Tipu Sultan's Search for Legitimacy: Islam and Kingship in a Hindu Domain.

• Author: SATYA, LAXMAN D.
• Position: Review

Tipu Sultan's Search for Legitimacy: Islam and Kingship in a Hindu Domain. By KATE BRITTLEBANK. Delhi: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1997. Pp. xxii + 184. Rs 450.

It is the author's contention that Tipu Sultan was the product of a syncretic tradition: a tradition formed over several centuries through the intermingling of Hindu and Muslim culture in south India. Tipu used the elements of this culture to legitimize his power and authority as the "parvenu Muslim ruler of a predominantly Hindu domain," Mysore. The elements which Tipu used were deeply ingrained in the beliefs and practices of the people and their society. Eighteenth-century south India was a "non-dualistic" world which did not distinguish between the spiritual and the material or, for that matter, between a Hindu or a Muslim. It was also a "non-modern" socio-cultural milieu in which symbols and rituals played a powerful role in the daily lives of people.

Tipu used popular symbols and rituals in his relentless search for legitimacy. Contrary to the views held by some historians, the author suggests that Tipu's kingship was not alien to this tradition but very much a part of it. The use of symbols and rituals such as the tiger and the sun, patronizing of temples and dargahs, gift giving and food sharing, holding a common darbar, belief in cosmology and astrology, making up genealogies, declaring himself Padshah (emperor) and acting like one, and his universal display of grandeur, opulence, and wealth, were acts well within the realm of the South Asian tradition of kingship and governance.

The author suggests that Tipu was a realist, even though he lived in a non-modern world in which power was for the taking. He knew the significance of reforms for the survival of his kingdom, especially at a time when the Marathas, and the Nizam, in cahoots with the British, were...