Captivity of Kodavas at Seringapatam

The captivity of Kodavas (Coorgis) at Seringapatam was the period of capture, deportation, and imprisonment of Kodava Takk speaking Coorgis who rebelled against Tippu Sultan, the de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore, they were caught during a number of attempts to suppress their rebellion in the 1780s.

Quotes

• In 1788, he actually implemented his threat. In a letter to the Nawab of Kurnool Runmust Khan, Tipu gloats about how gloriously he accomplished this vicious task: …the exciters of sedition in the Coorg country, not looking to the consequences [of such conduct]… raised their heads, one and all, in tumult. Immediately on our hearing of this circumstance, we proceeded with the utmost speed, and, at once, made prisoners of forty thousand…Coorgs, who, alarmed at the approach of our victorious army, had slunk into woods, and concealed themselves in lofty mountains, inaccessible even to birds. Then carrying them away from their native country we raised them to the honor of Islam, and incorporated them with our Ahmadi corps. As these happy tidings are calculated, at once, to convey a warning to hypocrites…
  • Tipu Sultan letter to the Nawab of Kurnool Runmust Khan, quoted from Sandeep Balakrishna. 2013. Tipu Sultan : The Tyrant of Mysore. Chennai: Rare Publications.

• Tipu marched into Coorg with a large force and launched a savage attack on the pretext of suppressing a rebellion. Indeed, there’s some grain of truth about the rebellion, and it has everything to do with a despotic officer named Zein Ul Abiddin Khan. He was Tipu’s faithful Faujdaar(commander) in Coorg. Here’s how Tipu’s arch-sycophant cum historian Mir Hussein Kirmani, describes Zein Khan: The Faujdaar extended the hand of lust to the women of the peasantry, and compelled them to submit to his will and pleasure. In consequence of this tyrannical conduct, the whole of Kodagu advanced into a field of enmity and defiance. The people there rose up in rebellion when Tipu himself entered Kodagu through Periyapattana and Siddapur. He threw himself like a raging lion into the midst of that frightful forest…the Kodagu country…
  • Mir Hussein Kirmani quoted from Sandeep Balakrishna. 2013. Tipu Sultan : The Tyrant of Mysore. Chennai: Rare Publications.

• Here’s Mir Hussein Kirmani again giving us a sample of Tipu’s savagery in Coorg. The conquering Sultan now…dispatched his Amirs and Khans with large bodies of troops to punish those idolaters and reduce the whole country (Coorg) to subjection. Troops under M. Lally…Abbedin [the same tyrannical Faujdaar] and Hussein Ali were sent to Thalakaveri and Kushalpura…attacked and destroyed many towns with 8000 men, women and children taken as prisoners…collected an immense crowd like a flock of sheep or herd of bullocks…while the Sultan pitched his tents to the South of the Thalakaveri hill…giving them orders to pursue the rebels and capture their chiefs.
  • Mir Hussein Kirmani quoted from Sandeep Balakrishna. 2013. Tipu Sultan : The Tyrant of Mysore. Chennai: Rare Publications.

• By September 1785, with a determination to punish the Kodavas for what they had been doing, Tipu ordered the commander or sipahadar of one of his kushoons (infantry brigades of five thousand men), Zain-ul-abidin Shoostri to invade Coorg and terminate the insurgency. In his later dated 17 September 1785 to Shoostri, Tipu writes: It has lately been represented to us, that the Koorgs have committed some excesses at Zuferabad. We have, in consequence, written to the Buktshy [Bakshi] of the Jyshe [army], to dispatch you with two guns and your kushoon to that place. He is also ordered to advance you Two Thousand Behadury pagodas, on account of the pay of your kushoon, as well as a thousand rupees, to be applied in compensations to the wounded . . . you will proceed, as directed above, to Zuferabad; to the Foujdar of which place, Zynul Aabideen, we have addressed another letter, which is enclosed. You are, in conjunction with him, to make a general attack on the Koorgs; when having put to the sword, or made prisoners of the whole of them, both the slain and the prisoners are to be made Musulmans [emphasis mine]. In short, you must so manage matters, as to prevent them from exciting any further sedition or disturbance.
  • in Vikram Sampath - Tipu - The Saga of Mysore's Interregnum (2024)

• Rev. Hermann Moegling, a German missionary from the Basel mission, who came to Coorg in 1853, mentions in his Coorg Memoirs: After fifteen days, he [Tipu] went to Talakaveri. He encamped at Devatiparambu. At first, he negotiated. When the Coorgs felt secure, he seized them suddenly with their families and carried them to Mysore. There he separated them and forced them to become Musulmans. They were received as Sheiks, Syeds, Mogals and Patans. In course he sent Mohammadans of the four classes into Coorg and gave to them the lands and slaves of the rulers. Besides, he transplanted large numbers of farmers from Adwani [Adoni] in the Bellary district into Coorg as labourers on the estates of the new Musulman rulers. Nagappaya, the nephew of Subarasaya, was charged with the Government of the country.
  • in Vikram Sampath - Tipu - The Saga of Mysore's Interregnum (2024)

• To the Sheik and Syed converts whom he transplanted into a depopulated, barren Coorg, Tipu gave a cruel task: The country is given to you in Jaghir, improve it and be happy; the extermination of those mountaineers being determined on you, you are required as an imperious duty, to search for and to slay all who may have escaped our just vengeance; their wives and children will become your slaves.
  • in Vikram Sampath - Tipu - The Saga of Mysore's Interregnum (2024)

• Some of the temples of the Kodavas, like the Bhagavathy temple near Kotakeri was demolished and the Biddatanda Ainmane was burnt down by Tipu.18 However, several temples and their deities were secretly translocated by the Kodavas and the Brahmin priests to be hidden in safety and escape the wrath of Tipu’s marauding forces.19 The Omkareshwara temple was replaced with a tomb.20 It is believed that several of these shrines, including that of the famous Bhagandeshwara temple, remained in disuse or ruins and the idols hidden in several secret locations, only to be reinstalled and worshipped later, once the Coorg Raja’s power was re-established.21 The Bhagandeshwara temple was made into a fortress and renamed as Afzalabad.
  • in Vikram Sampath - Tipu - The Saga of Mysore's Interregnum (2024)

• In a self-congratulatory account of the successful Coorg expedition, Tipu writes to the Nawab of Kurnool, Ranmast Khan, in a letter dated 5 January 1786:Some time ago . . . the exciters of sedition in the Koorg country . . . raised their heads, one and all, in tumult. Immediately, on our hearing of this circumstance, we proceeded with the utmost speed, and at once, made prisoners of forty thousand sedition-exciting Koorgs, who, alarmed at the approach of our victorious army, had slunk into woods, and concealed themselves in lofty mountains, inaccessible even to birds. Then carrying them away from their native country we raised them to the honour of Islam, and incorporated them with our Ahmadi corps. As these happy tidings are calculated, at once, to convey a warning to hypocrites, and to afford delight to friends, [but more especially] to the chiefs of the true believers, then pen of amity has here recited them [for your information].
  • in Vikram Sampath - Tipu - The Saga of Mysore's Interregnum (2024)

• In another letter to Meer Muinudeen, dated 13 January 1786, Tipu once again corroborates the act of transporting and converting the captives from Coorg: ‘By the favour of the Almighty and the assistance of the Prophet, we have arranged and adjusted the affairs of the taluk of Zufeerabad in the most suitable manner; the tribe of Koorgs to the number of fifty thousand men and women, having been made captives, and incorporated with the Ahmadi class . . . this being an event calculated to give strength to the people of Islam, we wish that brother [all co-religionists] all joy on this auspicious occasion.’
  • in Vikram Sampath - Tipu - The Saga of Mysore's Interregnum (2024)

• A large part of the population of Coorg was made prisoner. The number of prisoners and converts varies from Tipu’s own letters to those of the several chroniclers. In the letter above to Meer Muinudeen, Tipu gloats about 50,000 Kodavas being made captives, converted to Islam and incorporated into the Ahmadi class. In the letter to Ranmast Khan above, Tipu is gloating about 50,000 prisoners whom he converted. In his account, Kirmani states that ‘in the course of seven months and a few days, eighty thousand men, women and children were made prisoners . . . the prisoners . . . had been all made Musulmans and were styled Ahmudees, were formed into eight risalas or regiments and veteran officers were appointed to train and discipline them.’2
  • in Vikram Sampath - Tipu - The Saga of Mysore's Interregnum (2024)

• Rev. Georg Richter, another German missionary of the Basel Mission who Moegling had brought in to Coorg around 1856, records how Tipu captured ‘85,000 souls, sent them to Seringapatam and, carrying out his former threat, had them forcibly circumcised.’29 Wilks pegs this number at 70,000. He writes: ‘ . . . [Tipu] closed in on the great mass of the population, male and female, amounting to about 70,000, and drove them off like a herd of cattle to Seringapatam, where the Sultaun’s threats were but too effectually executed.’
  • in Vikram Sampath - Tipu - The Saga of Mysore's Interregnum (2024)

• No sooner had Tipu headed back to his capital than troubles began to erupt once more in Coorg. Puffed by his closeness to the Sultan, Mehdvi, the new foujdar, had become a debauched autocrat in a short span of time. He had forcibly abducted the sister of one Momuti Nair, a minister of the local chief.8 These excesses had naturally inflamed passions among the Kodavas, particularly Momuti and his colleague Ranga Nair. Soon the discontent spread among all the peasantry who were bearing the brunt of Mysore’s exploitation and heavy taxation, and now the additional scourge of their women being brazenly molested by Mehdvi. Kirmani too corroborates these excesses committed by Mehdvi:
  When Zein ool Abidin Mehdivi, the Foujdar of Koorg, from his intimacy with the Sultan, and the confidence he reposed in him was placed in uncontrolled authority there, he filled all parts of the kingdom with rebellion, and regulated the affairs of the government according merely to his caprice and folly; in so much that from the inherent vices of his disposition, he extended the hand of lust to the women of the peasantry, and compelled the handsomest among them to submit to his will and pleasure. In consequence of this tyrannical conduct, the whole of the people of Koorg advanced into the field of enmity and defiance.
  • Kirmani, in Vikram Sampath - Tipu - The Saga of Mysore's Interregnum (2024)