BANGALORE: Upset with the remarks made by Higher Education Minister D.H. Shankaramurthy that Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan followed an anti-Kannada policy, the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee on Wednesday demanded that the Minister should be dropped from the H.D. Kumaraswamy Ministry.

Top leaders of the party told presspersons here it was now for the Chief Minister to either drop Mr. Shankaramurthy or say that it supported the statement of the Minister. The Government should spell out its stance, particularly after the address of the Chief Minister at a meeting in New Delhi where he had referred to madrasas in poor taste, a statement he later retracted.

KPCC vice-president H. Hanumanthappa, general secretaries Abdul Wahab and Prakash Rathod, Congress Chief Whip in the Legislative Council Saleem Ahmed, and the former Ministers H. Vishwanath and Sageer Ahmed addressed a press conference on the issue on Wednesday.

Their contention was that the Mysore ruler was one of the first to work for the end of colonial rule and it was a shock that an Education Minister had attempted to stoke the feelings of Muslims by making such "loose statements." Tipu Sultan was a Kannadiga by any yardstick and laid down his life fighting the British.

Mr. Vishwanath, who hails from Mysore, said the people of Mysore were willing to take a class for Mr. Shankaramurthy on the life and contribution of Tipu Sultan.

"Let him visit Mysore and we will teach him a lesson or two on the valiant ruler. It is obvious that the Education Minister has a communal mindset and a jaundiced eye. The Bharatiya Janata Party should remember that it is part of a coalition government with the Janata Dal (Secular)," he said.

The former Union Minister C.K. Jaffer Sharief, whose statement was released at the KPCC office, said the statement of the Minister had shocked the people of Karnataka. "We remember the sacrifice of Tipu Sultan along with that of Rani Kittur Chennamma," he said. Mr. Sharief said the Minister acted like a `minister for distortion,' which was also the aim of the political party that he represented.

Scholar's stand

The Tipu Sultan Prachara Samithi and other organisations that promote communal harmony in the name of Tipu Sultan have demanded that the Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy should dismiss Mr. Shankaramurthy.

History scholar N.V. Narasimhaiah said the British version of history painted Tipu Sultan negatively while in Mysore's records, there were any number of instances that proved unambiguously that he wanted to end the colonial rule. Tipu Sultan, whose kingdom once panned the entire South, has been described as the ideal king by Mahatma Gandhi in Young India. The temple at Srirangaptna was dear to him and he filled his Cabinet with more Kannadigas than the Mysore Maharajahs can claim to have done.

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