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Visionary's dreams
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Girish Karnad's play on Tipu Sultan, to be released this evening, casts him as a great warrior and a greater dreamer, writes BAGESHREE S.
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Girish Karnad: `With Tipu there is a sense of vision which I cannot see about any other individual in Karnataka after the battle of Talikota in 1565.' — Photo: K. Bhagya Prakash
WHEN THE BBC asked Girish Karnad to write a play on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Indian Independence, he could think of no one more appropriate than Tipu Sultan to cast in the protagonist's role. A personage Karnad describes as "one of the most politically perceptive and tragic figures in modern Indian history".
Tipu (1750-1799) presented himself as a very complex and fascinating character — a great warrior who spent more than half his life on horseback, but also made the time to carefully record and preserve his fragile world of dreams; a man who hated the British and fought them all his life, but also admired them for their administrative methodology and trading skills...
Karnad radio play, The Dreams of Tipu Sultan, painted the character with all these complexities, moving back and forth between historical events and dreams that were as "real" to the dreamer as the events themselves. The Jnanpith-award winning playwright later rewrote it for stage, and it saw productions in both English and Kannada. The English version of the play has now been brought out by Oxford University Press, along with another of Karnad's plays, Bali: The Sacrifice. The volume of two plays is being released in the city this evening.
Karnad's mode of bringing into play dreams and real incidents (which are not so watertight, really) allows the playwright to go beyond dates and events, and explore the inner and outer worlds of a visionary who worked with a sense of building a nation. It's interesting that the opening scene of the play juxtaposes the Western and the Oriental ways of reading history — of Mackenzie, a stickler for facts, and Kirmani, a court historian, for whom Tipu's dreams also make for vital information. Karnad seems to read history from a position in between, incorporating both perspectives in measured doses. Incidentally, it was the late A.K. Ramanujan who drew Karnad's attention to the dreams Tipu recorded, the originals of which are now in the India House Library in London.
Karnad's choice of Tipu as his subject not only had to do with a 200-year-old history, but also with history as we live it now. "At that point of time, there was a great movement against Tipu by the right wing fundamentalist groups, trying to picture him as a fanatic... Trying to paint an 18th Century man in terms of 20th Century prejudices."
It irks Karnad that the right wing groups talk endlessly about the conversions Tipu carried out, but black out the fact that he gave shelter to the Sringeri swamiji while the Marathas were plundering the place. "There is no doubt that he converted people in the coast and in Coorg. In that sense he was an 18th Century king. Also think of what Marathas did when they came here. They didn't convert because there is no conversion to Hinduism. But they raped, looted, burnt down fields, razed village to grounds... It's, in fact, equally ridiculous to condemn the Marathas because Sringeri had lots of money."
He points out that the Kannada text of the play has on its cover a mural of a temple near Mysore that shows Tipu being welcomed into the temple. There are also ballads in Kannada that sing glories of Tipu's generosity. Pointing out that notions of religious splits can't be arrogated to those who lived two centuries ago, Karnad says: "Remember that the Nizams fought Tipu."
But aren't we predating another 20th Century notion when we talk of Tipu as a nationalist, as Karnad does in the play? In a dream sequence in the play, Tipu tells his father Hyder Ali: "... the English fight for something called England. What is it? It's not a religion that sustains them, nor a land that feeds them. They wouldn't be here if they did. It's just a dream, for which they are willing to kill and die... "
Karnad admits that nationality is a modern notion. "But let me say that of the 18th and 19th Centuries people who fought the British, he is one of the few who had a sense of British as `foreigners'... Tipu hated the British. He was the only man in the entire history who never allowed a Resident in his court."
And if one needs greater proof of his interest in the nation-building process, one only has to look at what Tipu did beyond the battlefield. "One of the reasons why the British destroyed him was because he was becoming strong in terms of trade. He nationalised the sandalwood and ivory trade. He brought the silk industry from China. He looked for ports for trade."
Through the play, there are references to Tipu's keen interest in upgrading trade, technology, agriculture, and taxation on the lines of the British system. In a touching sequence, Tipu tells his queen Ruqayya: "They dislike me for being so adept a pupil." Karnad attributes a lot of the prosperity of later Karnataka to the reforms Tipu carried out.
Karnad, in fact, sees Tipu as the greatest individual Karnataka has produced in the last few centuries. If he has to name three great moments in the entire history of Karnataka, he would pick the times of the Vachanakaras, of the Vijayanagar empire, and then of Tipu Sultan. "Look at the last 150 years. A state such as Maharashtra produced Tilak, Phule, Ambedkar... But in Karnataka there is no equivalent. The only person I can sense as not an intellectual but an intelligent man is Tipu. In him you see an effort to understand what's happening around him, to understand it, to reform it probably. With Tipu there is a sense of vision... which I cannot see in any other individual in Karnataka after the battle of Talikota in 1565..."
Recalling the circumstances under which he wrote the play, Karnad says: "It's an interesting twist that I was actually commissioned by the BBC, for broadcasting in England, on Indian Independence!"
In yet another twist, the play is being released this evening by an Irishman — Philip MacDonagh, Ambassador of Ireland to India. "Yes, the Irish too have their quarrels with the English reading of history!" laughs Karnad.
(The Dreams of Tipu Sultan and Bali: The Sacrifice will be released at Oxford Bookstore, Leela Galleria, at 7 p.m. today.)
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