The legacy of Tipu Sultan’s incursion into North Kerala in the 18th century has emerged as the subject of a bitter electoral back-and-forth in the high-profile Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency.
On Thursday, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) State president K. Surendran, who is fighting Congress’s Rahul Gandhi and Communist Party of India’s Annie Raja, in Wayanad, put the cat among the pigeons by stating that he would rename Sultan Bathery town as “Ganapathy Vattom” if elected to the Lok Sabha.
The current controversy has its roots in the arrival of Tipu’s forces in erstwhile Malabar in 1789. The Mysore ruler’s forces purportedly used the precincts of Ganapathy Vattom temple as an arms depot. The Sultan Bathery town draws its name from the historical encampment chronicled by the British.
Mr. Surendran contentiously portrayed Tipu as a marauder who destroyed temples and forcibly converted people to Islam.
He claimed that the late BJP leader Pramod Mahajan had, in 1984, raised the prospect of erasing the remnants of “subjugation” from Wayanad’s history.
Mr. Surendran’s comments dovetail with the BJP’s attempts to depict Tipu as a polarising figure in Karnataka politics.
The BJP government in the contiguous State controversially halted Tipu Jayanthi celebrations in 2019. Later, the BJP objected to the incumbent Congress government reinstating the festivities in 2023.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)], Congress, and Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) denounced Mr. Surendran’s attempt to make Sultan Bathery’s place name and history a cultural flashpoint.
‘Assault on history’
The parties claimed that Mr. Surendran’s statement reflected Sangh Parivar’s politicised assault on history, including the Central government’s alleged attempt to rewrite history textbooks.
CPI(M) leader C. K. Sasidharan told reporters in Wayanad that the BJP had a more prosaic reason for pushing the divisive narrative: “the fear of defeat”.
IUML leader P.K. Kunhalikutty termed Mr. Surendran’s bid to rename Sultan Bathery as sabre rattling. “The name will remain, and Mr. Surendran will face defeat. Wayanad will maintain political and cultural status quo.” Congress leader T. Siddique, MLA, echoed a similar sentiment.
The BJP also drew criticism from literary circles. Kerala Sahitya Akademi chairperson K. Satchidanandan termed Sangh Parivar’s alleged move to expunge “inconvenient figures” from history dangerous.
