Mysorean invasion of Malabar

The Mysorean invasion of Malabar (1766 –1792) was the military invasion of the Malabar region of Kerala, including the territories of the Zamorin of Calicut, by the then-de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore, Hyder Ali. After the invasion, the Kingdom of Cochin to the south of Malabar became a tributary state of Mysore. It was motivated by a desire for access to the ports bordering the Indian Ocean. The Mysore invasion gave the East India Company the opportunity to tighten their grip on the ancient feudal principalities of Malabar and convert Travancore into only a protected ally.

Quotes

• Here’s how Lewin Bowring describes it: Marching through Coorg with a large army, he sent detachments about the country to hunt down the rebellious Nairs, while he himself proceeded to Kutipuram. Here, two thousand [Nairs] defended themselves and their families with resolution, but were soon obliged to surrender. This gave an opportunity to Tipu to show his apostolic zeal. Orders were issued that the whole of these unfortunates should be offered the alternative of becoming good Musalmans, or, in case of noncompliance, that they should be banished to [Srirangapattana]. They reluctantly acquiesced in the former alternative, knowing well what the deportation meant. The next day, accordingly, all the males were circumcised, while both sexes were compelled to eat beef, as a proof of their conversion. One of the principal victims of Tipu’s revenge was the Raja of Chirakkal, of ancient descent, who, having been falsely accused of conspiring, was attacked and killed, and his body hung up after his death. In this raid the Mysore sovereign is said to have carried off large treasures plundered from the temples in Malabar. He crowned his achievements by compelling the princess of Cannanore to marry her daughter to his son, Abd-ul-Khalik.
  • Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan – Lewin B. Bowring in Sandeep Balakrishna. 2013. Tipu Sultan : The Tyrant of Mysore. Chennai: Rare Publications.

• A short but vivid sample from Fr. Bartholomew’s account will suffice to illustrate the nature of Tipu’s raid: First a corps of 30,000 barbarians who butchered everybody on the way… followed by the field-gun unit… Tipu was riding on an elephant behind which another army of 30,000 soldiers followed. Most of the men and women were hanged in Calicut, first mothers were hanged with their children tied to necks of mothers. That barbarian Tipu Sultan tied the naked Christians and Hindus to the legs of elephants and made the elephants to move around till the bodies of the helpless victims were torn to pieces. Temples and churches were ordered to be burned down, desecrated and destroyed. Christian and Hindu women were forced to marry Mohammadans and similarly their men were forced to marry Mohammadan women. Those Christians who refused to be honoured with Islam, were ordered to be killed by hanging immediately. These atrocities were told to me by the victims of Tipu Sultan who escaped from the clutches of his army and reached Varappuzha, which is the centre of Carmichael Christian Mission. I myself helped many victims to cross the Varappuzha river by boats.
  • Fr. Bartholomew’s account quoted in Sandeep Balakrishna. 2013. Tipu Sultan : The Tyrant of Mysore. Chennai: Rare Publications.

• Indeed, the devastation in Calicut was so comprehensive that it changed the character of the place forever. Calicut was home to more than 7000 Brahmin families. Thanks to Tipu, more than 2000 of these were wiped out, and the remaining fled to the forests. In the words of the German missionary Guntest, “Accompanied by an army of 60,000, Tipu Sultan came to Kozhikode [Calicut] in 1788 and razed it to the ground. It is not possible even to describe the brutalities committed by that Islamic barbarian from Mysore.”
  • German missionary Guntest, quoted in Sandeep Balakrishna. 2013. Tipu Sultan : The Tyrant of Mysore. Chennai: Rare Publications.

• In a letter to Syed Abdul Dulai he gloats that With the grace of Prophet Mohammed and Allah, almost all Hindus in Calicut are converted to Islam. Only on the borders of Cochin State a few are still not converted. I am determined to convert them also very soon. I consider this as Jehad to achieve that object.
  • Tipu Sultan letter to Syed Abdul Dulai in Sandeep Balakrishna. 2013. Tipu Sultan : The Tyrant of Mysore. Chennai: Rare Publications.

• Here is another letter commending his officer Budruz Zuman Khan thus: Your two letters, with the enclosed memorandums of the Naimar (or Nair) captives, have been received. You did right in ordering a hundred and thirty-five of them to be circumcised, and in putting eleven of the youngest of these into the Usud Ilhye band (or class) and the remaining ninety-four into the Ahmedy Troop…
  • Tipu Sultan letter to Budruz Zuman Khan in Sandeep Balakrishna. 2013. Tipu Sultan : The Tyrant of Mysore. Chennai: Rare Publications.

• In yet another letter to the selfsame Budruz Khan, Tipu celebrates the triumph of his fanaticism in a different way: I have achieved a great victory recently in Malabar and over four lakh Hindus were converted to Islam. I am now determined to march against the cursed Raman Nair.
  • Tipu Sultan letter to Budruz Zuman Khan in Sandeep Balakrishna. 2013. Tipu Sultan : The Tyrant of Mysore. Chennai: Rare Publications.

• We can turn to Bowring again:The Mysore army, flushed with success, now began to lay waste the country with fire and sword, desecrating and despoiling temples, and burning towns and villages, whose wretched inhabitants fled to the hills, where many were seized and made prisoners. The ruins to be seen at the present day testify to the ferocity of the invaders, while all the records of antiquity and the archives of the Travancore State were consumed in the burning pagodas, public offices, and houses. These atrocities were perpetrated with the express sanction of Tipu Sultan, who himself marched with his main army southward to Alwal, a favourite watering-place of the Travancore Raja. He contemplated the reduction of the whole province.
  • Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan – Lewin B. Bowring quoted in Sandeep Balakrishna. 2013. Tipu Sultan : The Tyrant of Mysore. Chennai: Rare Publications.

• In this context, it’s also pertinent to mention a 1964 book published by the Pakistan Administrative Staff College at Lahore. Entitled Life of Tipu Sultan, this book summarizes Tipu’s destructive raid in the Malabar as follows: Tipu imprisoned and forcibly converted more than a lakh Hindus and over 70,000 Christians in the Malabar region (they were forcibly circumcised and made to eat beef). Although these conversions were unethical and disgraceful, they served Tipu’s purpose. Once all these people had been cut off from their original faith, they were left with no option but to accept the very faith to which their ravager belonged, and they began to educate their children in Islam. They were later enlisted in the army and received good positions. Most of them morphed into religious zealots, and enhanced the ranks of the Faithful in Tipu’s kingdom. Tipu’s zeal for conversion was not limited only to the Malabar region. He had spread it all the way up to Coimbatore. But for the remonstrance of his mother, Tipu would have compelled his favourite Dewan Poornayya to have forsaken the religion of his forefathers.
  • Life of Tipu Sultan—Pakistan Administrative Staff College, Lahore, translated by Bernard Wycliffe quoted in Sandeep Balakrishna. 2013. Tipu Sultan : The Tyrant of Mysore. Chennai: Rare Publications.

• Even a summary of Tipu’s atrocities in the Malabar makes for painful reading. Colonel Fullerton’s report on the matter is one such account. During his 1783 siege of the Palaghat fort,Tipu’s soldiers daily exposed the heads of many innocent Brahmins within sight from the fort for Zamorin and his Hindu followers to see. It is asserted that the Zamorin rather than witness such enormities and to avoid further killing of innocent Brahmins, chose to abandon the Palghat Fort. In fact, it is not inaccurate to say that Tipu’s (later) Malabar campaign was—apart from trying to secure strategic advantage—a campaign motivated by extreme religious fanaticism against the Hindus of Kerala. Tipu and his army spared no section of the Hindu society—Brahmins, Nairs, Thiyyas, Christians, women, and children. Fullerton continues, It was not only against the Brahmins who were thus put in a state of terror of forcible circumcision and conversion; but against all sections of Hindus. In August, 1788, a Raja of the Kshatriya family of Parappanad and also Trichera Thiruppad, a chieftain of Nilamboor, and many other Hindu nobles who had been carried away earlier to Coimbatore by Tipu Sultan, were forcibly circumcised and forced to cat beef. Nairs in desperation, under the circumstances, rose up against their Muslim oppressors under Tipu’s command in South Malabar and the Hindus of Coorg in the North also joined them…
  • Colonel Fullerton’s report quoted in Sandeep Balakrishna. 2013. Tipu Sultan : The Tyrant of Mysore. Chennai: Rare Publications.

• A Sreedhara Menon, the former editor of the Gazetteer of Kerala mentions that Hindus, especially Nairs and chieftains who resisted Islamic cruelties, were the main targets of Tipu’s anger. Hundreds of Nair women and children were abducted to Sreerangapatanam or sold as slaves to the Dutch. Nairs were hunted down and killed and also deprived of all traditional and social privileges. Thousands of Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Nairs and other respected classes of Hindus were forcibly converted to Islam or driven out of their traditional ancestral homes. Thousands sought refuge in Travancore State while hundreds fled to forests and hills to escape Tipu’s atrocities which had completely shaken their sense of security. The new phase of Mysore administration in Kerala resulted in unending wars. Extreme cruelties of the invading army had badly affected every section of the society, leading to the mass exodus of people from Malabar.Many Hindu temples, royal houses and chieftain families were destroyed and plundered. The exodus of Brahmins and Kshatriyas who were the patrons and custodians of traditional arts and culture, resulted in stagnation in the cultural field also.
  • Sreedhara Menon, quoted in Sandeep Balakrishna. 2013. Tipu Sultan : The Tyrant of Mysore. Chennai: Rare Publications.

• Other evidence of Tipu’s barbarism in the Malabar has survived even today. In the words of the scholar and researcher Ravi Varma, One finds a heavy concentration of Mappilas [Kerala/Malabar Muslims] along the invasion routes of Tipu’s army, including the places of its temporary occupation, as in Mangalore, Cannanoor, Ponnani, Kondotty, Malappuram, Calicut, Kodungallur, Chawakat, Alwaye, Coimbatore, and Dindigal. This is another proof of forcible circumcision and conversion of helpless Nairs, defenceless Thiyyas and poor Cherumans on a mass scale. Even today, the origin of many Kshatriya, Nair and Brahmin families settled in Travancore and Cochin can be traced back to their ancestral families in Malabar - yet another proof of the severity of Tipu’s atrocities against Hindus during his Islamic wars in Kerala.
  • Ravi Varma, quoted in Sandeep Balakrishna. 2013. Tipu Sultan : The Tyrant of Mysore. Chennai: Rare Publications.

• Wherever Hyder Ali’s men marched, Hindus were massacred in cold blood. Everywhere, dead bodies deformed by sword cuts and bullet injuries were laying in pools of blood. All the temples and houses on the way were pillaged and set ablaze. To escape from swords of the Mysore army which engulfed the area like flood waters, many resorted to hiding themselves in deep forests. When Hyder’s force reached near Bharatha river, they inflicted heavy damages to life and properties in Vettatthu Nadu by plundering homes and temples and setting fire to everything belonging to Hindus indiscriminately. Big temples which were pillaged and damaged partly or wholly were Nava Mukunda temple of Thirunavaya, Temple of Brahma and Siva at Thavanur, Kodakkal Tali temple, Mahadeva temple at Thruprangod, Mahadeva temple at Trikkandiyur, Vamana temple at Kalad, Lakshmi Narasimha temple of Edamana. Further several small temples were also destroyed. Hyder Ali and his army demolished the eastern gopuram of Trikkandiyur Mahadeva temple and entered the inside premises and smashed the wooden structure holding a lakh of lamps and the Gopurams (entrance tower) and Mukhamandapam (sacred pillared pavilion in front of the sanctum). The head of the idol of sacred bull (Rishabha) was severed. They tried to enter the sanctum sanctorum and pluck out and throw away the idol but could not succeed. Hence it was badly disfigured. The remnants of the attack of Hyder are still visible in the temple. Even now the idol of the deity worshipped at Thrikkandiyur temple is the same which bears the cut mark inflicted by Hyder.
  • Tirur Dinesh - Moplah Riots (2021)

• Vella Nambudiri who was a direct witness of the atrocities committed by Hyder Ali and his army, records some of the incidents as under. “After Nawab went to Coimbatore and remained there, thinking that this land can be recaptured by a war, one king of Puthiya Kovilakam collected some fighters and started fighting. They could claim back some areas. Then “Madannan”was at Thirunavaya. There also the war commenced. Then they remained within temples and royal residences. They also fought. Chonakara also fought with all vigor. Then, there, Kalat Gopala Pisharody was appointed head man at Ponnani. He is also there. Hearing this news at Coimbatore, Nawab and his army came fast. At the same time Bouddha ( Muslim s) also came to the southern bank and fought. All the lords and a big group of people are there. When the fight began there, they all ran away from there. The Nawab and his army came to Vellanattukara, and seized girls and Brahmins as slaves, torched houses, executed many by the noose or sword. Then the Nawab and his people came to the northern bank. With Muslim s on the southern bank, they torched all the houses, temples, and the schools where Vedas were being taught to children. Many people of Vettatthunadu were forcibly converted to Islam. Then they went in different directions. Such a confrontation has not happened before. What more danger is there to come? Particularly Thirunavaya temples and entry towers were all torched. This is the facts.”
  • Tirur Dinesh - Moplah Riots (2021)

• During the onslaught of Mysore army Hindus lost several temples like Sreekrishna temple at Paravanna, Siva temple of Nechikkat, Mahadeva temple of Thanniyur etc. In all the temples the idols were dug out. These were later converted to mosques. There are pseudo intellectuals now who claim that these conversions were not forced but through persuasion only and the mosques were constructed according to Hindu architecture which alone was known to the craftsmen there. Their purpose is to establish that Hindu temples were not converted to mosques.
  • Tirur Dinesh - Moplah Riots (2021)

• This order being executed with the utmost strictness nothing was to be seen in the roads for the distance of four leagues round but scattered limbs and mutilated bodies. The country of the Nayars [Nairs] was thrown into general consternation which was much increased by the cruelty of the Mapileys [Mapillahs], who followed the cavalry, massacred all who had escaped, without sparing women and children; so that the army advancing under the conduct of this enraged multitude, instead of meeting with resistance, found the villages, fortresses, temples and in general every habitable place forsaken and deserted.
  • De La Tour. Tour, Maistre de La (MDLT.), The History of Hyder Shah, Alias Hyder Ali Khan Bahadur and his Son Tippoo Sultaun (London: W. Thacker & Co., 1855), in Vikram Sampath - Tipu - The Saga of Mysore's Interregnum (2024)

• Wherever he turned, he found no opponent, nor even any human creature; every inhabited place was forsaken: and the poor inhabitants, who fled to the woods and mountains in the most inclement season, had the anguish to behold their houses in flames, their fruit-trees cut down, their cattle destroyed and their temples burned. The perfidy of the Nayres [Nairs] had been too great for them to trust the offers of pardon made by Hyder, by means of Brahmins he despatched into the woods and mountains to recall these unhappy people; who were hanged without mercy, and their wives and children reduced to slavery; whenever they were found in the woods by the troops of Hyder; severity and mildness being both equally ineffectual in making them return to their homes.
  • De La Tour. Tour, Maistre de La (MDLT.), The History of Hyder Shah, Alias Hyder Ali Khan Bahadur and his Son Tippoo Sultaun (London: W. Thacker & Co., 1855), in Vikram Sampath - Tipu - The Saga of Mysore's Interregnum (2024)

• The entire Nair country was plundered; their homes were burnt and a universal massacre of the Nair caste was ordered. The Nairs were hunted down and butchered. Hyder gave ‘Rupees 5 to anyone who brought him the head of a Nair that was able to fight; if it was an old man, he gave four, and if of a boy he gave three rupees.’ A price of three rupees was also paid for every Nair woman captured alive. Many women were thus captured and transported to distant places as presents to governors and chiefs.
  • Peixoto, Eloy Joze Correa. ‘Memoirs of Hyder Ally from the year 1758 to 1770’. In Annual Report of the Mysore Archaeological Department. Bangalore: Government Press, 1938.in Vikram Sampath - Tipu - The Saga of Mysore's Interregnum (2024)

• It is sufficient here to merely recall the earlier stated writings of Paolino da San Bartolomeo, a Portuguese Roman Catholic missionary who stayed in Malabar for about twelve and a half years, from 1776 to 1789: The manner in which he [Tipu] behaved to the inhabitants of Calicut was horrid. A great part of them, both male and female, were hung. He first tied up the mothers, and then suspended the children from their necks. The cruel tyrant caused several Christians and Heathens [Hindus] to be brought out naked, and made fast to the feet of his elephants, which were then obliged to drag them about till their limbs fell in pieces from their bodies. At the same time, he ordered all the churches and temples to be burned or pulled down or destroyed in some manner. Christian and pagan [Hindu] women were compelled to marry Mohammedans. The pagans were deprived of the token of their nobility, which is a lock of hair called kudumi; and every Christian, who appeared in the streets, must either submit to be circumcised, or be hanged on the spot. This happened in the year 1789, at which time I resided at Verapole [Varapali in Travancore]. I had then an opportunity of conversing with several Christians and Pagans, who had escaped from the fury of this merciless tyrant; and I assisted these fugitives to procure a boat to enable them to cross the river which runs past that city. This persecution continued till the 15th of April 1790.33
  • Paolino da San Bartolomeo, in Vikram Sampath - Tipu - The Saga of Mysore's Interregnum (2024)

• A. Sreedhara Menon writes: The brutalities committed by the Mysorean troops led to large scale migration from Malabar of people belonging to all strata of society. The hardworking peasants took refuge in the forests and jungles. Consequently, agriculture was ruined. What was once a fertile and flourishing country now assumed the appearance of a cheerless desert. The Nair gentry was dispossessed and shorn of its military and political power. The decline in agriculture resulted in their economic impoverishment also . . . moreover, many a flourishing town had been laid waste by the Mysore troops. Trade and commerce also declined steadily. The cultivation of pepper on which depended the economic prosperity of the country was suspended over large areas and Kerala’s once prosperous pepper trade practically came to a standstill. The once flourishing sea ports of Kerala now presented a deserted look. Gold and silver which the country had amassed by centuries of trade with foreign countries virtually disappeared from the land. Extensive fields lay uncultivated, houses of nobles and landlords were in ruins and daily worship in many important temples was suspended. The economic depression that set in was so severe that the common people were on the verge of famine and starvation. To add to the economic distress of the times, the Mysorean invasions created a cleavage between the Mappilas and the Hindus and destroyed social harmony. The former had helped the Mysore Sultans in their campaigns in Kerala and aroused the active hostility of the Hindu population. With the expulsion of Tipu, the Mappilas who had enjoyed political power for more than 30 years lost their privileged status. They were unable to reconcile themselves to this discomfiture and were thereafter in a state of general revolt against established authority. The Mappila outbreaks of the 19th Century were thus in a way a legacy of the Mysore invasions.
  • A. Sreedhara Menon in Vikram Sampath - Tipu - The Saga of Mysore's Interregnum (2024)

• [Tipu Sultan] also boasted about ‘the destruction in the course of this holy war of eight thousand idol temples, many of them roofed with gold, silver, or copper, and all containing treasures buried at the feet of the idol, the whole of which was royal plunder.’
  • Tipu Sultan, in Vikram Sampath - Tipu - The Saga of Mysore's Interregnum (2024)

• Noted scholar Vadakkankoor Raja Raja Varma bemoans the dance of destruction that Kerala faced during this time, in his Kerala Samskrita Sahitya Charitram (History of Sanskrit Literature in Kerala): There was no limit as to the loss the Hindu temples suffered due to the military operations of Tipu Sultan. Burning down the temples, destruction of the idols installed therein and also cutting the heads of cattle over the temple deities were the cruel entertainments of Tipu Sultan and his equally cruel army. It was heartrending even to imagine the destruction caused by Tipu Sultan in the famous ancient temples of Thalipparampu and Thrichambaram. The devastation caused by this new Ravana’s barbarous activities have not yet been fully rectified.
  • Vadakkankoor Raja Raja Varma in Vikram Sampath - Tipu - The Saga of Mysore's Interregnum (2024)

• Writing about the temples destroyed in the Vettum region of Malappuram, the late P.C.N. Raja, a senior member of the Zamorin family, writes: The devastation caused by Tipu Sultan to the ancient and holy temples of Keraladheeswaram, Thrikkandiyoor and Thriprangatu in Vettum region was terrible. The Zamorin renovated these temples to some extent. The famous and ancient Thirunavaya Temple, known throughout the country as an ancient teaching-centre of the Vedas, revered by the devotees of Vishnu from Tamil Nadu, and existing before the advent of Christ, was also plundered and destroyed by Tipu’s army. After dismantling and destroying the idol, Tipu converted the Thrikkavu Temple into an ammunition depot in Ponnani. It was the Zamorin who repaired the temple later. Kotikkunnu, Thrithala, Panniyoor and other family temples of the Zamorin were plundered and destroyed. The famous Sukapuram Temple was also desecrated. Damage done to the Perumparampu Temple and Maranelira Temple of Azhvancherry Thamprakkal (titular head of all Namboodiri Brahmins) in Edappadu, can be seen even today. Vengari Temple and Thrikkulam Temple in Eranadu, Azhinjillam Temple in Ramanattukara, Indyannur Temple, Mannur Temple and many other temples were defiled and damaged extensively during the military regime.
  • P.C.N. Raja, in Vikram Sampath - Tipu - The Saga of Mysore's Interregnum (2024)

• Eminent historian of Kerala, Elamkulam Kunjan Pillai, recorded the atrocities committed by Tipu, especially in Kozhikode: Kozhikode was then a centre of Brahmins. There were around 7000 Namboodiri houses of which more than 2000 houses were destroyed by Tipu Sultan in Kozhikode alone. Sultan did not spare even children and women. Menfolk escaped to forests and neighbouring principalities. Mappilas increased many fold [sic] (due to forcible conversion). During the military regime of Tipu Sultan, Hindus were forcibly circumcised and converted to Muhammadan faith. As a result, the number of Nairs and Brahmins declined substantially.
  • Elamkulam Kunjan Pillai in Vikram Sampath - Tipu - The Saga of Mysore's Interregnum (2024)