Baroda, MADHYA PRADESH / Paris, FRANCE / London, UNITED KINGDOM :
If the proposal is passed, it will be the first time that non-white people will be featured on British coins or notes.
Born in Moscow to an Indian father and an American mother, Noor’s family moved to London and then to Paris during the First World War. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
British media reported this week that Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is considering a proposal to feature historical figures from the Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) community of the country on a set of coins titled ‘Service to the Nation’.
If the proposal is passed, it will be the first time that non-white people will be featured on British coins or notes. The plan has been submitted to the Royal Mint, which is to come up with proposals and designs.
Zehra Zaidi of the advocacy campaign ‘Banknotes of Colour’, along with a group of historians and MPs, had written to the Chancellor proposing some historical figures. Among them were the Indian-origin British spy Noor Inayat Khan, as well as Khudadad Khan, the first soldier of the British Indian Army to receive the Victoria Cross. Khudadad Khan, who belonged to the Chakwal district of Punjab in present-day Pakistan, died in 1971.
The continuing Black Lives Matter protests in the United States , triggered by the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis in May, which have put a spotlight on the lack of BAME representation in the UK, and have compelled authorities to take appropriate steps.
Who was Noor Inayat Khan?
Born in Moscow to an Indian father and an American mother, her family moved to London and then to Paris during the First World War. Although Noor started working as a children’s writer in Paris, she escaped to England after the fall of France (when it was invaded by Germany) during the Second World War.
In November 1940, she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, an arm of the UK’s Royal Air Force to train as a wireless operator. She then did a stint at the secret intelligence organisation set up by Winston Churchill called Special Operations Executive (SOE).
A bust of Noor Inayat Khan in Gordon Square, London. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
She became the first radio operator to be sent to Paris to work for SOE’s Prosper resistance network under the codename Madeleine. She was just 29 then, and had signed up for a job in which people were not expected to be alive for longer than six weeks.
Even as many members of the network were being arrested by the Nazi secret police Gestapo, Noor chose to stay put — and spent the summer moving from one place to another, sending messages back to London, until she was arrested in 1943.
She was executed at the Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany near Munich. Noor was awarded the highest honour in the UK, the George Cross, in 1949, and the French Croix de Guerre with the silver star posthumously.
What was Noor’s connection to India?
She was connected to India through her father Inayat Khan. He was founder of the Sufi Order of the West, which is now known as the Inayati Order. He had migrated to the West as n Hindustani classical musician, and then moved to teaching Sufism.
Inayat Khan was born in Baroda. His maternal grandfather was the noted musician Ustad Maula Bakhsh Khan, who founded the music academy Gyanshala, which now serves as the Faculty of Performing Arts at Maharaja Sayajirao University. Maula Bakhsh’s wife, Qasim Bibi, was a granddaughter of Tipu Sultan of Mysore.
Inayat returned to India in 1926 and chose the site of his burial at the Nizamuddin Dargah complex in New Delhi. The Inayat Khan dargah still stands in a corner of the complex.
Besides being a GC, what other honours has Noor received?
In 2014, Britain’s Royal Mail had issued a postage stamp in honour of Noor as part of a set of 10 stamps in the ‘Remarkable Lives’ series. In 2012, a memorial with a bust of Noor was unveiled in London by Princess Anne. Shrabani Basu, author of ‘Spy Princess, The Life of Noor Inayat Khan’, and Chair of the Noor Inayat Khan Memorial Trust, had campaigned for the memorial.
In February 2019, Noor’s London home at 4 Taviton Street in Bloomsbury, the house that she left for her final mission, was honoured with a blue plaque. She was the first Indian-origin woman to be awarded the plaque.
How has Noor been represented in popular culture?
Various documentaries on women agents and the SOE have featured her story, such as Netflix’s ‘Churchill’s Secret Agents: The New Recruits’. In 2018, a play titled ‘Agent Madeleine’ premiered at the Ottawa Fringe Festival.
In 2012, Indian producers Zafar Hai and Tabrez Noorani obtained the film rights to the biography by Basu. In the film ‘Liberté: A Call to Spy’, an American historical drama, actor Radhike Apte played the role of Noor. The film had its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival last year.
source: http://www.indianexpress.com / The Indian Express / Home> Explained / by Surbhi Gupta / New Delhi / July 29th, 2020
Mysore , KARNATAKA / Moscow, RUSSIA /Paris, FRANCE / London , United KINGDOM :
A LIFE of a British spy princess who was the first woman radio operator to be sent into Nazi-occupied France has been commemorated to mark International Women’s Day.
Noor Inayat Khan (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
Noor Inayat Khan is the most highly decorated Muslim woman in British Military history and was only aged 30 when she was executed in Dachau Concentration Camp in September 1944 after being captured by the Gestapo in Paris the previous year. Like 20,000 others who have no known grave she is remembered at the Runnymede Air Forces Memorial. Now her life and legacy has been brought to a new audience in a digital exhibition Noor Inayat-Khan: A Woman of Conspicuous Courage created by Commonwealth War Graves Foundation and the girl guides.
It tells how the unlikely spy came to die for her country and the courage she showed under torture while visitors will be able to put their code breaking skills to the test and discover the technical skills a wireless operator needed behind enemy lines.
Jasmine Theti, 15, of Girlguiding Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, said: “We must never forget her and the sacrifice she made.
“I loved learning the Morse Code it was good fun.
“Although I wouldn’t have liked sending messages in a cold Parisian park whilst looking over my shoulder all the time. Noor was an inspiration.”
Noor was born on New Year’s Day 1914 in Moscow to an Indian father and an American mother and was a direct descendant of Tipu Sultan, the 18th century Muslim ruler of Mysore.
The family moved to London then Paris where she was educated and worked as a children’s author.
After the fall of France, she and her brother escaped to England and in November 1940 she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force becoming a radio operator at RAF Abingdon.
But the fluent French speaker soon came to the attention of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and in late 1942 was recruited.
Noor Inayat Khan, left, with her mother (Image: Shrabani Basu/ PA Wire)
However they were unsure whether she would make a good agent, worried she was too honest and kind-hearted and couldn’t blend into a crowd.
She proved them wrong when she joined the Paris resistance in July 1943 just as the Gestapo were closing in.
While members were rounded up she evaded capture and ended up as the only SOE radio operator for the whole Paris region.
But two days before she was due to be replaced in October she was betrayed and arrested.
Remarkably she twice managed to escape from the Parisian prison before being sent to Germany the following month where she was kept in chains and in solitary confinement for 10 months.
Resisting repeated torture she and three other women SOE agents were finally taken to Dachau and shot on September 13, 1944.
For her courage she was posthumously awarded Britain’s highest civilian bravery medal The George’s Cross in 1949.
Julian Evans of the CWGC which looks after the Runnymede memorial added: “Noor’s story is an inspirational one and we believed it important, as the custodians of the memorial on which her name is inscribed, to help give it greater prominence.
“We hope that the exhibition will encourage more people to visit the Air Forces Memorial to explore the story of Noor and the 20,000 other members of the Commonwealth Air Forces who are commemorated here.”
source: http://www.express.co.uk / Express / Home> News> UK / by Tony Whitefield / March 08th, 2020
An experts’ committee constituted by the state government to look into the demand of BJP MLA Appachu Ranjan, who sought removal of content related to Tipu Sultan from textbooks, on Tuesday recommended against the demand by urging the government to retain the content on Tipu.
The committee, comprising academicians and historians, had submitted the report to the Karnataka Textbook Society on Monday and expressed an opinion that chapters on the ruler of Mysore currently prescribed in textbooks are only introductory in nature about the life of Tipu Sultan. “It is impossible to teach the history of Mysore without the introduction to Tipu,” the committee noted in its report.
Sources in the committee told DH that all textbooks contain only factual and introductory information about Tipu Sultan. “We have not arrived at any judgement based on the controversy. Being historians, it was our duty to submit a factual report,” revealed a member of the committee. Historians, who were part of the committee, have also advised that some of the documents submitted by Appachu Ranjan need to be verified.
Karnataka Textbook Society officials will now submit the report to the state government for a final decision. Textbooks for classes 6, 7 and 10 had lessons pertaining to Tipu Sultan and his administration.
BJP MLA from Madikeri Appachu Ranjan had appealed to Primary and Secondary Education Minister Suresh Kumar and Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa to drop content related to Tipu Sultan from school textbooks.
source: http://www.deccanherald.com / Deccan Herald / Home> City> Bengaluru Politics / by DHNS, Bengaluru / December 10th, 2019
Tipu Sultan was born on November 20, 1750 and died on May 4, 1799 fighting with the Colonial forces
New Delhi:
Twitter users on Wednesday paid rich tributes to Tipu Sultan on his birth anniversary, with many posting the quotes of the King of the erstwhile Kingdom of Mysore as also pictures of his prized possessions with hashtags #Tipusultan, #SherEHindTipuSultan, #TipuJayanti and #TigerOfMysore.
As many as 3,143 tweets were posted by Twitterati on Tipu Sultan.
Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi leader Prakash Ambedkar wrote: “Tipu Sultan, the king of Mysore, will always be known for his valour and his continuous resistance against the British rule”.
“A tribute to the first freedom fighter of India on his birth anniversary”, the grandson of Dr BR Ambedkar wrote.
Another Twitter user wrote: “Tipu Sultan was the only Indian ruler who understood the dangers the British posed to India, and fought four wars to oust them from India – in that sense he could be called the first freedom fighter in the subcontinent”.
One user posted a quote attributed to Tipu Sultan: “One day’s life of a lion is preferable to hundred years of a jackal”.
Many Twitter users also hailed his liking for advanced technology.
“Tipu Sultan was fascinated by science & technology, got gun-makers, engineers, clockmakers & other experts from France to Mysore, then set up a manufacturing of bronze cannons, ammunition & muskets to ‘Make in Mysore’. Basically the first who worked for MakeinIndia”, (sic) wrote one user.
Make in India is a type of Swadeshi movement covering 25 sectors of the Indian economy. It was launched by the Government of India on 25 September 2014 to encourage companies to manufacture their products in India and enthuse with dedicated investments into manufacturing.
Tipu Sultan was born on November 20, 1750 and died on May 4, 1799 fighting with the Colonial forces.
source: http://www.ummid.com / Ummid.com / Home> India / by Ummid.com with inputs from IANS / November 20th, 2019
It is an irony that Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, whom the current government in Karnataka wants to remove from its history, is celebrated in Britain, France and the US in song, drama, opera, novel, poetry and paintings. A wealth of Tipu’s personal effects, curiosities and artifacts have found way into numerous art galleries and museums in many countries in the West. There’s not a major museum in the UK that does not exhibit some artifact related to Tipu.
The 75th Highlanders were a regiment raised in Scotland to exclusively fight Tipu. Scottish generals like Sir Hector Munro, Baillie, Beatson, Fraser, Gordon, Dunlop and others participated in the wars against Tipu. The Scots, more than the English, were in the forefront of the British forces in all the Anglo-Mysore wars fought by Tipu as well as his father Hyder Ali. That explains the importance of the display of Tipu memorabilia in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
After Tipu was finally defeated and killed in 1799 by the British, under the command of Arthur Wellesley, the future Lord Wellington who 16 years later defeated Napoleon Bonaparte in the Battle of Waterloo, images of Tipu, his capital Srirangapatam (Srirangapatna) and his numerous impregnable forts and fortresses, proliferated throughout Britain. No other Indian ruler ever captured the imagination of the average Englishman as Tipu did. It is said that British housewives would quieten their babies by whispering “else, Tipu Sultan will come and get you.” Even three decades after Tipu’s death, his name was such a terror that when Ram Mohan Roy visited England on a mission from the then Mughal emperor, hostile crowds confronted him in London, mistaking him to be related to Tipu because his headgear resembled Tipu’s iconic turban.
Tipu Sultan, his capital city Srirangapatam, and the wars he fought against the British became favourite subjects for paintings, sketches and etchings by some of the most famous artists of the day in England and Scotland. When Ker Porter, the famous Scottish painter’s Panorama — a single large painting of Tipu — was displayed in Edinburgh, there was euphoria among the public as they rushed to have a glimpse of it. JMW Turner, the renowned British painter, painted portraits of Tipu and scenes of Srirangapatam and other places in Mysore kingdom. Sir David Willkie, another famous painter, was commissioned by the widow of David Baird to paint the poignant “Discovering the body of Tipu Sahib on 4 May, 1799”. It was exhibited in 1838 in the Royal Academy of Arts in London. David Baird had spent several years in Srirangapatam as Tipu’s prisoner, and had his revenge in the final assault on him.
Alexander Allen travelled to India to personally see the hill forts of Mysore kingdom and produced captivating scenes in his paintings. William Darnell Beckford, Holmes, Hunter and many others made several stunning paintings of Tipu and his palaces. Sir Walter Scott, the great Scottish novelist, wrote works of fiction based on Tipu and his times. Charles Dickens, Wilkes Collins and Jules Verne have all depicted themes from Tipu’s life in their novels.
The numerous artifacts of Tipu Sultan, pilfered, looted and spirited away by the British after the fall of Srirangapatam, became collectors’ items. Tipu’s dismantled throne, his numerous swords, daggers, bejeweled sword belts, hookahs, ivory caskets , nutcrackers, gold watches, precious jewels and many other priceless items occupy the pride of place in museums in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Wales.
The most awesome of these artifacts is the life-size toy tiger depicted devouring a British soldier. It has cast a spell over generations eve since it was spirited away by Wellesley to England where it was displayed at the Kensington Museum, now known as Victoria and Albert Museum (V& A Museum). This toy tiger in bright yellow strips has in its belly a mechanical pipe organ hidden, which creates wailing shrieks and a loud road when its handle is turned. There was near stampede for months in front of the museum when people flocked to see the wonder toy of Tipu Sultan. The fact that it is kept in an exclusive large room in the otherwise crowded V&A Museum, and with separate security, speaks of the importance that is accorded to this curious Mysore object. A replica of it is at the Scottish National Museum in Edinburgh. It was commissioned in 1999, when the bi-centenary of Tipu’s death was commemorated, as the original one at V&A could not be moved for fear of damaging it in transit.
The most significant of Tipu’s artifacts are at the Edinburgh castle. Inside the castle is the ‘National War Museum’, in which the battle honours of the Scottish Regiments are displayed. Here are seen several swords and arms used by the Scottish generals against Tipu and his Mysore armies. What is interesting are the words Carnatic, Mysore, and Srirangapatam engraved on the granite slabs displayed on the walls.
At a private museum in Powai Castle in Wales, one can see Tipu’s camp tent, made of silk and heavily embroidered, his camp cot made of sandalwood, his hookah and many other personal items, besides two large cannons.
A painting of Tipu with his war rockets hung on a wall at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia in the US was seen by young APJ Abdul Kalam when he was on a visit there in his early years at ISRO, about which he wrote as an inspiration many years later.
At the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF), held annually in August, Tipu’s memories come alive during the closing ceremony’s fireworks display when the Scots burst explosives and fire rockets around the castle to create scenes of their soldiers encountering deadly fires around Tipu’s forts in Nandidurg, Savandurg and other places.
Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, died 220 years ago, but his legend continues in the lands of those he fought fiercely against, who appreciate his valour, unyielding spirit and reckless courage. In the land that he defended from them, his memory is sought to be erased from school textbooks.
(The writer is a former Professor of History at the University of Hyderabad)
source: http://www.deccanherald.com / Deccan Herald / Home> Opinion> Comment / by K S S Seshan / November 07th, 2019
Karnataka BJP chief Appachu Ranjan mentioned Tipu Sultan looted temples and compelled conversions.
Kolkata:
After a BJP MLA in Karnataka mentioned classes on the 18th century ruler of the erstwhile Mysore kingdom Tipu Sultan have to be faraway from textbooks, a descendant of the king mentioned that it’s shameful that he being focused for vote financial institution politics.
Chatting with information company ANI, Md Shahid Alam mentioned, “History can never be deleted. Tipu Sultan was a freedom fighter. I will write a letter to the Prime Minister regarding this.”
“Some people are playing vote bank politics which is quite shameful. People cannot deny that he was a freedom fighter. History is like this and will remain so in future,” he added.
On Wednesday, Karnataka BJP chief Appachu Ranjan wrote to Training Minister S Suresh Kumar asking for Tipu Sultan’s reference to be struck off historical past textbooks.
In a letter, Mr Ranjan wrote that Tipu Sultan has been portrayed as a freedom fighter and historical past shouldn’t be written with false details.
“Tipu came to Kodagu, Mangaluru and other parts of the state to expand his territory. He came here just to convert people to his religion and to expand his kingdom,” he mentioned.
He added that king had no respect for Kannada as his administrative language was Persian. “He changed names of places. He looted many temples and Christian churches as well. In Kodagu, he converted 30 thousand Kodavas,” Mr Ranjan wrote in his letter.
source: http://www.heraldpublicist. om / Herald Publicist / Home> News / by Pete / October 24th, 2019
The view of the 12th century edifice at Edinburgh castle that houses the National War Museum.
The legend of Tipu Sultan is still alive in far away Scotland
It is an irony that Tipu sultan, the ‘Tiger of Mysore’, whose birth anniversary celebrations in India became a contentious issue recently, in Scotland whose soldiers and commanders fought for the dissemination of this great warrior king, the only Indian monarch to have died on the battlefield fighting the British, is cherished and commemorated in song, dance, drama, opera, in novel and in paintings. A wealth of personal effects and curiosities of Tipu Sultan have found way to numerous art galleries and museums in Scotland, particularly in its capital Edinburgh.
The participation of the Scots in the affairs of the East India Company began immediately after the unification of Scotland with England through an Act of Union in 1707. Since then Scottish people began coming to India as soldiers, generals, writers, administrators, traders, merchants and missionaries. But they excelled in their service as military generals and commanders. A separate Regiment of foot, the ‘75 Highlanders’ 75th .Highlanders was raised in Scotland to deal with Tipu Sultan. Scottish generals like Sir Hector Munro, Baillie, Beatson, Fraser, Gordon, Dunlop and others participated in the military operations against Tipu. The Scots, more than the English were in the forefront of the British forces in almost all the Mysore wars fought between 1760 and 1799.
After Tipu was finally dismembered by the British under the command of General Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, the images of Tipu Sultan as well as Srirangapatnam proliferated in Britain. No other Indian ruler, against whom the British fought and won, captured the imagination of the average Britisher at home, as much as that of Tipu Sultan. There were tales of mythical proportions in circulation about his valour, reckless energy and merciless acts of tortures meted to the captured British soldiers. It is said that British housewives used to threaten their weeping babies with the ‘arrival of Tipu’ to silence them
The images of Tipu Sultan and his capital, Srirangapatnam became subjects for paintings and art sketches throughout Britain. When Ker Porter’s Panorama a single large painting of Tipu Sultan was displayed in Edinburgh, there was euphoria among the Scots to have a glimpse of it. The celebrated British painters J.M.W. Turner and J.S. Cotman painted scenes of Srirangapatnam and other places in Mysore besides the portraits of Tipu. Sir David Willkie, the famous painter of the day was commissioned by the widow of Sir David Baird, and his poignant painting Discovering the body of Tipu Sahib on 4 May, 1799, was exhibited in 1838 in the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The Scottish General David Baird had spent several years in Srirangapatnam as a prisoner of Tipu before avenging in the final assault on Tipu.
Alexander Allen an artist of great repute travelled to India to personally see the hill forts in Mysore kingdom before he produced captivating sketches. William Darnell and Beckford also produced several sketches that survive even today. Holmes’ Select Views of Mysore, and Hunter’s Picturesque Scenery in the Kingdom of Mysore also evoked great enthusiasm in Britain. The Mysore wars offered exciting subjects and artists who never even visited India responded to the popular appeal of the Tiger of Mysore. As a result of such prolific paintings, the image of Tipu was so much etched in the collective memory of the Britishers that decades later, when Raja Ram Mohan Roy visited England, he had to confront hostile crowds as he was mistaken to be a descendant of Tipu Sultan. The head gear he wore was similar to the huge turban Tipu wore.
Returning soldiers of Scotland provided Sir Walter Scott with anecdotes for his novels on India. Several dramas and stage plays depicting Tipu and his fall were written and enacted at the Royal Corbug theatre in Edinburgh. Events at Srirangapatnam also appear in the writings of the novelists like Charles Dickens, Wilkes Collins and Jules Verne.
The remnants of Tipu Sultan’s dismantled throne, his numerous swords, daggers, bejewelled sword-belts, hukkas, ivory caskets, and several other artefacts were displayed in Glasgow and Edinburgh besides London.
Tiger in Museum:
In 1999, National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, as a part of the bi-centennial celebrations of Tipu’s death, held a special exhibition and decided to make Tipu’s Toy Tiger as a special exhibit along with several other Tipu’s memorabilia. But as the antique Toy Tiger was advised by exerts not to be moved from Victoria & Albert museum, fearing damage in the transit, a replica of it was made for the occasion.
The Toy Tiger is an awesome life size wooden toy seen devouring a European in military uniform. This impressive toy has cast a spell over generations of admirers since 1808 when it was first displayed in the Indian section of Kensington Museum now called Victoria & Albert Museum. The Toy in its body has a mechanical pipe organ hidden and by turning a handle, creates wailing shrieks and a loud roar. The design of this Toy Tiger is said to have been inspired by the death of the son of the Scottish General, Sir Hector Munro, a bête Notre of Tipu Sultan.
Tipu’s Memories at Edinburgh Castle:
The most significant of Tipu’s memories lay at the imposing castle in Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital. This historical castle, perched on a hillock with a commanding site, is a national symbol of Scotland. Inside the castle is located ‘National War Museum’in which the ‘the Battle Honors” of the Scottish Regiments are displayed. Here are seen numerous ornamental swords belonging to the several prominent Scottish Generals who saw action in the Mysore wars. Swords presented to Generals as souvenirs and medals are also on display What is surprising is the words, ‘Carnatic’, ‘Mysore’, and ‘Srirangapatnam’ carved in stone, are seen on the wall of this Museum indicating the importance the Scots bestowed on their combats during the wars against Tipu.
At the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF), held annually in August with several programmes of music, theatre, opera and dance, Tipu’s memories also come alive . The closing ceremony of the EIF held at the Castle is marked by spectacular display of fireworks. The scene is suddenly shrouded in darkness and bellowing smoke as rockets and explosives presents dramatic images of a big hill-fort under siege. This is an imitation of the Mysore wars when Scottish soldiers in India were familiar with such sights when deadly fires were showered on them from the impregnable forts like Nandidurg, Savandurg and Ootradurg in Tipu’s kingdom. It is said that four tons of explosives are used that evening for the celebration of such fireworks. Tipu Sultan, the ‘Tiger of Mysore’ must have died two centuries ago, but his enduring legend continues to be celebrated in far away Scotland with genuine nostalgia.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Friday Review / by K.S.S. Seshan / Hyderabad – March 17th, 2016
Surrender of Baillie to Hyder Ali, 1780, illustration from ‘Cassell’s Illustrated History of England’ (20th century) 1780
It was 1765 and a Duke in faraway England known for breeding race horses named his foal Hyder Ally. A few years later in 1782, and many more thousand miles away at the other end of the world, a single mast ship named Hyder Ally gave the fledgling navy of United States of America one of its greatest victories. How are these two events related and what connection did they have with the people of the erstwhile Kingdom of Mysore, the precursor to modern day Karnataka state, India?
In 1749 a 27-year old youth Haidar Ali (Hyder Ally as the British spelled his name), born at Budikote in modern day Kolar district, Karnataka put his military skills in action for the Mysore Army during the nine month siege of Devanahally Fort against a Poligor. Poligars (or Palegaras in Kannada language) were the local strong men, each controlling a few fortified settlements prior to the British rule. In early 1750s Haidar was also part of the action between the French and English in their struggle to install a person of their choice as Nawab of Arcot in which the Mysore Army sided with the English. Haidar Ali increased his stature among the military circles of the Mysore Army and was elevated asFaujdar of Dindigul in 1755. He successfully led Mysorean resistance to the Maratha invasion in 1759 and was consequently elevated as the Chief Commander of its army. Haidar’s perseverance in fighting his political foes paid off and in 1761 he was the lone survivor around the utterly weak Mysore King of the Wodeyar dynasty. He proclaimed himself a Nawab soon and found himself the de-facto ruler of Mysore Kingdom, being the most successful in protecting it from invasions by both other Indian kingdoms as well as Europeans 1. By then the British East India Company had its eyes set firmly on peninsular India having taken control of Bengal in 1757 as a consequent of the Battle of Plassey.
Back in England, Peregrine Bertie was the 3rd Duke of Ancaster in England having succeeded his father in Jan 1742 2. He raised a regiment of foot for the King of England during the rebellion in Scotland in 1745 3. He was subsequently promoted to the rank of a General in the Army in 1755 and later as a Lieut. Gen., in 1759 4. Peregrine was a leading horse racer who started a number of famous racing lines 5. He was appointed Master of the Horse to Queen Charlotte, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland in 1765. Peregrine as a military administrator was probably aware of the military and political happenings in India. In fact he was transferred in a year from the post of the Master of the Horse to the Queen to that of the King, where he was ‘responsible for overall management of all the royal stables, horses, carriages’. This transfer was due to the changes affected by the stock-holders of East India (EI) Company in England. The stock-holders were apparently alarmed by the acts of the English Prime Minister Lord Chatham to curb the influence of EI Company which by then controlled huge resources and land across in India. Given this background Peregrine was probably informed of the meteoric rise of Haidar Ali in south India’s political and military theatre. Indeed in 1760 an overconfident English Army detachment under Major Moore tasted its first defeat at the hands of Mysoreans under Haidar Ali at Trivadi near Pondicherry. And through that decade Haidar continued to spoil the political, economic and military aims of East India Company in Peninsular India with ramifications beyond this country given the global nature of the company’s trade. Did the military acumen of this Mysorean soldier play a role in Peregrine in naming his foal Hyder Ally in 1765 6,7? This may not be surprising as another race horse breeder in England named a foal Tippoo Saib in 1769 8, 9. Just a couple of years ago in June 1767, 17-year old Tipu Sultan (or Tippoo Saib as the British preferred to call him), heading a small force of the Mysore Army, stormed East India Company’s HQ in south India at Madras and nearly imprisoned the Madras councillors who threw themselves into the sea and escaped in a dingy. A year later Tipu recovered Mangalore from the British who fled the fort leaving behind their sick and wounded 10. The military and political deeds of this father-son seem to have left an impression on the British psyche.
US Navy’s tryst with Hyder Ally
Chance a race horse imported into USA by Col. Tayloe was a line of Peregrine’s Hyder Ally 8,11. Interestingly foals within America were also being named Hyder Ally (and Tippoo Saib) in 1770s.
A pamphlet advertisement for a stallion of Hyder Ally’s line published in the city of Portsmouth, USA in 1798. Accessed from Library of Congress, USA on November 5, 2017 from this link.
The first Hyder Ally to be foaled in America was in 1777 and four other foals were recorded with the name in 18th century 12, 13. But something very interesting was recorded in eye witness accounts of America’s history in 1770s. An upheaval overtook the country in 1775 as ordinary Americans rose against the Government of Great Britain, declared independence and flew their own flag 14, 15. Apparently the first flag of the Union, now the US national flag- the Stars and Stripes, sent to the state of Maryland was hosted on a sailboat by teenaged Joshua Barney at Baltimore in October 1775 who served the US Navy since then.
‘Rocket Warfare’, by Charles H. Hubbell (1898–1971) captures the humiliation of British at the Battle of Pollilur (Sep. 1780) by Mysorean war rockets
In 1780, in far-away Mysore Kingdom, America’s ally against the British through the French, the East India Company was suffering one of its worst reverses in its military history. The reverberations of the humiliation of British at Battle of Pollilur in September 1780 inspired the Americans who received the news 16 on 23 August 1781. On 19 October 1781, the British land force led by Charles Cornwallis (who later led EI Company’s army and its Indian allies to defeat Haidar Ali’s son Tipu Sultan in the 3rd Anglo Mysore War) surrendered to the Americans led by George Washington. Nine days later Cornwallis’ surrender was celebrated at Trenton, New Jersey with the town being decorated with American colours. The town’s who’s who along with inhabitants attended a service at the Presbyterian Church, where a discourse highlighting the occasion was delivered by a Reverend. In the afternoon the gathering drank 13 toasts accompanied with a discharge of artillery one of which was for ‘The great and heroic Hyder Ali, raised up by Providence to avenge the numberless cruelties perpetrated by the English on his unoffending countrymen, and to check the insolence and reduce the power of Britain in the East Indies’.
In October 1781, the British land force led by Charles Cornwallis surrendered to the Americans led by George Washington (Incidentally a decade later Cornwallis gave EI Company and its Indian allies victory over Haidar Ali’s son Tipu Sultan in the 3rd Anglo Mysore War in India). But America was far from being an independent nation. The British still ruled the seas. They kept a keen watch on the ships entering and exiting the ports of north east USA, often capturing the vessels and looting goods 17.
General Washington an American sloop-of-war was captured by Admiral Arbuthnot, and placed in the king’s service under a new name The General Monk, which was then used to pirate American ships. By 1782 the commerce of Philadelphia City as well as the ordinary life of the residents of the coast and nearby streams was deteriorating. As the fledgling American Union was not in a position to protect the affected vessels the State of Pennsylvania, at its own expense, fitted a number of armed vessels that operated in waters leading to Philadelphia. The state purchased Hyder Ally, a small sloop (single mast ship) equipped it with sixteen six-pounder guns to help protect the American vessels. 23-year old Lieutenant Joshua Barney, now in the US navy, arrived at Philadelphia where he was honoured with the command of Hyder Ally17. Assigned with recruiting men, Barney used a poem penned by Philip Morin Freneau18 to attract young American men to the ship. The poem exalted Haidar Ali’s bravery against the British with the following lines:
Come, all ye lads who know no fear,
To wealth and honour with me steer
In the Hyder Ali privateer,
Commanded by brave Barney.
From an eastern prince she takes her name,
Who, smit with freedom’s sacred flame,
Usurping Britons brought to shame,
His country’s wrongs avenging;
Come, all ye lads that know no fear.
With hand and heart united all
Prepared to conqueror to fall.
Attend, my lads! to honor’s call —
Embark in our Hyder-Ally!
And soon Barney led a force of a hundred and ten men. On April 8, 1872, he received instructions to protect a fleet of merchantmen to the Capes just before the sea, at the entrance of Delaware Bay. Dropping the convoy at Cape May road he was awaiting a fair wind to take the merchant ship to sea when he saw three ships19 which he realised were waiting to plunder the convoy. Barney immediately turned the convoy back into the bay, using Hyder Ally to cover the retreat. Soon the bigger General Monk under the command of Captain Rogers of the Royal Navy nearly double his own force of metal, and nearly one-fourth superior in number of men caught up with Hyder Ally. Despite being fired upon, Barney held Hyder Ally’s fire till within pistol shot when both the two vessels got entangled. A desperate fight, lasting for only 26 minutes though, resulted in the lowering of flags by General Monk indicating her surrender. Both vessels arrived at Philadelphia a few hours after the action, bearing their respective dead. The Hyder Ally had four men killed and eleven wounded. The General Monk lost twenty men killed and had thirty-three wounded including Captain Rogers himself, and every officer on board, except one midshipman!20
Source: ‘Life of Commodore Joshua Barney, Hero of the US Navy (1776-1812), 1912
A hero is celebrated
Philadelphia burst in celebrations. Ballads were made upon this brilliant victory and sung through the streets of the city! And echoing with Barney’s name was that of Hyder Ally. Here are some lines 14:
And fortune still, that crowns the brave
Shall guard us o’er the gloomy wave —
A fearful heart betrays a knave!
Success to the Hyder-Ally!
While the roaring Hyder-Ally
Cover’do’er his decks with dead !
When from their tops, their dead men tumbled
And the streams of blood did flow,
Then their proudest hopes were humbled
By their brave inferior foe.
In 1782 the Legislature of Pennsylvania passed a vote of thanks to Captain Barney and ordered a gold-hilted sword to be prepared, which was afterwards presented to him in the name of the state by Governor Dickinson. It was a small sword with mountings of chased gold- the guard of which on the one side had a representation of the Hyder Ally, and on the other the General Monk 14. Barney was the last officer to quit the Union’s service, in July, 1784, having been for many months before the only officer retained by the United States.
Source: ‘Life of Commodore Joshua Barney, Hero of the US Navy (1776-1812), 1912
Barney was sent by the American Government to Paris. A reception was given in France him as a hero of dashing naval exploits during the Revolutionary War 21. A painting representing the action between the two shipswas executed in 1802 by L. P. Crepin in Paris by order of Barney, while in the service of the French Republic. The same was presented by him on his return to the United States, to Robert Smith, Esquire, then secretary of the navy 22. The painting is now in the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland 14. Barney was an intimate friend of Count Bertrand, one of Napoleon’s generals 15. Napolean incidentally had an alliance against the British with Haidar Ali’s son Tipu Sultan, during the latter’s life time 23.
Barney was appointed a Captain in the Flotilla Service, US Navy on 1814 April 25 24. He took part in seventeen battles during the Revolutionary War and in nine battles during the War of 1812. A British Musket-ball lodged inside his body in battle at Bladensburg, Maryland in August 1814 25. He passed away on December 1, 1818, aged 60.
70 years after Hyder Ally’s victory over General Monk, James Cooper wrote “This action has been justly deemed one of the most brilliant that ever occurred under the American Flag. It was fought in the presence of a vastly superior force that was not engaged, and the ship taken was in every essential respect superior to her conqueror.”17
The world today is considered a global village thanks to the scaling down of boundaries between nation states and individuals alike. But it may surprise us even in the 18th century seemingly local political events and humans made an impact on lands and societies far away. The name Haidar Ali, after an adventurer from an obscure place in the erstwhile Kingdom of Mysore who gave many a lesson in military and political strategies to global colonial powers of England and France, echoing across the proverbial seven seas in distant North America for nearly a century is testament of this 26, 27.
Painting of Commodore Joshua Barney at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, ‘Life of Commodore Joshua Barney, Hero of the US Navy (1776-1812), 1912
Sources/ Notes:
Col. Mark Wilks, Historical Sketches of the South of India, Volume 1 of 3, 1810. Wilks traces the origins and political lives of Mysore Kingdom’s rulers and provides an insight into their military campaigns.
The New Peerage, or Present state of the Nobility of England, Vol. 1 of 4, 1784
The Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol.78, Part 1, 1808
George Cokayne, Complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, 1887
Allan Chivers, The Berties of Grimsthorpe Castle, 2010. Peregrine established the racing lines of Blank, Paymaster and Pacolet which were well-known in England. Their foals went to establish themselves in the US.
Blank was one of his favourite horses and he named a foal sired by it as Hyder Ally.
Hyder Ally was later sold by Bertie to C.Blake who then sold it to Richard Vernon. The later, in Oct. 1773, raced it at New Market, considered the birthplace and global centre of thoroughbred horse racing. Many of this horse’s progeny were imported into America and entered racing.
allbreedpedigree.com Online database on Pedigree horses. Downloaded Oct. 10, 2017.
It is interesting that it was not uncommon for race horses to have names originating in the east. Such names in 1700s included Mumtaz Mahal and Salim7. But Pergerine’s only horse named after a human was Hyder Ally.
Prof. B Sheikh Ali, Tipu Sultan – A Crusader for Change
American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine, Vol. 2, 1831
J.H.Wallace, American Stud Book, Vol. 1, 1867
Other books that document Hyder Ally foals and sires are William Pick and R.Johnson’s The Turf Register, and Sportsman & Breeder’s Stud-Book (1803) and Patrick Nisbett Edgar’s The American Race-turf Register, Sportsman’s Herald, and General Stud Book, Vol. 1 of 2 (1833)
A biographical memoir of the late Commodore Joshua Barney (1832) by Mary Barney sister of Joshua Barney provides in-depth information of the latter’s personal and military life.Born on July 6, 1759, 13-year old young Philadelphia Joshua Barney set sail on his maiden merchant ship journey to Ireland in 1771 with his brother in law Captain Thomas Drysdale. He sailed back home the following year and made trips to ports in Europe again. He set sail for Nice, France in December 1774 during which journey Captain Drysdale died. He took control of the ship which needed urgent repairs and therefore docked at Gibraltar, Spain instead. In a few months he sailed to Algiers, Algeria from Alicant, Spain to deliver Spanish troops during which he witnessed the annihilation of these troops by the Algerians which made him return to Alicant soon. He immediately set sail across the vast Atlantic Ocean for Baltimore, USA. As he entered the Chesapeake Bay on 1st October he was surprised by the British Sloop of war Kingfisher. An officer searched his ship and informed him that Americans had rebelled and that battles were being fought. He was fortunate enough to escape detention. Returning to Philadelphia he was determined to serve the Americans fight against British. At that time a couple of small vessels were under at Baltimore ready to join the small squadron of ships stationed then at Philadelphia and commanded by Commodore Hopkins. Barney offered his services to the commander the sloop Hornet, one of these vessels. He was made the master’s-mate, the sloop’s second in command. A new American Flag, the first ‘ Star-spangled Banner’ in the State of Maryland, sent by Commodore Hopkins for the service of the ten gun Hornet, arrived from Philadelphia. At the next sunrise, Barney unfurled it in all pomp and glory. In 1776, Robert Morris, President of the Marine Committee of the Congress offered him a letter of Appointment as a Lieutenant in the Navy of the United States in recognition of his efforts during a naval battle engagement in Delaware.
A summary of Mary Barney’s book14 is well recapped with notes in William Frederick Adams’ Commodore Joshua Barney: many interesting facts connected with the life of Commodore Joshua Barney, hero of the United States navy, 1776-1812 (1912).
Frank Moore, ‘Diary of the American Revolution’, Volume 2, 1860
James Fenimore Cooper in History of the Navy of the United States of America (1853)
‘The sailor’s invitation’, Freneau’s Poems written and published during the American Revolutionary War (1809)
Two ships and a brig- a sailing vessel with two masts
As explained by Barney himself in his painting of this war commissioned later
A. Bowen, The Naval Monument,1815, Concord, Massachusetts, U. S. A. gives an account of the reception received by Barney in France
The painting was accompanied by a description, in the hand-writing of Commodore Barney, which is reproduced in Mary Barney’s book
Record of Service, Bureau of Navigation, Navy Department, United States Navy
The conduct of Commodore Barney, at the battle of Bladensburgh, was appreciated by his military opponents as well. He was wounded in the engagement and was taken prisoner by General Ross and Admiral Cockburn but paroled on the spot. At the time of his death in 1818, the ball was extracted and given to his eldest son. For the valuable services of her husband, Congress granted Mrs. Barney a pension for life.
William Goold, Portland in the past, 1886 has information of at least one more well-known ship named Hyder Ally built in the US in 1800s after the one described in this story. This ship, like many other US ships, resorted to pirating British ships in the Indian Ocean all the way up to the island of Sumatra and around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa in the run up to the British-American War of 1812.27. Corbett’s Annual register (1802) documents the ship ‘Tippoo Saib’ registered in Savannah, Georgia, the southern most of the 13 colonies that declared independence from the British in 1776 and formed the original ‘United States of America’.
Tipu Sultan, son of Haider Ali, on an elephant in a detail from ‘The Battle of Pollilur’, 1780, a mural at Daria Daulat Palace, Seringapatam. Photo by Bridgeman Iages
If the sultan of Mysore had had a bit more luck, George Washington might be known as the Haider Ali of North America
If the sultan of Mysore had had a bit more luck, George Washington might be known as the Haider Ali of North America. As the ruler of Mysore, a kingdom in what is now southwestern India, Haider fought a series of wars with Great Britain in the latter half of the 18th century, at the onset of the Age of Revolution. While Haider was fighting his last battles against the British, Washington was leading the forces of the nascent United States from the harsh winter at Valley Forge to the final victory at Yorktown.
The circumstances of Haider’s childhood did not seem to mark the young man out for greatness. Born around 1720, Haider soon lost his father, a mercenary officer who died on campaign. Haider followed his father’s path, becoming an officer for the Wodeyar dynasty that ruled Mysore. After many years of service, he grew indispensable to the ruling family, sidelining it entirely by the 1760s. It was a dangerous time to come to power in South Asia. The British East India Company was expanding its power throughout the Subcontinent, at the expense of rulers from Bengal in the east to Haider’s neighbours in the south. Allied with France, however, Haider held off the British advance for another two decades, dying in 1782, just a year before the US triumphed in its own rebellion against Britain.
Haider and Washington never communicated directly with one another, but they fought against a common enemy, and shared a common ally. Like the Mysoreans, the American rebels were members of a global coalition funded by the French government, which saw both uprisings as a chance to humble Britain. In the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), Britain had ended nearly a century of conflict with its imperial rival in North America by seizing France’s vast territories in Canada and the Mississippi River Valley. Some French observers tried to minimise the extent of the defeat. Voltaire dismissed loss of North America as ‘a few acres of snow’. Yet French policymakers were well aware that Britain had greatly increased its power. Too weak to confront it again on its own, the French government wove a network of alliances, playing on resentments against Britain’s growing control of global trade and rapidly expanding empire. Beginning in the mid-1770s, it sent money and military advisors to both Mysore and the US, aiming to avenge its defeat by stoking colonial rebellions against Britain.
The alliance with France proved critical to the survival of the fledgling US. The memory of French aid, and particularly of the dashing Marquis de Lafayette’s assistance to Washington, has for more than two centuries served as a symbolic origins story of close Franco-American relations. During the Revolutionary War, however, Americans saw themselves not just as allies of France, but as part of a coalition that included Mysore.
Even after the US made peace with Britain in 1783, the American fascination with Haider and his son and successor, Tipu Sultan (1750-1799) lived on. Mysore’s rulers became familiar references in American newspapers, poems and everyday conversation. Yet, within a generation, Americans lost their sense of solidarity with the Indian Subcontinent. Mysore remained under British control, written out of the story of the American Revolution. The US turned its attention to the interior of North America, and to becoming an imperial power in its own right.
Even before the Revolutionary War, American interest in South Asia was lively. In fact, Americans’ rebellion against Britain in part grew out of the connections between America and the Subcontinent. Before the 1770s, Americans were cheerleaders, rather than critics, of British imperialism. The Philadelphia-born poet Nathaniel Evans (1742-1767) commemorated the victory of the East India Company at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, in which Robert Clive had seized control of Bengal:
The world to British valour yields
How has bold Clive, with martial toil
O’er India born his conqu’ring lance?
Sharing in Britain’s glory in this way seemed natural to Americans, who were proud to be part of the British Empire. The East India Company’s growing influence in Bengal enabled it to export large quantities of South Asian goods, particularly textiles, to American ports such as Boston and Charleston. Colonial elites displayed them in their homes with pride, signs that they were part of a global British empire growing rich from the spoils of the Subcontinent.
While Americans were free to purchase these imperial commodities, they were not free to join British merchants in South Asia. Britain’s colonies served to provide the motherland with raw materials. They were not supposed to have direct economic relations with each other, but rather to send their exports to the great trading centre of London. New England merchants in particular resented being pushed to the side of the mercantile system. Following military victories by the East India Company in South Asia, the company’s economic power within the British Empire, including North America, grew even greater, and so too did New England merchants’ resentment.
In 1773, the British government issued the Tea Act, a bill in effect subsidising the East India Company so it could sell tea to North America more cheaply than any other company. The Tea Act was meant to save the Company’s struggling finances, which were sinking under the cost of its expensive wars. By allowing the Company to sell its tea without paying the heavy taxes normally due on tea exports to the colonies, British officials thought they could help the Company while also keeping Americans happy. Because of the taxes levied on it, tea was expensive in the colonies, and tea-loving New Englanders often resorted to buying theirs on the black market. If the Company no longer had to pay these taxes, it could pass the savings on to thirsty American consumers.
Seeing themselves as victims of Britain’s imperial oppression, Americans sympathised with the empire’s other victims: South Asians
The colonists, however, did not respond as the British expected. By granting the East India Company an exemption from the tax, Parliament had confirmed that the tax on tea, passed without Americans’ consent, was there to stay for all other merchants. And the smugglers that the British government hoped to cut out of the tea business were influential members of New England society. On 16 December 1773, economic self-interest combined with principled opposition to taxation inspired a group of protestors to attack a Company shipment of tea, dumping its contents into the ocean.
The Boston Tea Party marked Americans’ growing opposition to British rule, and the beginning of a new perspective on South Asia. The British government retaliated by stripping Massachusetts of its right to self-government. Outraged colonists met in 1774 to form the First Continental Congress. The following year, armed conflict between colonial militias and British soldiers broke out at Lexington and Concord, and the American Revolution was underway. Americans started to see themselves as victims of Britain’s imperial oppression. They were soon sympathising with the empire’s other victims, particularly South Asians.
The American revolt against Britain quickly took on international dimensions. In 1776, the Continental Congress declared independence, transforming the former British colonies into the United States of America. American agents were soon busy seeking international recognition and goodwill from countries including Morocco, the Netherlands and, most importantly, France, Britain’s imperial rival. Within a year, the French government began sending aid to the fledgling US. A year later, in 1778, France and the US officially became allies.
The Continental Congress recognised that it was not France’s only partner against Britain, and looked for ways to cooperate with Mysore, France’s South Asian ally. In 1777, on the advice of Thomas Conway, an Irish-born French military advisor, the American patriots contemplated sending troops to join the French military expedition to the Subcontinent. The provisional American government lacked the resources for such a scheme, so instead it encouraged American privateers to attack the East India Company’s shipping to weaken Britain’s economic grasp on South Asia.
Different state governments also made friendly gestures toward Mysore. In 1781, the Pennsylvania legislature commissioned a warship named theHyder-Ally, an eccentrically spelled tribute to the Sultan of Mysore. This ship sailed the North Atlantic only, far from the Indian Ocean. Its existence, however, demonstrated the affinity American elites felt for Mysore’s cause. Philip Freneau, an ally of Thomas Jefferson and one of the country’s leading poets, wrote a poem in honour of the Hyder-Ally and its namesake, the sultan of Mysore:
From an Eastern prince she takes her name,
Who, smit with freedom’s sacred flame
Usurping Britons brought to shame,
His country’s wrongs avenging.
Clearly, nothing prevented these 18th-century Americans from seeing faraway Asian peoples as exemplars of liberty.
Despite Freneau’s optimistic vision, freedom’s sacred flame did not save South Asia. By the early 1780s, it was becoming clear that Britain would lose the war. Many Americans happily imagined a post-war world in which the East India Company would no longer be a significant force. Britain, however, managed to hold on to its territory in the Subcontinent, resisting the combined forces of Mysore and France.
France’s military support for Mysore and the US helped drive it into crippling debt and push French society toward its own, more radical revolution. Meanwhile, Britain’s finances survived the conflict intact, allowing it to continue an aggressive policy in the Subcontinent after 1783. The cash-strapped French, however, could maintain only a token military presence in the region. The situation left Mysore’s new ruler, Tipu Sultan, to his own devices. He resisted mounting pressure from the British for nearly two decades, succumbing only in 1799. He died beneath the walls of his citadel as he fought a last-ditch battle against the East India Company.
The American government adjusted to the new realities of South Asian politics. New England merchants eagerly sought to trade directly with the Subcontinent. In the first years after the end of the Revolutionary War, they relied on the French colony of Pondicherry on the southeastern coast of the Subcontinent as a port. They soon realised however that they could not enter the region’s most lucrative markets without the permission of the British East India Company. They lobbied for the establishment of American consulates to foster goodwill for American interests. Responding to their pressure, the US government created its first consulate in South Asia in 1792, in Calcutta. Two years later, in Madras, they added another. American consuls in the region were responsible only for relations with the Company. They had no contacts with independent South Asian states such as Mysore, which the American government, like the French, left to fend for itself.
Only recently an enemy of the British empire, America had won independence and become Britain’s junior partner in empire
On a state level, American interest in Mysore disappeared. But many Americans remained fascinated by Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan. When Tipu sent a team of ambassadors to Paris in 1788, in an unsuccessful attempt to restore the Franco-Mysorean alliance, Jefferson, then the American minister to France, reported on the event with keen interest. Like Jefferson, a wide range of Americans were eager to learn more about Mysore. American newspapers of the 1780s and ’90s reported on the country’s desperate struggle with Britain. American textbooks, including Jedidiah Morse’s influential The American Universal Geography (1793), included sections on Mysore. Haider and Tipu seem to have approached the status of household names. In Williams vs Cabarrus (1793), a lawsuit brought before a circuit court in North Carolina, the two parties disputed a wager made on a horse race. One of the horses was named ‘Hyder Ali’ in tribute to Mysore’s former ruler.
Even in the wake of Tipu’s final defeat, in 1799, his struggle for an independent Mysore continued to echo in the imagination of Americans. In his sermon on 4 July 1800, John Russell, a Baptist minister in Providence, warned his audience about the dangers of British imperialism. While many Americans, such as Alexander Hamilton, advocated for closer ties to Britain, Russell insisted that Britain could not be trusted. The ultimate example of British injustice, he argued, was its conquest of Mysore. Deeply moved by what he saw as Tipu’s heroic resistance, Russell told his congregation of Tipu’s death at the hands of British soldiers: ‘here the full heart must have vent… [Tipu Sultan] defended his power with a spirit which showed he deserved it. His death was worthy of a king.’
For Russell, Tipu’s end ought to warn America about the mortal dangers of empire. By the early 19th century, however, America had embarked on its own imperial project. American missionaries fanned out across North America, travelled to the Levant, and poured into South Asia, writing glowing reports back home on the work that the British were doing to ‘civilise’ the world, including the Subcontinent. Only recently an enemy of the British empire, America had won independence and become Britain’s junior partner in empire.
American diplomats, merchants and missionaries in South Asia accepted Britain’s empire in South Asia, working alongside it to profit from local trade or proselytise to potential converts. Over the following decades, foreign policy officials, commercial interests and religious groups pushed for the US to acquire a colonial empire of its own. Just like the British empire Americans had once rebelled against, the US became an imperial power, with colonies stretching from Puerto Rico and Guantánamo in the Caribbean to the Philippines in the Pacific.
Today, with military bases in more than 70 countries across the globe, the US remains an empire. Yet, the generation of Americans who fought for independence from Britain and laid the foundations of America’s identity saw the US as an anti-imperial cause and nation. The founding generation and the children of the founders were fascinated with Mysore and its leaders because they thought Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan embodied American values of resistance to empire and aspiration to freedom. If later generations of Americans had continued to see Haider and Tipu as heroes, had continued to identify with underdogs and anti-imperial causes, then the US, and indeed the world, might look quite different today.
source: http://www.aeon.com / Aeon / Home> Essays / by Blake Smith / Edited by Sam Haselby / December 07th, 2016
___________
Blake Smith is a postdoctoral fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. His research, focusing on the French East India Company, has appeared in scholarly journals such as French Cultural Studies and the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, as well as popular media such as The Wire and The Appendix.
British Indian World War II spy Noor Inayat Khan may be the next face of British currency. A campaign for the same is gaining momentum wherein people are demanding the spy to be featured on a redesigned 50-pound currency note.
The Bank of England had recently announced plans for a new polymer version of the large denomination note to go into print from 2020 and indicated that it would invite public nominations for potential characters to appear on the new note.
An online petition in favour of the campaign has already garnered over 1,200 signatures by Wednesday, calling for Khan, a descendant of Tipu Sultan and daughter of Indian Sufi saint Hazrat Inayat Khan, to be considered as the first ethnic minority British woman to be honoured on the currency.
“I am absolutely delighted that the story of Noor Inayat Khan has inspired so many people and that she has become an icon. Noor was an extraordinary war heroine,” said Shrabani Basu, the author of Khan’s biography ‘Spy Princess’ and founder-chair of the Noor Inayat Khan Memorial Trust.
The trust was set up in 2010 to campaign for a memorial in honour of the war-time spy, who had been recruited by Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) and infiltrated beyond enemy lines before being captured and killed by the Nazis in 1944, aged only 30.
Khan’s memorial bust now has a permanent home at Gordon Square in central London, with the trust also lobbying for a commemorative blue plaque to mark the house nearby where she spent time with her family.
“I am very happy to support the campaign for Noor Inayat Khan on the 50-pound note. It is a way of keeping her memory alive and taking this story to the next generation. It will certainly make a big statement internationally because Noor was someone who believed in breaking down barriers,” Basu said.
The campaign has found the backing of prominent political leaders, historians and academics in the UK, with many taking to social media to voice their support.
“The new 50-pound note could have anyone on it. I’m backing Noor Inayat Khan. She volunteered for SOE, served bravely as an agent in occupied Europe, was eventually captured and murdered. A Muslim, a woman, a hero of WWII. This would celebrate her courage and all SOE,” said Conservative Party MP Tom Tugendhat, who is currently leading the UK Parliament’s Global Britain and India Inquiry.
“Just returned from both East Africa and the Western Front and am more than ever aware of the shared service and sacrifice of men and women of many backgrounds. I would love to see Noor Inayat Khan on the new 50-pound note,” said Melvyn Roffe, Principal at George Watson’s College in Edinburgh.
Noor Inayat Khan, born in Moscow to an Indian father and American mother, was raised in Paris and Britain. As a Sufi, she believed in non-violence and also supported the Indian independence struggle.
But she felt compelled to join the British war effort against fascism and went on to become the first female radio operator to be infiltrated into Nazi-occupied France before she was captured, tortured and killed at the Dachau concentration camp in Nazi Germany.
“In this age, when we see a rise in anti-semitism, anti-Muslim hatred and intolerance, it is important that we continue to build bridges and show positive contributions from Britain’s ethnic and religious minorities, not least one of World War II’s almost forgotten heroes, a British Muslim woman,” said social activist Zehra Zaidi in the online petition she started to campaign for Khan as the face of the new banknote.
The 50-pound currency will be the final redesigned note to go into circulation after notes in the denomination of 5 and 10 have already been reissued in polymer. The new 20-pound polymer note will go into circulation from 2020 when the 50-pound is set to go into print to be circulated later.
“The bank will announce a character selection process for the new 50-pound note in due course, which will seek nominations from the public for potential characters to appear on the new note,” the Bank of England said.
With Inputs From PTI
source: http://www.indiatimes.com / India Times / Home> News> India / October 18th, 2018
