Captivity of Mangalorean Catholics at Seringapatam - Criticism of Tipu

Criticism of Tipu

Many Roman Catholic and British writers have severely criticised Tipu for his policies and treatment of Christians. British general Kirkpatrick referred to Tipu as, "the intolerant bigot and the furious fanatic." British Colonel Mark Wilks in his Historical Sketches of the South of India, cites an account in which Tipu mentions that, "the cause arose from the rage of Islam began to boil in his breast when informed of the circumstances of the spread of Christianity in Goa and Canara."

According to historian Thomas Paul, Tipu shifted his hatred for the British to the Mangalorean Catholics and other South Indian Christian communities. Sita Ram Goel mentions that Tipu's justification for the conversion was that during the Portuguese domination, many Muslims were forcibly converted to Christianity. Tipu proclaimed his actions as a punishment for the conversion of Muslims to Christianity.

According to historian Alan Machado Prabhu, Tipu's reasons for the captivity were primarily religious. He found the social customs of the Christians distasteful, such as their fondness for pork and the social acceptance of alcohol. Tipu therefore saw them as a community deserving of his religious zeal as a Padishah. As evidence of this, Prabhu states that Tipu does not mention a large scale Christian conspiracy in his writings in the Sultan-ul-Tawarikh, where he justifies his action instead as arising from the "rage of Islam that began to boil in his breast."

Prabhu further asserts that Tipu's hatred of Christians was compounded by fears that as they shared the same faith as their European co-religionists, the Christians were viewed as a potential fifth column in the event of a British attack. To this, he adds that Tipu also had future territorial ambitions in Goa and wanted to rid himself of any potential dissent from the Christians within his domain. Therefore, according to Prabhu, through coerced confessions of prominent Mangalorean Catholics, Tipu fabricated evidence of a large-scale Christian conspiracy against him, even though he knew it wasn't true.

Contemporary scholars like Surendranath Sen, Mohibbul Hasan, N. K. Sinha, and B. Sheik Ali, who have analysed Tipu's religious policies on Christians, conclude that he was not a religious bigot. They argue that forcible conversions to Islam were done purely for political, not religious reasons. Forced conversions were carried out as a punishment for Christians who supported the British against their own native suzerain. The conversions came after many warnings by Tippu.

Irrespective of these views, the Mangalorean Catholic community still considers Tipu as a bitter religious bigot and a ferocious conquistadore. He remains a hated personality among the community. More than a century after the Captivity ended, Jerome Saldanha, a Mangalorean Catholic historian and civil servant during the British Raj at the Bombay Presidency, wrote an article in Mangalore Magazine, published by St. Aloysius College, which chronicled contemporary developments and views from the closing decades of 19th century:

"People of all classes belonging to Canara, especially the Christians, had suffered so dreadfully from Tipu's regime of terror that they welcomed the British with a sense of relief and joy, and a hope of future peace and prosperity, that perhaps nowhere else was felt in India on the advent of the British. Nor were our ancestors disappointed, for they found that the main object of British rule in India was to secure the happiness of the people over whom it was held."