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The facts of fiction
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Vikram Sampath’s book on Mysore royalty is a non-historian’s objective telling
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Tell tale Vikram Sampath says history is a tussle between science and art
For those who have grown up in Mysore, the grand old city forms a significant component of the unconscious. The kings, queens, the palace, the grandeur, the festivity… the ever-so-many stories that we listened to in our growing-up years, left u
s in awe as well as a sense of intrigue for the royalty of Mysore: the Wadiyars. It was not only a political capital (remember Gandhiji’s remarks about the Mysore State being so prosperous that it doesn’t need to worry about Independence), but also a cultural capital. Art and literature had never seen more patronage.
It takes perseverance of another kind to chase these fascinating stories and turn it into a well-researched document of the times. Vikram Sampath, a graduate from BITS Pilani, has realised this daunting task. “I must have been a boy of 12 when the ‘Mysore bug’ bit me for the first time. The provocation was the tele-serial, ‘The Sword of Tipu Sultan’, aired on national television those days.” The protests that followed over the way the royalty was portrayed was something that led Vikram — already tanked up on many stories that his grandma had told him — to read up on Mysore history.
The journey
For Vikram, it did start of as “child-like” curiosity, but eventually developed into a serious pursuit. However, in this journey from curiosity to quest, the book was never on his mind. It came much later. But all along, what disturbed him immensely was the manner in which “the veil of time and the kind of historical documents that existed had slowly blurred the facts.” It’s a matter of great coincidence that the history of Mysore has been at the centre of controversy even in the recent times. He found that the historical records of the times were invariably biased towards the ruling party and berated the House of Hyder as a barbaric and dogmatic clan. The contemporary Muslim records, however, heaped encomiums on father and son. And then there were historians who, seized with rabid hatred particularly for Tipu, portrayed him as the worst villain of mankind. “Where does a modern, unbiased commentator on history, such as me, go?,” asks the young author. With much deliberation, he did find his way out. “I have stated stories with the responsibility of a modern-day story teller. I have tried to rationalise my view point which I think is very important in story telling.”
The driving motive of the 700-odd-pages tome was a “non-historian perspective”. Vikram feels it is unfair to judge people by the yardsticks of today. Vikram felt a pressing urgency to share with youngsters of his generation that the State was not the result of a magic wand wave of IT czars; it is the grand vision of Mysore royalty, and that it always was a knowledge and cultural centre. For a rational mind, the many stories that are accepted as part of history go down with a big helping of scepticism. Vikram was not different. But during his many travels, he realised that these fables had become part of the collective consciousness, part of everyday life.
Taking it further, as Vikram puts is quite beautifully in his Preface: “If nothing else, it gives the historian a chance to turn novelist – a temptation that I have succumbed to as well!”
DEEPA GANESH
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