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.