Few rulers have been so maligned and misrepresented as Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, who has generally been pictured as an ‘intolerant bigot’ or ‘the furious fanatic’—and consigned to the category of monsters. Generations of readers have accepted this view of the contemporary Englishman, writing with a sense of moral superiority over the so-called barbarian, who felt that liquidating Tipu was as desirable as beating Boney. A few recent biographies of Tipu have endeavoured to picture Tipu as he was—minus all the distortions—and the latest in the series is Bhagwan S. Gidwani’s The Sword of Tipu Sultan.
Jan-Feb 1977, volume 2, No 1/2