Tipu Sultan and the Rajputs

This article was prompted by a recent interaction between myself and my dear friend R. G. Singh of the iconic Ramsons Kala Pratishtana at Nazarbad in Mysore. RG as we know him has one of India’s finest private collections of Mysore style paintings and has done yeoman service to our cultural traditions by working hard to conserve, revive and popularize traditional Indian board games many of which but for his and of his establishments’ efforts would have gone extinct.

The Singhs are of Agnikula Rajput origin and their family hail from Bassi in Chittorgarh, Rajasthan. His Rajput clan were ‘specialists’ in the breaching of forts. The family tradition mentions that they moved from the desert sands of Chittorgarh to Seringapatam by the Cauvery sometime in the 18^th C to serve in the army of Tipu Sultan. This will surprise many among us!  Rajputs in Tipu’s army? How?

We get the answer to this in one of Tipu’s new regulations for his army drafted after Mysore’s defeat in the 3^rd Anglo Mysore war. This was noted by Macleod here:

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“The strength of the infantry has increased considerably since the year 1794. This is accounted by the effect of of the Sultan’s regulations of not admitting any Hindus into his corps – Mahrattas and Rajputs excepted. It may be urged that there ought to be present in his army as many Mahomedans, Mahrattas and Rajputs as there had been in 1794; but the deficiency may be reconciled when it is recollected how much the sources of his recruiting have been limited by the cessions he made in 1792;”

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The strength of the Mysorean infantry after 1794 became considerably larger than the cavalry because the prime recruiting grounds of the Sultan’s horsemen – Northern Karnataka (the Deccan region) was lost after the 3rd Anglo Mysore war and the treaty with the British and their allies in 1792. Much of the cavalry came from the Northern Karnataka stock and since Mysore no longer had these areas the number of cavalry men in the army greatly reduced. Old Mysore proper, the coast and hill regions did not have as many quality horsemen as the plain terrain of the Deccan which was more conducive to horse breeding as well as cavalry warfare. So the Mysorean army was in a precarious situation with the numbers of its horsemen decreasing considerably compared to the pre 1792 situation.

Tipu could either increase the number of his cavalry forces by recruiting the available Hindu talent which was deficient in horse warfare in comparison to their counterparts up North or recruit more Muslim soldiers from within Mysore if available. The first option was ruled out as there were not enough quality horsemen available here and the second option though available would upset a balance that Tipu deliberately maintained, ostensibly for the safety of his state. As a matter of statecraft Tipu ensured that no single community contributed to a majority in the army. So in 1795, by the time the reorganization was complete Mysore had 6 kacheris ( Divisions ) of ‘silladar horse’, of which 2 were composed exclusively of Hindus and the remaining 4 of Muslims. Each kacheri was further divided into six maktoubs (regiments). Tipu again ensured that each of these Muslim kacheris had a mix among Syeds, Sheikh, Pathan , Mahdavi ( an esoteric Muslim sect) and Shiite soldiers. Only the Ahmadi kacheri had a majority of a single sect of muslims – Syeds supposedly of the Koreish tribe that Prophet Mohammad also hailed from.  The Asadollahi kacheri was exclusively made of new Muslim converts taken captive from among the British as well as in the Mysorean campaigns in Coorg and Malabar. Altogether the number of men here came to 6000. Wellington recorded in his despatches that the Mysore Silladars were ‘the finest light cavalry in the world‘.

Recruitment to the Hindu kacheris was vigorously carried out and it was for this that preference was given to the Rajputs and Marathas as they were the Hindus largely available for the cavalry at that time. They came in large numbers because of the good pay that Mysore offered –26 Rupees a month which was even better than the pay the East India company in Madras then ( Year 1779 pay scale ) offered for a native Corporal who would have put in at least 14 years of service –20-5-6 (Rupee, Anna, Paisa). Tipu’s choice of the Rajputs in his army was not a surprise as he would have met more than a few of them in his wars with the Nizam where the Rajputs had already entrenched themselves as part of the Mughal entourage that accompanied the first Nizam from Delhi to his seat in the South nearly a century earlier.

Around 1796 Tipu proposed to Zaman Shah the King of Afghanistan to come to India and help him rid India of the British. He writes a letter to the Afghan king and this paragraph inside is interesting :

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” That your Majesty should remain in your capital (Kabul), and send one of your noblemen, in whom you have confidence, to Delhi, with an army; that this person, on his arrival there, should make the necessary arrangements, and, after deposing the infirm King (Mughal Emperor Shah Alam), who has reduced the faith to this state of weakness, select from among the family someone properly qualified for the government; he should remain one year, for the purpose of settling the country (North India); and taking with him, the chiefs of the country who are Rajpoots and others, direct his standard towards the Dekhan;”

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This goes to show the awe Tipu had regarding the prowess of the Rajputs, that he asked the Afghan King to arrange for them to join him and come to the Deccan to rid the South of the English (Marathas and the Nizam as well). It is well known that this plan came to naught with Zaman Shah being unable to come to Mysore’s aid.

Muhammad Hussein Ali Kirmani who lived through the time of Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan in their court and wrote their biographies too mentions about a curious request made by Tipu to the Jadeja Rajput  Maharao (King) of Kutch. We know that the Mysorean diplomatic embassy to Afghanistan was asked to visit enroute the court of the Maharao of Kutch. A large Mysorean factory or warehouse already existed there which was one among Mysore’s several warehouses where various finished gods as well as raw material from Mysore would be traded for cash or goods in return. Kutchi traders were very enterprising and Tipu used their reach and skills to trade with the Persian Gulf too. A khilat or honorary robe had already been presented to the brother of the Maharao and gifts to other senior officers there. Kirmani mentions in the Nishan-i-Haidari :

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“as according to the customs of kings of Delhi, first introduced by Sultan Jalal-uddin Muhammad Akbar; for they previously, demanded the daughters of the family of Jaswant, previous to the Sultan’s accession a certain ceremony remained unperformed, the Sultan having dispatched hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Raja of Kutch; by his presents and favours made him obedient and willing to send his daughter to him in marriage. At that period, however, fortune being employed in endeavours to ruin those professing the true religion, and the defender of God’s people; this happy result was not obtained.”

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So Tipu had in a grand scheme of emulating none other than the Mughal Emperor Akbar who he had already emulated in replacing the Hijri calendar with the Mauludi and in assuming some names not usually used by Muslim monarchs, requested Maharao of Kutch for a Royal Princess in marriage. The Jaswant that Kirmani mentions in his manuscript signifies any Rajput ‘possessed of courage and enterprise’! The proposal failed obviously because the Jadeja Rajput would have refused to offer his daughter to a Muslim king however friendly he would have been. Those were the days when a clan of Rajputs would not dine with another Rajput clan who they perceived as below their standing.  And in that age, marrying ones daughter to a muslim, even a muslim monarch would have been catastrophic to the Maharao’s  social standing. This in all probability masks Kirmani’s account of the curt dismissal of Tipu’s marriage proposal by the Maharao of Kutch as ‘misfortune’.

So over two centuries ago the prestige that the Rajputs carried with them and Tipu Sultan’s great desire to have military alliances with this community brought in a  number of Rajput families to Mysore who have since adopted the city as their own home to whose well being, families like R G Singhs’ have contributed in no small measure.

References:

Computation of the Forces of the Sultan in June 1798, from Macleod’s computation (Forrest’s selections, Maratha series, Vol. I, part III, p. 723)

From Appendix (A) No. 22 – Translation of  paper entitled Proposition to his Majesty Zemaun Shah from A review of the Origin, Progress, and Result of the Decisive war with the Late Tippoo Sultaun in Mysore, 1800

Karnataka State Archives, Red Books, Col. W Morrison, Notes on Mysore – 1834 vide Tipu Sultan, Mysore State and the early Modern World, Dr. Nigel Chancellor

Mir Hussain Ali Khan Kirmani, Nisan-i-Haidari – History of Tipu Sultan (trans.) Col. W. Miles

Kate Brittlebank, Tipu Sultan’s search for legitimacy

Pay, Allowances and Pension of the British Army