Tippu Sultan’s Genocide Against Hindus of Malabar – First Jihad Against Hindus Of Malabar- Part 1

Jihad is nothing but terrorism in the name of God and Islamic history is a catalogue of Jihads. Attempts to separate terrorism from Jihad are contradicted by both history and Islamic scriptural authority. -N.S.Rajaram

Islam had been welcomed and nurtured in Kerala for centuries. For example, the first mosque in India was somewhere near Kodungalloor (aka Muziris in Roman times). Also, by tradition, the Zamorins of Kozhikode (Calicut) enlisted Muslims in his navy and treated them rather well. Therefore, Hyder Ali’s and later Tippu’s jihad between 1776 and 1790 traumatized the local Hindus, who had never experienced such an Aurangazeb-style religious fundamentalist mass destruction.

There was a Muslim ruler under Kolathiri Raja. He controlled the sea trade through Cannanore port. The senior-most male member of the Arackal Muslim family was known as Ali Raja while the senior-most female member was referred to as Arackal Bibi. Though Ali Raja was a subordinate chieftain under Kolathiri Raja, he used to disobey the authority of Kolathiri quite often.

During his southward march of conquest and plunder, Hyder Ali allowed Ali Raja and his barbarous Moplahs to act as army scouts and also to commit all sorts of atrocities on the Hindu population of Malabar. The Kolathiri Raja could not offer much resistance against the huge army of Hyder Ali which was equipped with heavy field guns. On the other hand, Ali Raja who had been made a tributary chieftain in Cannanore, seized and set fire to the palace of the old Kolathiri Raja.

It may be noted here that when Hyder Ali reached Calicut with his huge army, destroying everything on the way and forcibly converting to Islam every Hindu warrior defeated or captured, the ruling Zamorin, after sending away all his family members to Travancore State, committed self-immolation by setting fire to his palace and ammunition depot nearby, in order to escape personal humiliation and possible forcible conversion to Islam.

Hyder Ali now entered Kottayam (Pazhassi) Raja’s territory where he encountered resistance. There were casualties on both sides. But the Kottayam Moplahs betrayed and deserted their Hindu king and assisted Hyder Ali.

“Wherever he (Hyder Ali) turned, he found no opponent; and every inhabitable place was forsaken and the poor inhabitants who fled to the woods and mountains in the inclement season experienced anguish to behold their houses in flames, fruit-trees cut down, cattle destroyed and temples burnt. By means of Brahmin messengers despatched to woods and mountains, Hyder Ali promised pardon and mercy to the Hindus who had fled. However, as soon as the unfortunate Hindus returned on his promise of mercy and pardon, Hyder Ali, like all the other Muslim tyrants of North India, saw to it that they were all hanged to death, their wives and children reduced to slavery.”

Hyder Ali’s invasion of Kerala was not to fight and defeat the British, but to subjugate the independent Hindu kingdoms and for conversions to Islam.

Tippu Sultan, the first son of Haider Ali, by second wife Fakhrunnisa. Tippu was also a truly devout and therefore fanatic Muslim king, but more cruel and inhuman than his father in his Islamic wars and conversions in Kerala.

It was at Kuttippuram, the headquarters of the Kadathanad Rajas, that the huge army of Tippu Sultan with a large number of field-guns surrounded an old fort defended by a small contingent of Nairs. After several days of resistance, and finding it difficult to defend the fort any longer, the Nairs submitted to the usual terms of surrender – “a voluntary profession of the Mohammadan faith or a forced conversion with deportation from the native land… In short, either way they had to embrace Mohammadan faith!… The unhappy Nair captives gave a forced consent and on the next day, the Islamic initiation rite of circumcision was performed on all male members, closing the ceremony after every individual of both sexes was forced to eat beef”.

If this was not an Islamic war, what else was it? Do forcible circumcision and feeding of beef form any part of normal wars of territorial aggression? The war that Tippu Sultan waged in Kerala was a cruel Islamic war against the Hindu population, mainly for conversion of Hindus by force.

Yet there are Communist traitors and degenerate anti-Hindu pseudo-secular hypocrites in Kerala who admire Tippu Sultan as a hero!

The doings of Tippu Sultan were held out as an example which other detachments of the Mysore army followed. An original order sent to various army contingents by Tippu was found among the records from Palghat Fort, after its capture by the English Company in 1790. It has been reproduced as a footnote on page 510 of the Malabar Manual: “It directed (all military detachments) that every being in the district should be honoured with Islam, that they should be traced to their hiding places, and that all means, truth or falsehood, fraud or force, should be employed to effect their universal conversion to Islam.”

While escaping from Tippu’s army, one of the princes of the Chirackal Royal Family in North Malabar was captured and killed in an encounter after a chase of few days. As per the accounts of Tippu’s own diary and as confirmed by the English Company records, the body of the unfortunate prince was treated with great indignities by Tippu Sultan. “He had the dead body of the prince dragged by elephants through his camp and it was subsequently hung up on a tree along with seventeen of his followers who had been captured alive”. Another chieftain, Korangoth Nair, who had resisted Tippu, was finally captured with the help of the French and hanged.

Muslim armies of Hyder Ali and Tippu Sultan murdered thousands of Hindus, looted, burnt, desecrated and destroyed hundreds of Hindu temples, engaged in forced conversion, murder, rape, kidnapping of women, selling women as slaves, forcing captured Hindu women to work as house-maids during day time and sex-slaves at nights in Muslim house holds.

Such was the treatment meted out to Hindu nobles, chieftains and their followers by Tippu Sultan of Islamic faith. He was no different from other Muslim tyrants who had played havoc in North India such as Mahmud Ghaznavi, Nadir Shah, Timur, Aurangzeb and Kala Pahar of Bengal.

As we all know that Islam is the “Religion of Peace”. Tippu brought ‘Eternal Peace” to villages all over the present-day Indian state of Karnataka and south into Kerala. Tens of thousands of villagers never felt anything at all after Tippu was done with them.

It is said that Tippu went to every village with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, and offered the choice to those who survived his army’s initial wave of ‘Peace’. Accept the Religion of Peace – or get Eternal Peace in pieces after loot, rape, dismemberment and other happy acts by his soldiers.

Tippu Sultan’s notorious jihâd – Islamic war-slogan – was SWORD (death) or CAP (forcible conversion), a cruel option for a hapless Hindu population. For this, his most dependable and obedient accomplices were his equally cruel and treacherous co-religionists – the Moplahs of North Malabar.

“The revolt in the South Malabar was led by Ravi Varma of the Zamorin family. Though Tippu conferred on him a jaghire (vast area of tax-free land) mainly to appease him, the Zamorin prince, after promptly taking charge of the jaghire, continued his revolt against the Mysore power, more vigorously and with wider support. He soon moved to Calicut, his traditional area of influence and authority, for better co-ordination. Tippu sent a large Mysore army under the command of M. Lally and Mir Asrali Khan to chase and drive out the Zamorin prince from Calicut. However, during the above operations, Ravi Varma assisted not less than 30,000 Brahmins to flee the country and take refuge in Travancore”.

Tippu’s campaigns were often characterised by great brutality. His religious bigotry was without any parallel, cruelly slaughtering Hindus in cold blood when they refused to convert to Islam. The Butcher from Mysore marched from Calicut up to Alwaye where he was forced to retreat because of formidable military resistance from the warriors of the Hindu Kingdom of Travancore. Tippu himself fell down from the rampart, was seriously wounded, and was rendered permanently lame during the counter-attack by the Travancore Army. As far as Tippu’s defeat and humiliation on the borders of Travancore were concerned, the entire credit for the victory goes to the strategy of the Diwan of Travancore, Raja Kesava Das and the valiant soldiers of the Travancore Army.

The jihad against Hindus left deep and ugly scars on the Kerala Hindu psyche and the people suffer from its malevolent effects even to this day.

The story of Tippu’s savage jihadi expeditions through northern Kerala (‘tippuvinte padayottam’ in Malayalam) is spoken of in hushed terms, as a HINDU HOLOCAUST.

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