How the fictional representation of historical characters can serve to justify historical events and actions: Tipu Sultan’s Tiger

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper is a comparative analysis of three nineteenth-century British novels – The Surgeon’s Daughter (1827) by Walter Scott; Tippoo Sultan: A Tale of the Mysore War (1840) by Philip Meadows Taylor; and The Tiger of Mysore (1895) by G.A. Henty – all of which feature Tipu Sultan, the Muslim ruler of the south Indian kingdom of Mysore, who used the tiger as his personal emblem, and was killed by the British and their allies on 4 May 1799. Previous scholarship on Tipu has mainly focused on the rationale behind his adoption of the tiger as his personal insignia which, among other things, stood for his fierce independence and military acumen. However, there is little discussion of the representation of Tipu’s tiger as an emblem in the literary tradition of the colonial power at that time or as an implied justification of its political ventures in the south of India reflected in the novels written after his death. This paper argues that these British novels subvert the emblematic significance of Tipu’s tiger through the use of tiger imagery, whose main thrust is to synonymize the savagery of the Indian tiger with the rulership of Tipu. To damage Tipu’s legacy, the tiger is portrayed both as formidable, with a morbid thirst for blood, and as vulnerable and weak. The study focuses on these variations, and suggests that Tipu’s fluctuating fictional images are influenced by the shifting British attitudes towards the Sultan during different periods of the East India Company’s rule. These novels were statements within the larger discourse of colonization whose enunciative context contributed to the process that reinforced Tipu’s status as a distinct menace to be solved by the colonial conquest.