that his father always gave him made tipu so such a cruel man himself and who could Brook no uh you know disagreement who could not tolerate any mistake and for everything he would come like a ton of bricks on anybody uh there's another incident where in the in in

a battle with the maratas um tipu does something in temporate and hather loses his cool and he takes a cane and In front of the whole Army wax his that's very emasculating for for a young prince to be to be to in front of everyone to be insulted so he's actually he throws a tantrum he dashes his turban and his sword and said to hell with you and your War I'm not going to fight with you anymore go to hell and runs away somewhere and later of course after that war there's also an agreement that

he signs with for his father which the British discover after tru's death in his Palace it has eight articles where tipu is saying you know if I steal money from others then I'm uh you can uh flog me me if I do this I will not uh you know do idle talk or conspiracies against the sarar if I do you can execute me so from Petty crimes to big things like Intrigue uh which means he was doing something like this and the father thought so low of him that he actually made an agreement which the

son had to sign and the last line was I'm signing this and putting his sign in the Royal emblem also so and hayar had so many other men you know shik a Muhammad Ali whom he would always have adopted sons and he would keep saying you know thatth these people will be better successors For me so in fact when tipu comes to power one of the first things he does is to get rid of this Shaz who was like a competitor I think very uh an inferiority complex uh ridden childhood that he had that manifested

itself and so this assertion that he wanted to assert himself in all ways became more R once he came to power and as I said islamize my calling it sarar kadad or a god-given Kingdom Persian replaced Canada and marati as the court language in myour uh and all the names of places were islamized myor became nazarabad uh Kur became zafarabad kikut became fok Abad so a long list of all the names getting changed uh he started minting his own coins with Persian numerals and Persian written to a Canada speaking uh you know Kingdom which wouldn't

understand that and forget the Islamic lunar calendar was also dispensed with along with of course the Hindu panchang and he started his own calendar system called the maudi calendar so which had its own way of calculating uh days of the month and all that so it was almost like tolaki fans that he started you know uh and many people talk about this too that fine irrigation Works palaces forts which the V rulers had built over centuries they would all be demolished and in its place you build another just to stamp your authority over it and

both uh father and son they were one thing about them is they would they had this deep insecurity in their minds uh and they knew that they were user Pur and so um anybody the the the weakest link uh to for them would be to talk to them about their class and lineage so in fact hayar um he in fact used his good offices with the Maharaja to also get a proclamation out that anybody who calls me nyak so in the Army he was just a subedar nyak type of a thing so people would call

him hayar nyak so he got a Proclamation announced that anybody who calls me nyak should have their tongue cut off so you know today the proclamation will go immediately on social media everyone knows it those days it took time for that proclamation to percolate to everybody and one poor guy who actually called him nyak had his tongue cut off so so you you come to know the Deep class Consciousness that they had uh they tried to you know Elevate their ancestry they wanted to get into matrim M alliances with the nazam of Hyderabad and every

time that fellow would R Ruff them saying you are of low descent we cannot marry uh into your family and tipu had that insecurity and inferiority complex and that is why to get the uh legitimacy to rule myor he sends several letters to Delhi to the mugal saying I am the true badsha uh so can you install me as uh the can you give me the legitimacy to rule uh but the m himself is so weak he's not able to so he sends a Emissary all the way to the Calif uh the ottoman Calif and

says I am the true Muslim ruler and there he gloats I'm a great Muslim ruler I have killed so many cfirs I have burned so many things you know temples and churches so you call me the badsha of myor because that agreement that hayar had signed with the deposed Maharaja it was not a hereditary claim uh it didn't automatically come to the Sun so you needed a legal uh you know syst you wanted a few prefixes that they would say before they call your name so yeah Sultan TI naab tipu Sultan bahadur all these other

honor fix to his name constantly wanting all these uh and in the midst of all this this bigotry that was there also led to uh the kind of excesses That he committed against various communities uh whose trauma lives even to this day you had the Mand mangar in myour 700 of them men women and children were ruthlessly slaughtered on on the day of naraka chaturdashi before Diwali and see the kind of trauma that the that Community uh you know has even to this day while all of us celebrate Diwali that group does not celebrate Diwali

on the day the rest of India celebrates it's uh observed as a day of mourning or shad and much later they celebrate Diwali uh and this also with some sense of make belief he would assure them something and you know literally stab them in the back similarly his campaigns in kurg in Malabar uh they led to a rampant M massacres of thousands and lacks of ners and the kodavas and the kodavas even to this day people in Kur hate uh this man every year on the 12th of December there is a mar years's day that

the kodavas commemorate uh where on 12th December 1785 he invites thousands of kodavas to a place called daati param and gives them a false assurance that we'll have peace negotiations and they are told to come unarmed and when they come there you know what happens they they're all Encircled and a Mass Massacre happens of all these uh people and similarly the ners too in Malabar in Northern Kerala which we have you know the the top districts of Kerala today there to I mean right from haer's time uh he wanted to extend his kingdom up to

the frontier of Kerala because that gave easy access to the ports to uh you know to to go to the Middle East or Europe now there the ners who were a warrior class never gave up and they constantly pushed back against him and the kind of tortures they faced have documented heart trenching details of these tortures he would in fact sit there and uh haer in fact um you know five rupees for every ner head and uh five rupees for every kurgi head and so there's a there's a description once that almost 600 700 heads

have already come in kg and the kurgis are these you know Fair skinn beautiful people they're very chivalrous so one head comes of a young boy who's very pretty and seeing that he takes pity and says Oh what a beautiful face so let let us stop killing people so had that face not been beautiful there would have been several others who would be you know beheaded so that cruelty Which I mentioned which is of uh inherent with kingship that son and father both had in some to large extent but the problem with the sun was

he specifically targeted these people the aars there similarly the Cana Christians the Christians of Mangalore the kind of misery even to this day I think people there uh you know talk about it they have that wound in their hearts conani literature is full of lots of these tortures they have so also the kurgi you know oral history called this P palame which has the details of what he did to them in in Mangalore too almost 60,000 70,000 Christians literally dragged all the way from Mangalore to srirangapatna about 300 kilom many of them dragged tied to

the feet of elephants pregnant women made to March many of them delivering babies on the way uh there's no way to even conduct a funeral for the dead you know dogs and jackals are feeding on their copses uh 27 odd churches in Mangalore being completely demolished including the mes Church which is a famous Church which was rebuilt in Mangalore later uh and after they came to sangat unless they converted to Islam their lips and noses would be cut off and They would be paraded on donkeys all over the uh City and that also for the

Christians he did it on a day which was very sacred for them called Ash Wednesday uh I know Ash Wednesday before Easter 6 weeks of so if it was not just political opposition it was because you wanted to culturally and religiously subjugate them you choose the day which is sacred for that Community for the Hindu the AAR you chose deepavali for them you choose Ash Wednesday and inflict that sort of uh you know uh cruelty on them so that really shows that it was not just oh kingship is violent so he was as violent as

the rest of them he was extra violent because he took uh clearly into mind the fact that the religious um minorities had to be targeted two vital questions from this and no the sound of this won't come in here or um number one what about his reputation in our history books ncrt growing up from 97 to I guess I was in school to 2013 2014 um about showing tiu sutan as a freedom fighter as someone who fought against the British and second look on the top of Karnataka you've got Maharashtra which has a strong marata

Empire I don't know if it's still prevalent around The time his time on the on the right side toward the west you've got Hyderabad or earthw Hyderabad right so you at least have other Hindu Warriors if it all who could perhaps step in this Kingdom and stop these persecutions you also had the hayadi naam who also had power aspirations but was more sort of real politic friends with the British that kind of guy did they not intervene was his power so unchecked that he was able to basically do as he pleased so like first I

would love your response on this and second we can talk about his reputation as a even as a contemporary Freedom Fighter yeah no I don't think we that uh that kind of religious Consciousness was so much prevalent uh like sometimes even I feel even the maratas come across in this book uh not smelling of roses because they were also invading myor even when myor was under a Hindu Raja uh and the kind of excesses they commit uh just to collect cha and sardes Muki uh the Hindu Raja sorry what's CH the taxes that they had

to pay CH4 so uh so that is what they they they would constantly keep raiding almost like looters who would come and take uh Revenue out and the vadiar would just Pay them off and send them away and so on this father and son at least you know pushed back and fought with them though Hayer there were three Wars that he fought against madav ra PESA and he lost all of them uh and terribly in fact hayar and tipu had to literally run away as uh dressed as Beggars uh fak literally you know when they

were encircled ones and their downfall was almost imminent So to that extent uh you know that consciousness itself I don't know that it's a Hindu Kingdom we to probably never they never had that but the Consciousness seems to be quite rif in tipu's mind because in 1786 he issues a proclamation kind of a Manifesto of his where he clearly clearly annunciates that uh the the goal of my government is to create you know to purge all the infidels so he signs this proclamation to uh a Manifesto where he clearly says that the goal of uh

you know his government is to get rid of the infidels the kafir and similarly on his sword you know you have the uh an inscription which says this sword is to drench itself in the blood of kafir so that Consciousness seems to have been very very much there on his mind And the the problem for people who whitewash him is the fact that unlike hayar tipu was extremely educated uh and he was a prolific prolific writer he wrote so much copiously letters his own dream registers everything he documented and his um you know subordinates would

send back uh reply letters so all that is there and as I said in these very letters he gloats over the fact that I have done committed these crimes uh in fact in Kur he sends a letter which says which is shocking in fact to Z abidin three he says not only the uh those prisoners who have been caught alive even the dead should be converted so even dead bodies being circumcised and converted to Islam but he's getting it from religious texts that he read as a kid he's he's is he is he does he

have a retinue of M or jihadists like informing his decisions yes a lot of those because as I mentioned he wanted uh legitimacy for his rule from the Middle East now mind you in the Delhi suuts too the tuglaks the kis Lis they all sought permission to rule India from the Calif it was only the yeah the Ottoman calips and it was only the mugal who were a departure from that they said to hell with him We'll do it ourselves but this guy goes back to that tradition and in the process he sent several emissaries

uh embassies uh big you know Royal embassies which go all the way to the Middle East to Turkey to the Sha of Persia to all these places and that was the time when the emergent this wahabi ideology was gaining ground there in Saudi Arabia yes and so obviously there was some interchange maybe a lot of that of the pure purest form of Islam uh and how you need to treat people who don't belong to your fold all of that seemed to have percolated to him there and so people who say oh but he didn't do

uh these things within myor the intent was there it's just that he was waiting for the right opportunity the opportunity not presenting itself doesn't mean at all that the intention was not there which is made clear as I said by his own writings there is no need to Sugar Cod that or whitewash that or undermine when will you when you say you know primary source based uh research here your protagonist himself is writing about it and we don't want to take him at face value and say oh I think he won't be exaggerating his own

excesses so it's a little odd that uh you Know we don't we try to cover up so many things but you yourself say in the book that there is a dichotomy between his gifts to Temples he's given several Grands to Temples much like his father but he's also at the same time doing Force conversions desecrating temples so how did when you were doing the research for this book how did you balance a dichotomy to the point you also say on the last day of his life he brings in Brahman priests and astrologers to speak with

him and do japas for him yes right so I clearly understand that he's cooping these people because he's scared of his life he he believes he works very much from his unconscious mind he lets his psyche influence his decisions as opposed to you know taking purely decisions that a real politic yeah uh Centric uh King like his father would take but does he offer some kind of Mercy to these Hindus because there there there are grants there are gifts so yes so that is also a very difficult thing to analyze because U of course in

one chapter called the blooded Legacy chapter 20 I document all these not only the grants but also the numerous temples that he broke in myor in Kerala particularly which Are still bearing the brunt now these grants also if you see these were probably carried on from the past because for I'll give one instance so in the list of Grants which uh one uh report of the 1914 or 1915 talks about that has grants to the guru temple in Kerala the famous Guru Temple there now it so happens that uh he actually sent an army to

demolish the idol the daty there guran and the Brahman priest get to know about it before and they take away the idol and it is put in a safe place elsewhere at this place called Amala Pula and this place Amala Pula where temporarily that DTI was housed uh and after tipu's death it goes back to where it is today that place is still worshiped because this place gave temporary shelter to our Lord so uh it is very likely that many of these grants possibly started at in haer's time and either tpuk just continued that or

you know some of the officers in the middle interceded or kept it as a secret from him for instance in Guru you had this man called hyros CTI who was actually a converted n uh so obviously there was still Affinity to your previous religion so he he's the one who's credited with protecting the Guru guru Temple when tipu wanted to attack it so there could be numerous such examples including lot is made of a uh of a uh shivling which uh people say was donated by tipu to the nanjan good temple in near myor but

actually the records state that this was given by Hayer uh when one of his favorite elephants fall sick so someone tell says you know the God here is very uh you know good in curing maladies and so some incantations are done and the Elephant becomes fine and so as a Thanksgiving hather gives a uh you know Green [ __ ] uh you know shivling which is called Hakim njunda hakeim he actually gives good health but people pass that off also as tipu's benevolence so some things the he could have done as you said to coopt

that Community uh so in the third Anglo myour War when the maratas invade uh there is that shameful incident of the pindaris or the you know Irregulars in the marata Army actually attacking shringeri and shingari was one of the Cardinal muts which ADI shankaracharya had established even the Sharda Dei morti is vandalized and that sends shock waves back in Pune because the shankaracharya has decides to go on a fast unto Death and then the PESA writes several apologetic letters to the shankaracharya saying we're very sorry we didn't intend to do this we will give you

money to rebuild the mut uh please don't end your life tipu probably gets to know about this and he sends a letter to the Shankar aara saying don't take money from Pune I will give you money to rebuild this Temple uh in return uh you please do a havan a jup for my long life and the shankaracharya actually does that also he does a shat chandi havan sahastra chandi jup uh to help tipu win against the maratas so it's a very so he wants for he wants a Hindu suser to pray for his long life

and uses and incantations and mantras to ensure that he's fine while he can break uh the Hindu temple confiscate grants to Hindu temples so the hypocrisy of it all uh that you know uh the same brahans whom he stripped off all the grants and the temple pujas that were done in fact Louie rice says by the time uh of his death in 1799 there were hardly four or five temples in all of myour where regular pujas were conducted there was no money to uh that was given to Temples what about the religious life of of

People in myour at that point obviously it was uh suffering the temples uh were under DK and there was a reason for that because he loses the third Anglo myour War terribly uh Lord Charles conis comes there this is when the1 British the n and the a triarte tripartite Alliance and uh he loses half his kingdom uh he has to give a war indemnity of about three and a half crores which was much exceeding the state budget those days and for to get that two of his sons Abdul khik and Mahin he has to give

away his hostages to the British and so to get his sons back within two years he has to bring them back by paying this huge sum so he takes back all the grants that were hither to being given to Temples he to raise money and oppressive taxes uh and particularly for the Hindus so there also there's a discriminatory policy where Muslims were exempt from several taxes but only the Hindus were taxed extra to raise all the funds needed uh but at the same time while he was confiscating the money he's also asking the shanar aara

and other Brahman priest to pray for him and for their dsha whatever else they were also doing it so you know it's a very complex Uh age and time what a strange Society You know despite all of this I don't I mean he could be a very religious radical Muslim but he maintained a Haram in your book he says you say that he has got servants Unix and three 333 women yes right I I'm not sure of the popular standards in Earth Tri harams about if this is a good if this is a big number

if this is a small number and you said in fact there were 601 women 268 for Heather and the rest for him yeah so despite Wars despite the religious zealotry despite the conversions despite the resistance against the British he still finds time to maintain such a large harm I'm asking this simply as you know zooming out is this is this a consequence of the times I guess so I think yeah more so tipu was not as much but his father was a huge womanizer and so he always had an eye for the pretty young thing

so and there was this uh Fable of this uh even today I mean in several parts of Karnataka you have a sua woman who's called a kangi who goes around with a beating her little drum and then people allow her into the house uh and she sees the palm and fortells future uh so she was Employed this uh Lady sua by Hayer while she went to the Villages she would gain easy access to the houses of villagers so if she spotted a young girl who was pretty uh immediately she would take the news back to

Hayer and the next day the armies would kidnap that girl and she would find her place in the Haram and these were young girls also 9 10 years old yes yeah yeah several of them and there are lots of reports of how young uh you know girls were and young boys would be picked up uh castrated made unu off and they would also you know be put to all kinds of uh no but I don't understand this I've read this briefly I think about the Ottoman Empire they had this uh unic Army who would I

forget their names they it's on the tip of my tongue but why why make Unix of of young boys like what's the intent I mean to serve as administrators no and also to guard the female apartments and zanana because you know you then not a threat you know York I see so you can be trusted so yeah this kind of torture so he also used to do but yeah I don't think tipu had that much time for uh sensual Pleasures to that extent at least but but uh he captured several people Including uh the Kur

Princess uh there's this uh when so the Kur royal family is uh put in you know prison uh and when he invades Kur and you know kills most of these people like I mentioned dead kurgi is also converted he visits this Fortress where the royal family is imprisoned and his eyes fall on the young princess vam Maji or n one of them and she is also abducted and two princesses of the uh Kur family are also made part of the Haram in fact pura's own niece is also part of the Haram uh the same Pura

who was such a loyalist who helped keep his father's death a secret and helped in the smooth transition of power his own niece being in the Haram is quite something in fact there's an episode where in the open court he tells Pura that you're such an intelligent man so why don't you convert and come to our side now this guyy is a very cunning uh you know person and Artful Badger Survivor so he quickly ah yes as you say huzur and he makes a hurried exit then it is said that his tipu's mother was sitting

in the women's apartment the chambers in the parda she comes out into the court and admonishes her son saying you know your father never did such Thing things if you continue to do such stupid things your end is near because you will lose the confidence of everybody around you and so she would have a very strict control over him but even that advice seems to have fallen on DEA years and particularly after the third Anglo myour war and his loss there I think whatever little confidence he had in the Hindus particularly the brahmins that also

went away and after that you see his steady downfall because he starts taking and people document that he employs Muslims in every stream of administration Army illiterate Muslims also who did not know the only criteria to enter is you belong to that religion uh you went nuts yeah and so what would happen to the administration uh so it it uh you had a and surrounded completely by cofant uh by people who would just you know not tell him the truth or give him Good Counsel he started having this huge hubris and arrogance that I can

do no wrong uh in fact there's one instance where his army uh is advising him let's not go ahead in Kerala because the monsoons you know how it is there and he pompously says do do you think I can't advise the clouds to stop they will listen to my orders so he goes ahead obviously the clouds didn't listen to him and the whole Army gets stuck in a quick sand so these kind of things fool hearty uh kind of things that he did you almost see him scripting his own disaster chapter by chapter by chapter

and by the time he is actually killed in Shang Patna eventually I think he has only himself to blame and no one else I am friends with many astrologers um many of them are my dear friends one astrologer friend of mine told me that sometimes politicians will come to him with their opponents charts and say how can I bring this guy down um and uh when I speak to my astrologer friends I'm surprised that those in power are the ones who consult these guys the most you know I'm wearing two rings so obviously I'm I'm

guilty as charged of uh falling prey to the this mystical science as many say um but it's a it's a tricky terrain you know because you never know when you go from let me seek good guidance to let me deliberately have multiple opinions and ultimately you start only surrounding yourselves with like many people do Astrologers who will Who will give you remedies for Immortal Life or help you prevent some some you know tragedy M so this business of so s has always fascinated me you know where you will have someone saying I had a bad

alen okay let's fix this alen by doing this special ritual and Kings have always done this in the past they will perform in incredible like the in Hinduism we've got the ashida ritual and many others right let's talk about this man's inner private life his divinations his his stri with mysticism and all the ways in which he uses his dreams and suiters to inform his decisions uh I can for for instance I can start with one of his dreams where he is with a a handsome man and then man is converted into a beautiful woman

and then his interpretation is that it's it stands for the maratas and they're all secretly women effiminate right yeah yeah so yeah I think so after this particularly the defeat in the third Mysore War he gets he becomes so insecure about himself he can't trust his right hand can't trust his left hand he sleeps in a suspended hammock in his uh you know uh Royal Chambers because he feels someone is going to Secretly assassinate him uh so all kinds of things and in that uncertainty he also learns astrology himself so he's quite proficient in reading

his own chart uh and all the time everything is done with the help of astrologers who will tell him what to do uh in fact on the last day of his life to uh he has this uh that morning on 4th of May 1799 a very you know momentous day in the history of India uh an iron pot uh full of oil he's looking into it his uh reflection Nazar utar n or whatever and then he's confiding with them when do I go out to uh you know fight the transit of Mars what is that

happening all these kind of things he go that that detailed yeah yeah and I think uh this whole business of Dreams uh he was a very very Vivid dreamer and uh it is said that every day he would uh wake up and actually spend about 2 hours in his toilet where he would sit and write these uh dreams down which he saw the previous night uh and I managed to access the original uh handwritten dreams of this man uh which still lie in the British Li in persan yes so he was writing Persian everything there's

hardly anything in Canada how did you get it translated I had Initially tried to learn Persian and that ended in a huge disaster so I said okay I'll rather employ someone to uh translate them for me those dreams are also full of violence full of Gore as you said uh Prophet Muhammad appears or there is an angel who comes and tells go so far kill that break this there's a there's a strange cow that comes which he uh actually is a you know um considers an enemy it's actually the trenor Raja and then he cuts

off its legs and all kinds of things like this which are very very and he wants to break the saligram uh the sacred stone for vnav which as an embodiment of Lord Vishnu so in fact I got some those dreams even psychoanalyzed because dreams please talk to me about that yeah because dreams are index of your subconscious mind what you're constantly thinking about and it came out very clearly there that this man was consumed consumed by hatred consumed by violence and there was probably not a single day in his life uh when he didn't have

a fight or a war to uh engage himself in in fact look at the amount of hatred that he had that even in his room you had this Tiger toy uh which used to to play with every day apparently Uh it is a huge Contraption of a tiger actually Fe wooden Contraption of a tiger uh attacking a fallen British soldier and it had a you know crank or something which you had to turn and then the entire thing would uh you know rotate and there would be growls of the tiger and the howls and shrieks

of the man and it is said he would keep listening to this every day to give himself inspiration that I have to attack the British this way and the tiger was the motive of his kingdom so it's like the sarar kadad feasting on the East India Company so there was this unbridled hatred that he of course uh you know had uh you had asked another question earlier which I think I forgot answering which was about his this whole elevation of him as a freedom fighter yes which u i mean as I said right at the

beginning there is no doubt that he was a brave Soldier a warrior and that he was supremely anti-british that he hated this Tiger toy uh is an embodiment of that hatred but Freedom Fighter calling him a freedom fighter is a like stretching the truth uh you know to to to a absurd extent because in this fight against the British he was actually taking the support of the French and the French were no less Colonial than the British so if he had won you know in Karnataka today we would all be speaking French instead of Canada

uh and we would be ruled by another colonial power the French were as imperialist in their designs right from the natic Wars and so the French he would Appeal on the basis of their rivalry with the British which they had right from Europe and the hatred and rivalry of the British and the French played itself out in the politics of India all through the 18th century so he was just doing one against the other there but to the Islamic uh world the larja Umma or the Brotherhood uh he was appealing to their religious sentiments as

I said all these uh achievements he was wearing them as Medals of Honor have killed so many Hindus have killed so many Christians have broken so many temples so I am the you know pure Muslim ruler not the mugal he's come under the uh you know U protection of a kafir Mahi cindia and so you know break bread with me rather you will'll become allies so he writes letters to all these people the Shah of Persia the turkey Sultan the Calif all these people and also two years before He dies he writes his letter to

Zaman sha the Afghan ruler durani ruler and there's a clear plan that invade India uh for two years let's do this the first year let's flush off all of Northern India from cfir and then second year let's uh you know flush out the south from cfir and then let us meet Midway and then divide this whole subcontinent among ourselves and declare this as an Islamic caliphate uh so such is the freedom fighter who wanted to actually establish either French rule or an Islamic caliphate is what India would have become and even you know two years

before he dies he he has this there's another tale of the Absurd which I would urge readers to read in the book of this french guy called ripard he comes uh ostensibly from macius uh but he's an imposter he's a crook so he comes there and um uh tells him that we have kept a large army of about 10,000 people ready for you to fight the British and so all his you know advisers say we find something fishy about this report let's not trust him but this guy has lost his sense of uh you know

discretion he is so taken in by report they for a jacoban club in sangap Pat And the Jacobin were the Revolutionary you had the French Revolution already there yes and you had Louis the 16th being beheaded and Mar anet being executed and you had the revolutionaries and these Jacobin Club was actually formed in srirangapatna uh there was a tree of equality cap of equality planted and he is called Citizen tipu and then they all you know go around that false commemoration for for and he's singing the French national anthem uh and he's citizen tipu uh

for everybody so it's a it's a and that report is such a fraud that you know costly presence he sends an entire Embassy uh with him and his uh you know emissaries to go to macius to the aisle of France to uh get French support and on the way the this report actually you know pilers all the treasures he just escapes into thin air once they land in macius and out of 10,000 that were asur only 99 people come to help tipu and even then he doesn't realize that he has been fooled uh so in

fact a very favorable biographer of him uh Dennis Forest even he says at this juncture of his life you see tipu being inflicted by mental blindness and his story coming literally like a Greek tragedy uh into one where you know absurdity fool hardiness uh it actually is a theater of the Absurd you actually feel sorry at times like where is his mental capacity to think and take decisions uh in a sensible manner he writes to Napoleon bonapart and there are exchanges of letters between him and Napoleon um and Napoleon what Napoleon promises to come from

Egypt all the way and help him and all and the British actually intercept all these letters so they have they are building evidence against him Brick by Brick they have intercepted all these letters there is a malartic proclamation uh by name in macius Where clearly the French are saying we are going to assist tipu in defeating the British and eliminating them from India then you have all these emissaries to Zaman sha and all these people so the British have built a case against him and the last angur war when Richard Welsley is sent there uh

he comes for the kill cones still gave him a lease of Life yeah because he has the highest amount of military forces at that point right he's ready to take over yes and so he uh has all these evidence and say since you have Planned to eliminate us it is our right to counter you to eliminate you and that is how the fourth Anglo Myer War the last Anglo Myer War breaks out in 1799 and that also the last few chapters uh which deal with that and his end well it is as I said a

Shakespearean tragedy in the making as it unravels worse by verse uh you you just see you know you're blinded totally by uh by your own Hate by your own uh megalomania that you're unable to see things as they are and so it's a case study of how a leader should not be fascinating man like I one thing that Carl Yung says who I'm sure you know the in a lot of ways the successor to Freud's ideas because Freud Freud became a little neurotic the psychologist are split on that but he said uh if you don't

pay attention to your subconscious it's going to slowly dictate your life for someone who paid so much attention to subconscious I think his strategy was that he let it run his life yeah right where you're supposed to be as a as a king or a ruler use logic sometimes against emotion against strong impulses and take decisions to preserve your power yeah he I think based on your book was completely taken by Omond and dreams and and Soo saying and fortunes and mysticism in a way that is not fitting a king yeah right do do you

think that beyond all the forces Gathering against him his his extreme belief delusion uh in his dreams and his you know Omens was that a reason for his demise that also but as I said he uh I think embittered everyone Hindus Muslims alike in fact uh in the last war it was his most trusted prime minister called Mir sadik uh who actually cheats him uh you know as much uh as Paya or anybody else does so I think and and he had no one to give him good counsel in fact on the LA in the

last few weeks before his uh death there's a breach that is affected in the impregnable Fort of srirangapatna he doesn't even have advisers who would tell him that there is a breach and he's living in this make belief world so in fact I write there are descriptions of his Palace where In the Heat of May of Southern India uh you know his inner Chambers had these huge mats you know for the wind on the Windows which are sprinkled with water they give you a false insurance that it is so cool inside but actually there's blazing

sun outside and that was Very homotopic so to say to actually demonstrate what was happening in his kingdom and his life the British had literally come near the doorstep and this man even at that time is sitting and looking at his face in a pot of oil uh or happily having his food and then they tell him that the uh enemy is out right there and a few weeks before itself they had said that they're encircling us from all sides there is one secret uh passage of what Water Gate or something in the fort why

don't you run away from there uh the French actually advise him he initially says yes he actually gathers uh his favorite women from the zanana some elephants and horses and lots of treasures they're all kept ready but on that faithful day when he tries to escape to uh it is me Nadim who is the kedar and me sadik who Clos that uh last passage of exit then he goes to another exit passage and Mir sadik is trying to close that as as well and he this man looks at me Nadim uh and orders him to

open it and that man looks the other way and that is when tipu finally realizes that treachery has permeated through every brick and uh wall of the fort but it is too late by then there's nowhere To escape so he literally decides let me go out and face it uh in whatever way which also was a fool Hardy thing to do but there was no option uh he said he could have surrendered perhaps the only he could have surrendered but maybe that he did not want to do um that amount of self resect and dignity

he wanted to keep for himself which is uh appreciable but he goes there he thinks that you know if I if the my Army sees me right in the heart of the battlefield maybe they'll get enthused but even there me sadik and me Nadim when the British is just entering the fort all the soldiers of the myour army are locked off in a uh in a room promising uh payment of areas and salary so there's nobody to defend the fort as well so you see the tragedy that unfolds it actually you know it it's very

very Shakespearean and I would like your viewers to read it to uh understand more but just giving a trailer and so this man then goes on his favorite uh mayor that he uh gets on and goes to fight uh along with his physician Raja Khan who's coming with him and there's a break his doctor because he's got no one else no one else no one else to uh stand by him he's literally All alone and but as I said he has only himself to blame uh by then so what your stupidity can lead you I

think this is a casee study of that and the mayor gets shot and then you know he's also uh his uh tipu's leg is hurt and so Raja Khan tries to put him into a palanquin and in the process both of them tumble over each other and fall and he tumbles and Falls amidst a heap of dead bodies and at that time srirangapatna is like a scene from hell where there are you know volleys of uh missiles going from both sides there's some bomb that burst and lots of bodies are burnt uh in the process

uh mangled masses of Limbs everything flying around and this man is sitting there amidst these bodies his uh leg being stuck there watching you know his whole Kingdom collapse bit by bit in front of his eyes and that is when a group of British soldiers come there they don't even know that this is the Sultan of myour because they didn't expect him to be there by then his turban has fallen off he's baldheaded and so they there attention is caught by a b gold you know um sword handle that he wore belt to get that

they try to attack him and he attacks back And they snatch away that uh belt from him then who is this man why is he being so intemperate and one of them takes a pistol and shoots him in the temple and that's how quite unceremoniously he's killed in the battle Now by sunset uh you know nobody knows where the sultan has gone uh uh the his family is worried the British the day has ended but they don't know where the man who was supposedly defending the fort has gone so they go to his Palace there's

a elaborate description of how the children react uh they take one hour to come back they there's a carpet laid and then the young boys they're probably in their late teens they have to come and confront a a British uh opponent who comes there the British think that he's hiding in the zenana or the Women's Chamber so a search is done there he's not to be found there is there any secret passage they search there no By Night a search party then goes through the ramp parts of sangap Patna which has literally become you know

ramp seene from hell again with putrid bodies and [ __ ] Rotting Flesh Rotting Flesh burning flesh the The Embers of those bombs everything still being there and vultures have Already encircled the place and in the midst of this they find this Raja Khan who is still alive uh and they hear a groan or something and these these are first person accounts which the British have documented major Allen beatson these people go on that search party with a masal in their hand uh and rajak Khan mentions that I think tipu went in that direction that's

the last he scene of his master and when they go there they have to literally remove dead bodies in the midst of this they find the cops of this man and Alan says his eyes were wide open his body was warm and his hand was still clasping the sword and lot of us thought uh he might suddenly spring up and attack us but when we felt the pulse uh you know the the doubt was dispelled that he was dead we raised a hurah and then the body was taken uh for a you know um funeral

proper funeral it was sent back to the palace and after that of course his entire family gets of 600 women 25 kids are all sent away to Valor uh where they try to instigate another rebellion and then the British say we've had enough of this they're all packed off to Kolkata uh which is where a lot of them some remnants of The family supposed to be still there uh some in abject poverty but a lot of people say this is perhaps Poetic Justice they came from that nagada on which his father was beaten upon from

that poverty to where they came from and that was the life and Arch of Hayer and tipu and the Intero in myour dude I can't wait for you to get old because you're you're going to have so much stories with with a big beard it's I I must really I must really really give you a compliment I have never on my podcast ever had such a profound Storyteller who goes to the depth of every exacting detail of someone's life I mean this is clearly your obsession it's very evident uh I have never had so much

fun you've you've literally even though I've read parts of the book what you the way you've delivered it to me today and for my viewers it's a treat right I'm going to I'm going to go through com through the pages one by one f look how the mighty have fallen yeah it happens everywhere you know you you rise up through the ranks of the world you become emperor you have this Larger than Life Persona and then ultimately your sword is auctioned off and you're a relic of the past right Vicam my final question to you

on this is this there's a forward by SL bppa right yeah obviously there have been many accounts of historians writing this book right you have written perhaps the biggest right the in terms of at least volume were the previous accounts of this book not justified were they maybe lacking in information because I think uh you being from this region really helps yeah no I think there's never a final word VRA when it comes to history I think a very famous historian had said every work of history is an interim report uh you know so otherwise

if everything about the past if it's already written and carved in stone we historians would go out of job so it's always a constant revisiting of the past looking at new sources looking at new uh new ways of perceiving the same past uh I have tried to present everything that I could lay my hands on on tipu and as you said it's been an obsession for several years now it's not something I just started now so the sources the story was something that was always there in my head but I've tried to put everything Under

One Roof to the extent that I have found uh as of today so I've relied on Uh Persian records British records from London uh the French records the ones in marati the PESA DFT documents uh so from various and oral history of several of these communities thear the difficult thing to get your hands on uh I think some of his persan records are um are tough to get even in London so I did somehow manage to it took a lot of perseverance uh but finally um since some of them are in not in a great

condition to also get them translated was a huge Challenge and most of those are written in uh flowing hand so it's very tough to even read them uh and make sense of them but I've tried my best to decipher some of them too so uh so I'm sure this is not the last word uh but as of now I think everything that was possibly scattered in various places about tipu uh I've tried to put it under one roof and that is why the size also is what it is but I'm I'm I hope the the

size of the book is not intimidating and the readability overpowers that at some way um and people get to read it because I think it's a very very fascinating account forget the polarization forget the politics uh even as individuals for us to know uh you know what works and what what Mistakes not to commit where even when something is given to you on a platter how your own hubris and your arrogance can let you squander it all away even if you're an individual a businessman or whatever else I think these lessons that one reads from

a fascinating life uh and Times of some people like this that's what I think history comes alive for people I know I I asked a final question but I I must really ask you this are you a dreamer as well do you have dreams dreams well yes I don't dream uh vividly but I have a v in terms of a dream and we were talking about that earlier so I've started this um foundation called the foundation sorry before you say that I just wanted to ask you has the ghost of tiu sutan visited you in

your dreams okay have you had visions of him thankfully no but okay I think several times uh he's been constantly with me since the time I saw that serial by Sanjay Khan I should thank Sanjay Khan you know otherwise you would have had a historian sitting in front of you but for him so somewhere I owe it to him to uh to uh thankfully but but yeah I've been consumed by thoughts of this man uh because I tried to Wrap my head around him because he's such a such a even in his want and cruelty

uh which was there a feudal autocrat that he was uh there's just so many shades of his character uh that fascinate me to just investigate deeper and I'm not saying it out of some eulogy to him uh I'm saying just to understand how and why a person can be that cruel is also investigating something about the human mind uh so thankfully I don't get to see him and I don't want to see him also in my dreams and finally last time we mentioned on a separate podcast about your archive of Indian music on SoundCloud you

said you had an update on that well yes the archive itself has now become part of a larger umbrella called the foundation for Indian historical and cultural research fcr um whose main goal is to Foster new scholarship in Indian history uh you said do you have dreams do you have visions uh I I do have a vision in term of terms of what I need to do in this life I think uh you know especially after covid VRA the second way where I narrowly lost my life uh it was just by an inch I think

I came back doctors had given up all hope of my survival then uh so when I came back I I think since then I'm deeply aware and conscious of my mortality uh and the fact that you know you are here on this Earth for a limited period of time and when you have that in mind you know that that you have a lot to finish before you go uh and I thought a lot about this that okay in my life whatever is left of it um they maybe X number of books that I may write

uh and go go away from this world but is that enough uh is there a need for a larger Corpus of scholarship that we need to produce uh and you know in all these non-left conclaves of ours all that we end up doing is demonizing Marxist historians they have distorted in history we have commment leaders we don't have scholar yes because history and research is is a lot of hard work getting your hands dirty no one has the patience for that Mr Arun Shri has exposed these people 20 30 years ago in that eminent historians

book of his so even today in every conclave litfest that uh the non-left organizes just having one imaginary woodoo doll of romila taper dja Iran Habib and keep sticking pin saying she did this he did that just doesn't help uh even to this day it's their books Which are uh the textbooks in universities for upsc exams where is the alternative scholarship that we have produced there is none I mean to this day maybe her word on Ancient India is the last word there's no one from the non-left who has written an alternative ancient Indian history

to counter and uh Twitter Wars and you know uh outrage on social media is not the alternative the only and only alternative according to me to distorted history is scholarship scholarship and more scholarship so individually I may be limited by so many uh you know disadvantages so I thought why don't why not institutionalize this and especially since governments and so on are apathetic about this uh let's not even continue to blame that's another pasttime that most of us have either blame Marxist historians or say or blame blame for everything from a pothole to everything so

let's for one stop being criers and become doers whatever little bit let's create for yeah that's and you have a favorable environment today in all ways so why not do something and that's how this idea of this fcr foundation for Indian historical and cultural research came up And I really fortunate I had found a very uh dear friend and Patron in bhavish Agarwal of Ola who came forward and said you know I'll I'll support this uh as you as you grow and Ola as such helped us to make this into a proper institution we've hired

eight people and there are a few verticals that we have the first one is fellowships where we've given uh eight fellow we've just instituted it a couple of months back it's uh in the name of Sir jadunath sarar the eminent historian uh and we've selected it's a nationwide selection process we had interviews and eight of them were selected to and given a substantial stipend of about 15 lakhs per anom over the year uh and at the end of that one year the ask is you need to come out with a publish worthy manuscript uh so

imagine every year 8 10 books added in 10 years you have 100 books then you at least you have a menu card to choose from there's an alak cart where okay I want to read romila taper or I want to read someone who comes from this side so or read both or read both I would I mean demonization is not uh what is done shatr actually you know asks you to even read what someone you Don't agree with has written so that you can come up with a counter and as I said at the start

the counter to a book an article is not uh outrage on Twitter burning figs you know stabbing someone it is a counter intellectual Point finally these are intellectual Wars we are having nothing personal against uh any of those people so this scholarship of eight people have come out with and they're doing their work a wide range of topics that they working on and in the process I hope to help them where if someone needs mentorship and we'll help getting those books published also so that was one vertical there's another vertical called projects team where we

are collaborating with uh universities uh we we have one with uh nalanda University which has just started where we investigating the rise and fall of Buddhism in India uh now see most of our history is written in languages which we don't understand Sanskrit Persian Arabic we rely only on translations by westerners which may be either flawed or malicious or just ignorance or or or sorry or oral history or oral history now these translations uh in Sanskrit one word can have 10 Meanings uh depending on the context so unless you're a you you're really well vered

in the language it may you may be Lost in Translation now as a modern historian for me to learn all those languages today and this thing like what I tried with Persian here that would be uh you know it'll take many lifetimes so we thought why don't we create a multi-disciplinary team where a historian actually in this Buddhist project we have uh along with me we have a Sanskrit scholar we have a Buddhist monk we have a uh person who knows Pali prakrit Tibetan and an archaeologist archaeologists and historians seldom talk to each other so

six seven us together investigating the primary sources uh iasa means literally translates into it thus happened so let's go back to what has been written primary sources wise and investigate and the outcome there would be I think about a book series three or four books on Buddhism and academic Journal articles and so on the third vertical is called uh yua which is again very uh close to my heart because we want to make make history interesting exciting and inspiring for our young people so children from the age of 6 To 12 and young adults 12

to 20 history is not that boring subject which you just mug up and vomit uh you know details in an exam and get money it's a mirror in which you identify yourself as a country so to make it interesting in the language they understand it could be you know Instagram reals it could be animated videos it could be podcasts whatever make we are a nation of story tellers make history great again yeah MGA MGA and we are a nation of storytellers we always I mean for Generations uh the same rubric of a ramayan and Mahabharat

people all over our country have added to it added to it and made it this colossal uh epic so where did this Art of Storytelling disappear from our lives where our own stories all these are such fascinating Tales of another era uh but it can be told in a beautiful manner yeah I think Regional stories sadly remain closet to the regions because of language constraints because of lack of scholarship because of unverifiable accounts and whatnot yes so yua seeks to you know um plug that animated videos children's books we're trying all kinds of things there

we have also instituted a national essay contest called Sh orindo National History contest for children of six sixth grade to 9th grade and we'll publish their books uh their essays in a Anthology you know we'll uh it'll be nice for a sixth standard student to see their essay uh being published uh you know on some matter of History which we given to them and the fourth uh Wing is where the archive of Indian music has merged itself we trying to uh Institute digital Humanities where how can technology be used for preservation of Heritage and history

world over you have the artificial intelligence U models which are used for digitization translation so Ola luckily has a um AI tool of Krim so can we use that to see if uh some of our manuscripts could be digitized some of our works could be translated fast into Indian languages because as far as I know kitm can manage to translate uh stuff in eight Indian languages already uh Hindi Canada Tamil Telugu marati Bengali Gujarati and so on so all these plans are also a foot saying how can we bring technology to the aid of protecting

preserving our past and Heritage so it's a long uh very very ambitious uh task we've set out on but I'm sure with a lot of support well wishers and I'm in a city like Bangalore which is blessed to have the you know startup Capital here there's lots of young people who are passionate about this baves being one of them passionate about it and wants to do something about it and so to get them all on board and not complain not crib all the time and actually do something wow man you you accelerate really fast I

mean I remember I like I was saying I just had you on my podcast to talk about waiting for Shiva that was in March yeah you've got this book and you doing you're doing this so you've got your hands full yes my only uh ask of you is where can people follow this work get engaged is there a website or a resource yes uh it's fc.com so they could actually write there many people and people will get grants to publish their own books if they want you know because one of the great things that happened

to me as a kid is Scholastic had this book competition called for kids by kids so I under the non-fiction category as a 9-year-old and I wrote a wrote an essay on bhat Singh of course I was not a great writer it was just adjectives but I sort of Penn down His life and what I felt about him and that got published I still have the book wow it what to be published to see my name in a tangible book till this day I still think that this is an interim career what I do that

someday I'm going to come back to memoi writing full time only because I was instill with that confidence when others around me were just trying I was able to get published so you're going to enable especially in an age where people are not valuing writing as much you're going to enable people to come back and daily pursue these scholarly disciplines without feeling like oh I should do something that's you know more fast or emerging and you know let this be a discipline that only people who are you know older pursue yeah so it's the website

is called fi hcr.com Doom wonderful man thank you for your time and I really I really hope that 30 years from now 40 years from now this B book becomes a staple at least in ncrt or other uh you know other places in universities in India and abroad where history is T because passing through the book walking uh talking to you and seeing the reviews I can tell you it's really a Shakespearean tale but it's also At the same time a story that should go outside the South uh and India should know about it and

of course I commend you for being one of the best historians of our country and thank you it's great to be your friend thank you VRA wonderful always talking to you and thanks likewise always for giving this unhurried space to speak uh in detail about everything thank you it's my pleasure