6_Glorious_Epochs_of_Indian_History

224 SIX GLORIOUS EPOCHS OF INDIAN HISTORY
unscrupulous adventurer of a son, Tipu Sultan !
556. As soon as he came to the throne, Tipu wiped out
even the name of the original Hindu King and proclaimed
himself the Sultan of a Moslem state* 1 Tipu was the last
of the Muslim rulers to establish a new independent state
and style himself a Sultan during the millennial Hindu-
Muslim war.
557. True to the usual Muslim tradition, Tipu perfor­
med his first duty as a Sultan of announcing publicly in the
very first session of his court (Darbar) that he would see to
it that all the Kafirs were made Muslim willy nilly®. He
commanded all the Hindus in his state to embrace Islam.
He ordered his various oflScers of high and low ranks in every
city, town and village to convert every Hindu to Islam. If
the Hindus did not willingly take to Islam, they were to be
forced to do so, or else the men were to be slaughtered and
the women were to be distributed as slaves among the
Muslims!".
558-560. This campaign by Tipu of pollution and prose­
lytization of the Hindus was so thorough and ruthless and
it was carried to such vast dimensions that there was
universal wailing and a sense of unimaginable horror
throughout the Hindu community in the state". Not only
the soldiers in his army but even the Mulla-Moulavis in the
meanest of villages, too, with the Muslim hooligans and
rufBans to help them, began a systematic persecution of the
Hindus ! At a later date Tipu invaded Malabar and at the
first stroke converted!* a hundred thousand Hindus in that
one single coastal district. Then overtaking the Karnatak
he even marched on the Maratha territory!*. Millions of
Hindus from Dharwar to Travancore were horror-stricken and
hundreds of men and women from all castes and sects of the
Hindu society feeling thoroughly incapable of facing this
armed attack of the Muslims preferred death, by drowning
themselves in the Krishna and the Tungbhadra, to all the
indignities and atrocities of Muslim vandalism. Hundreds of
others leapt into the fire,!* bat did not become Muslims !