CHAPTER 17 NAYAKA, HABSHI AND MARATHA RULE, EUROPEAN INCURSIONS AND CHRISTIANITY IN SOUTH INDIA : INDIA, HINDUTVA AND HISTORY
CHAPTER 17: NAYAKA, HABSHI AND MARATHA RULE, EUROPEAN INCURSIONS AND CHRISTIANITY IN SOUTH INDIA
The death of Rama Raya was followed by six years of
internecine strife for the throne of Vijayanagar, or rather, Penukonda (571). As
usual, when the throne was weak, all the subordinate chiefs and governors tried
their luck by rebelling.
The Nayakas of Madurai, Tanjore and Ginji (near Pondicherry) asserted independence. The Battle of Talikota, which has become a rallying call for Hindutva in South India today, had no such effect on the Hindu rajas, chiefs and nobles of the time. They continued to compete with each other as fiercely and ruthlessly as with the sultans.
As mentioned in Chapter 16, even the relationship between the Sultans and Vijayanagar nobles remained as friendly as before the Battle of Talikota. In the scramble for the Vijayanagar/Penukonda throne, Tirumala applied to Ali Adil Shah of Bijapur for help. At a later point he joined with Ahmadnagar and Qutb Shah of Golconda against Bijapur.
In the meantime, in Madurai, Visvanatha Nayaka had been
succeeded by his son, Krishnappa Nayaka, in 1564 (572). Krishnappa Nayaka
successfully invaded Sri Lanka, possibly on behalf of the Vijayanagar kingdom,
and appointed his brother-in-law, Vijaya Gopala Nayaka, as governor there. In
this way, Sri Lanka experienced a period of Nayaka rule
Tirumala crowned himself king in 1570 taking the title
“Reviver of the Karnataka Empire”. Thus, six years after the Battle of
Talikota, the Aravidu dynasty of Vijayanagar was established.
Tirumala Deva Raya reconciled with the Nayakas of
Tamil country, the Wadiyars of Mysore and the Nayakas of Keladi in Bednore (the
latter two being principalities in Karnataka), with whom relations had become
strained under Rama Raya.
In 1572, he moved the capital from Penukonda to
Chandragiri (also in Andhra country). That same year, his son, Sriranga,
succeeded to the throne. Sadashiva seems to have died or been killed a few
years later.
Another event of note in
1572 was that in Madurai, Krishnappa Nayaka was succeeded by his son, Virappa
Nayaka (573). There is a reference to the mosque of Goripalaiyam in his time,
where he affirmed the right of the Muslims in a dispute that arose over the
ancient grant of a plot of land by a Pandya king on which the mosque stood
(574). Virappa Nayaka thus continued the tradition of religious tolerance that
we repeatedly find among the kings of the Deccan.
It was also in Virappa
Nayaka’s time that the Portuguese started their missionary work in Madurai and
coastal regions nearby. Virappa Nayaka gave permission to the Portuguese Jesuit
missionary, Father G. Fernandez, to build a church and presbytery. Father G.
Fernandez was also permitted to proselytise among the elites and upper castes
of Madurai.
The Pandyas, who ruled in
the coastal regions at this time, also appear not to have objected to
Portuguese missionaries working there. The coastal population comprised mostly of
fishermen and pearl divers. Father G. Fernandez did not have much success
converting the elites of Madurai, but the coastal folk in Pandya country espoused
Christianity in significant numbers.
The tolerance towards
Portuguese missionary work was consistent with the policy of the Vijayanagar
rajas of friendship with Portugal in exchange for access to their ports in
India, such as Goa, and their sea trade, particularly in horses. The Portuguese
were also valued by the Vijayanagar rajas for their guns and mercenaries.
Alliances with the Sultans continued under Sriranga of
Vijayanagar, or, rather, Chandragiri (575). He took the help of Golconda when Ahmadnagar
attacked Penukonda. In 1579, the Maratha Brahmin commander of Golconda, Murhari
Rao plundered the Narasimha temple at Ahobilam in Andhra country. Again and
again we see religion not playing any role in the Deccan theatre.
Sriranga was able to take some Golconda territories around
the south of the Krishna river. He was succeeded by Venkata in 1585. Venkata
was able to take the principality of Vellore near Chennai, and made that his
new capital. He attacked various Golconda forts and other possessions from time
to time. Though Venkata made some gains, Kondavidu remained with Golconda.
The Nayakas in Tamil country had grown in influence to
a point where now they were able to join in their own right in the ever-shifting
game of alliances and counter-alliances in the Deccan (576). Tanjore, whose
Nayaka was related to the Vijayanagar rajas, tended to remain loyal to them.
But Madurai had no such feeling for Vijayanagar, and acted according to its own
lights.
The Dutch and the English began to establish
themselves on the east coast of the Deccan at this time (577). In 1608, the
Nayaka of Gingi, nominally under the Vijayanagar kingdom, allowed the Dutch to
begin building a factory in Cuddalore port on the east coast. They built a fort
here which was eventually acquired by the British, and named Fort St David.
In 1610, Venkata granted the Dutch exclusive trade
rights and permission to build a factory in Pulicat near Chennai (577). The
English too set up trade here. Using the excuse of the possibility of an attack
by the Portuguese from San Thome, the Dutch also built a fortress here.
In 1620, the Danes built a fort in Tharangambadi
(“Tranquebar” to the Europeans) in Mayiladuthurai district next to Tanjore in
Tamil country. Centuries later this writer’s father would be Member of
Parliament from Mayiladuthurai.
_-_Tharangambadi,_Tamil_Nadu.jpg)
In 1639, the Vijayanagar Raja in Chandragiri leased
land to the English East India Company in Channapattinam on the coast just
outside what would become the city of Madras. It was here that the English
built the famous Fort St George from which they eventually built their colony
of the Madras Presidency (578).
The death of Venkata was followed by decades of
fighting between various aspirants to the throne from the Aravidu clan of the
Vijayanagar rajas now based in Chandragiri. There was also pitched fighting
among the Nayakas. The in-fighting among the Aravidus was spectacularly bloody,
with entire families being wiped out in move and counter-move (579).
The Deccan Sultans used the civil strife among the
Aravidus and Nayakas to take what possessions they could. Bijapur was able to
get the fort of Kurnool in Andhra country. Sriranga III, an Aravidu prince,
allied with Bijapur to attack his uncle, Venkata III who then held the seat of
Vellore (580). Golconda also attacked the Aravidu’s possessions in Andhra
country.
Sriranga III succeeded Venkata III. His alliance with
Bijapur endured for a while, enabling him to hold off Golconda beyond Udayagiri
in Andhra country (581).
In the early 1600s, the Wadiyar dynasty rose in
Mysore. They had been chiefs of the Vijayanagar empire in the Mysore region
since the days of Harihara and Bukka Raya. They may even have been related to
the Sangamas, as some scholars give them the surname of “Odiyar”.
Nilakanta Sastri claims, without offering any evidence, that Sriranga made an appeal in the name of Hinduism to the neighbouring chiefs
and Nayakas. Interestingly, he does not mention his colleague SK Aiyangar’s
finding that: “failing to secure useful assistance anywhere near, [Sriranga]
made an appeal to Shah Jahan in 1653, offering even to become a convert to
Islam if the emperor made it a condition preliminary to rendering him the
assistance that would enable him to regain his territory.”
It is a testament to the stubborn communal-mindedness
of these historians that they will continue to speak of the Vijayanagar rajas as representing a sort of last stand for Hinduism in the teeth of this history (581A).
In the meantime, in Madurai,
Virappa Nayaka had been succeeded by his son Vira Krishna in 1595, who was in
turn succeeded by Muttu Krishnappa in 1601 (582).
Muttu Krishnappa made alliances with the Setupatis, the traditional chiefs of Ramnad and Sivaganga (also known as Marava country).
Muttu Krishnappa
continued the Nayaka policy of friendship and laissez faire towards the Portuguese in
the coastal regions that we noted earlier (587).
Foreign reports refer to
the fisher folk or “Paravas” as “subjects of His Portuguese Majesty” and
describe the situation thus:
“The entire civil and
criminal jurisdiction of the fishery coast had been seized upon by the
Portuguese, and …..all dues and taxes, including valuable revenue arising from
the pearl-fishery, had been assumed by the governors appointed by the
Portuguese viceroy. The Portuguese had not asked any native potentate’s consent
to the formation of their settlements (583).”
The reign of Muttu
Krishnappa also saw the entry on the scene, in 1606, of the famous Italian
Jesuit missionary, Robert de Nobili, in the Madurai Jesuit Mission. Robert de
Nobili styled himself a “Roman Brahmin” in an effort to obtain high caste
converts to Christianity.
He is said to have declared “I will make myself Indian to save the Indians”. His three-point project was as follows: “the adaptation of the life of the missionary to that of the people”; “the appropriation of harmless (Hindu) customs and ceremonies for Christian use”; and “the thorough study of the vernaculars …with a view to fluency of speech and writing” (584).
Robert de Nobili made
some converts among the elites. There are hints of opposition by the local
Brahmins, but the Polegar chiefs, who were fiefs of the Nayakas, and through
them of the Vijayanagar kingdom, extended protection.
In fact, the Nayakas of
Tamil country stepped in time and again to calm religious strife that broke out
in Tamil country in reaction to the missionaries. They took strong steps to
provide security and protection to the Jesuits when they were threatened by the
populace or subordinate chiefs.
The historian R.
Sathyanatha Aiyar says that: “Muttu Krishnappa’s dealings with the missionaries
reveal his broad-minded toleration and appreciation of honest effort, provided
it did not go against the stability of the kingdom (589).”
Robert de Nobili’s
greatest opponent was from within the Jesuit mission in South India itself.
Father G. Fernandez
complained to Rome, saying that de Nobili’s attempt to combine Hindu practices
with Christianity was “monstrous” (585). The Pope was persuaded, and for nearly
a decade, de Nobili’s activities were suspended.
But in the end de
Nobili’s methods were approved, and he resumed his work in Tamil Nadu and
Kerala.
RS Aiyar says that: “The
Nayaks, in general, seem to have left the coast open to the enterprise of
foreign nations (586).”
However, there also
appears to have been a neglect of a local requirement, which was of maintaining
safety for pilgrims on the route to the holy site of Rameswaram where Lord Ram
is said to have stopped on his way to Lanka. To tackle this, Muttu Krishnappa
appears to have decided to restore the Setupatis to control in this area as
tributaries of Madurai (588).
Muttu Krishnappa Nayaka
was succeeded by Muttu Virappa Nayaka I in Madurai (590). In his reign in 1611,
fighting broke out between Tanjore and Madurai. Hostilities continued to simmer
for years.
In 1614, there was civil
war in the Vijayanagar kingdom after the death of Venkata I. A powerful Andhra
chief, Yachama Nayaka, supported one claimant, while the prince, Jagga Raya, supported another. When Jagga Raya was defeated by Yachama Nayaka, he came to
Tamil country hoping to garner support among the Nayakas there.
He joined Madurai and
Gingi (a Nayakar principality to the southeast of Chennai) against Tanjore. The
Pandyas also joined Madurai. A battle was fought in Trichy in 1616, which
Tanjore appears to have won. Peace was restored with the marriage of a daughter
of Muttu Virappa to the Tanjore Nayaka.
The Madurai Nayaka
shifted his capital from Madurai to Trichy for the time being.
This was also the time
that hostilities began between Madurai and the governor of Mysore. With the
decline of Vijayanagar, the Wadiyar feudatories in Mysore began to gain in
strength. They annexed Ummattur and kept expanding until their lands were
co-terminus with those of Madurai. Taking advantage of Madurai’s preoccupation
with the battle against Tanjore, Mysore began skirmishes in Dindigul, a
district in the Madurai domain.
Muttu Virappa Nayaka I was succeeded by Tirumala Nayaka in 1623 who shifted the capital back to Madurai (591).
Views of the Palace in Madurai of Tirumala Nayaka.
Photo Credit: iStock.The Vijayanagar overlords were preoccupied with their internal troubles, and fighting broke out all over the deep south. Mysore and Madurai went to battle twice. The raja of Kerala and the Setupatis of Marava country (Ramnad) stopped paying tribute to Madurai, so action had to be taken against them as well.
Kerala was restored to
allegiance, but the Marava problem became increasingly complicated owing to
infighting between two Setupati brothers over the throne. Dalavay Setupati
Sadaka Teva was the crowned king and his challenger was his younger brother,
“Tambi”.
Madurai initially allied
with Tambi, as it was the Dalavay who had stopped paying the tribute. “Tambi”
means younger brother in Tamil, so this was not his proper name, however, none
other seems to have been recorded.
The Europeans joined in,
with the Portuguese fighting on the side of Madurai, and the Dutch on that of
the Dalavay. The Portuguese had appointed locals as their governors in Tamil
country.
A European report of the
time states that the Madurai Nayaka sent word to Ramapa, the Portuguese
“Viceroy”, that in return for Portuguese assistance in subduing Marava country,
he pledged to give them a fortress in Pampa, and to build “at his own expense a
church at [Ramnad], and seven churches between [Pamban] and [Tondi]. Madurai
also promised to support Portugal in its schemes in Sri Lanka and “gave
permission to all those who might desire it to become Christians” (592).
So much for the Golden
Age of Hinduism that the Hindutva ideologues want us to believe in.
Tirumala Nayaka won the
war, and installed the Tambi as the Setupati king. But supporters of the
deposed Dalavay refused to accept him. In the end, Tirumala Nayaka shifted his
allegiance to the Dalavay. For a few years the Dalavay ruled over Marava
country, but then the Tambi assassinated him!
Tirumala Nayaka then
decided to divide the Ramnad Kingdom between its warring factions. This appears
to have worked. Over time, the Setupati chiefs in charge of different divisions
passed away, leaving only one Raghunatha Teva, under whom the kingdom was
reconstituted into one again.
Robert de Nobili had resumed his missionary work in 1624 (593). To begin with, aided by the rising importance of the Portuguese in the sea trade on the southeastern coast, with few exceptions, he was given friendly treatment everywhere.
Initially, he was
received kindly by the Nayaka of Trichy, a subordinate of Madurai. But soon trouble
began there for ever afterwards. de Nobili had great success in Salem, where
the brother of the Nayaka adopted Christianity under his guidance (594).
Things were calm for
several years, but then, in 1638, de Nobili ran into difficulties. He and his
fellows were arrested in Madurai and Trichy. This appears to have been a time
of censorship and hostility against the Jesuits and Christians in general.
The Tirumala Nayaka
released de Nobili, but Trichy continued to resist the Jesuits. On the personal
representation of de Nobili, Tirumala Nayaka wrote a strong letter to the
Trichy Nayaka to allow freedom to the missionaries in their work and to restore
their possessions. Things settled for a while, but hostility against the
Christians continued to break out from time to time.
While Tirumala Nayaka
himself continued to be supportive, other local rajas and chiefs began to rise
from time to time against the missionaries, either imprisoning or expelling
them. The missionaries’ reports to
Portugal describe how they always found themselves on the defensive from “the
proud castes of the Hindus”, and felt safer among the Paraiyas.
It must be noted how even
so far back in the past, much before the evolution of modern liberal ideology,
the bigger rulers of South India always saw it as their role to rise above
religious divisions, and to establish religious tolerance and harmony in their
domains.
It should also be noted
that it was the so-called outcastes and other communities who had been
marginalised and stigmatised by the Hindus that were the most open to espousing
a new faith, which gave them dignity and a sense of inclusion.
Meanwhile, in Karnataka country, the raja of Mysore had already declared independence from Vijayanagar. Tirumala Nayaka of Madurai was ready to do the same (595). An alliance was formed against Vijayanagar among the three big Nayakas – Madurai, Tanjore and Gingi. But, as usual, Tanjore betrayed the others. So Tirumala Nayaka turned to the Sultan of Golconda for an alliance (596). The upshot was that Sriranga of Vijayanagar was forced to flee to the forests of Tanjore.
A welcome exception to the anti-Muslim attitude of Tamil historians of the early 20th century is RS Aiyar who describes the times far more faithfully to the truth than his fellows when he writes of the policy alliances between the Deccan Sultans and Tirumala Nayaka of Madurai that:
“To understand Tirumala’s policy aright, it is
necessary to have a grasp of the trend of South Indian politics in those times.
Self-interest had become the governing motive in political transactions. Even
religion hardly entered into the calculation; so far as South India was
concerned, there was no close wall of separation between the Hindus and the
Muhammadans. Many a time the Muhammadan states of the Dakhan did not act
conjointly in their struggle with Vijayanagar. Some of them called in the help
of the latter against their own co-religionists. The great Vijayanagar
minister, Ramaraja [Rama Raya], helped the Muhammadans in their internal
struggles. According to the conceptions of the day, it did not offend against
political morals for the Muhammadans to seek Hindu help and vice versa (600)”.
In the edition of this work with me, his editor,
Aiyangar, whose communal understanding of history I have criticised in previous
chapters, could not resist chiming in with a long footnote accusing Tirumala
Nayaka of selfishness and painting scenarios where Sriranga (the last
Vijayanagar raja), who was hiding in the forests of Tanjore at the time from
his own Nayakas, could make a stand “against the Mohammadans”. The history that
is described below shows the foolishness of such thinking.
RS Aiyar points out that
while Venkata III had understood the power of Tirumala Nayaka and had the tact
to maintain him under Vijayanagar suzerainty without leaning too hard on him,
Sriranga III failed to see this.
Sriranga III was an
aggressive prince who had come to power by pushing out Venkata III who was his
uncle. He forced Madurai into open defiance by marching against it when the
Nayaka showed reluctance to pay the usual tribute. It was this aggression
initiated by Sriranga that prompted the Nayaka alliance against him (596A).
But now Golconda tried to
take over the Nayakar lands. Tanjore surrendered, but Tirumala Nayaka of
Madurai made an alliance with the Sultan of Bijapur. They marched to the relief
of Gingi which had been besieged by the Sultan of Golconda. Golconda won Gingi,
and entered Madurai, but Tirumala Nayaka was able to beat him back.
Mysore and Sriranga (of
Vijayanagar/Vellore) now began plotting a military aggression. This made
Tirumala Nayaka nervous about his own domains, and he turned once more to the
Sultan of Bijapur for an alliance.
Bijapur took over Vellore in Tamil country. Sriranga
fled to Bednore in southwest Karnataka country where the Nayakas of Keladi gave
him refuge. He later went to Belur (also in Karnataka) under protection of the
Wadiyars who let him hold court there till his death in 1672.
This was the end of the Vijayanagar kingdom, though
princes of this lineage seem to have survived here and there, as inscriptions
have been found bearing the name of Vijayanagar kings dated to the end of the
18th century.
In 1673, Chikka Deva Raya Wadiyar came to the throne
of Mysore. In the same year, the French leased land around Masulipattinam from
the Sultan of Bijapur and went on to establish their colony of Pondicherry
there (597).
Chikka Deva Raya Wadiyar
tried to expand along the west coast of Karnataka but found himself blocked by
the Kodavas of Coorg to his north and the Keladi Nayakas to his south. He was
also threatened by the rising power of the Maratha chiefs.
He decided on a policy of
allying with Delhi to hold off his immediate neighbours, and sent an embassy to
the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, receiving an ivory crown from him in return as a
mark of his overlordship (598).
Strangely, despite this history, the Wadiyars are among the figures that are held up today as a great symbol of Hindu resistance of the time by the spinners of Hindutva history.
As stated above, after
taking Vellore, the Sultan of Bijapur had marched southwards, where Tanjore and Gingi accepted the suzerainty of
Bijapur. In keeping with the policy of centuries, the Tanjore Nayaka was kept
in place as a tributary of Bijapur. The Sultan of Golconda expanded eastwards
upto the coast (599).
Though Madurai remained
independent under Tirumala Nayaka, it did not remain peaceful. Kanthirava
Narasa of Mysore carried out a raid in Madurai which retaliated in turn.
Tirumala Nayaka was old and infirm by now, and the fighting was conducted by
his allies, the Setupatis of Marava (Ramnad).
War also broke out
between the Dutch and the Portuguese on the east coast. On an appeal from his
Portuguese allies, Tirumala Nayaka expelled the Dutch from the port-city of
Nagapattinam. The Dutch accused Madurai of conspiring with the Parava
fisher-folk who had defaulted in their payment of tribute to the Europeans.
In revenge, the Dutch
sacked Nagapattinam and carried away the fishermen’s boats until the Paravas
were forced to agree to resume payment of tribute. Ten years later, the Dutch
captured Tuticorin (Thoothukudi), thus ousting the Portuguese entirely.
An interesting development in the late 16th
century, was the rise of the Ethiopian general Malik Ambar in the Ahmadnagar
Sultanate (601). Ahmadnagar was located in the north-western Deccan, spreading
over Maharashtra and northern parts of Karnataka.
Such soldiers were in high demand in both the Deccan Sultanates and the Vijayanagar kingdom. The African slave soldiers were called “Habshis”.
Malik Ambar was hired by the prime minister or peshwa
of Ahmadnagar, Chengiz Khan, himself a Habshi and freed slave. The convention
was for senior slaves to be freed after distinguishing themselves in service.
Talented slaves could rise to high office, and even become Sultans in their own
right, as we saw in the Delhi Sultanate.
In the 1570s, when Malik Ambar was taken into service
by Chengiz Khan, the Mughal Empire had reached its height in North India. The
legendary Emperor Akbar sat on the throne of Delhi.
In 1574-75, Chengiz Khan died. His widow freed Ambar, who
went on to marry a local woman of African descent. This was also of a piece
with the times. Many Habshi soldiers married locally, and there was a
significant community of African-Dakkhani descendants of such parentage in
South India at the time.
Ambar then took service in Bijapur where he rose to
the rank of “Malik”. Maliks were in
effect autonomous war lords with their own independent forces. Malik Ambar rejoined
Ahmadnagar in 1595 with a contingent of 150 cavalrymen. This was the time of,
and was probably prompted by, the start of Emperor Akbar’s incursions into the
Deccan. Ahmadnagar, being the northernmost of the Deccan Sultanates, would have
been the first to come under attack by the Mughals.
In 1600, Ahmadnagar fell to Akbar’s forces, who
carried off its Sultan. But this military victory of the Mughals was not yet a
decisive takeover of the throne of Ahmadnagar, for which, as usual, a number of
contenders appeared on the scene.
By now Malik Ambar had seven thousand men in his
personal cavalry. He was powerful enough to join the political battle for Ahmadnagar.
He backed a young prince of the House of Ahmadnagar who had been living in
Bijapur at the time of the fighting with the Mughals.
Malik Ambar had the prince proclaimed Sultan of
Ahmadnagar, and had himself appointed as regent. He further secured his position
by marrying one of his daughters to the new Sultan. This marriage of a prince
of the Deccan Sultanate with Brahmin ancestors through Malik Shah Bahri (whom
we read about in Chapter 15), the Brahmin-born father of Ahmad Nizam Shah, the
founder of the Ahmadnagar Sultanate, to the daughter of an African, demonstrates,
yet again, the marvellous hybridity of society in the Dakkhani Age.
The Ahmadnagar Sultanate was restored, and stood up to
the Mughals for decades to come. Malik Ambar was a master of guerrilla warfare
or “bargi giri”, drawing Mughal soldiers into unwinnable positions in the
forests and ravines that defined the landscape of Ahmadnagar. He also used
surprise night attacks to great effect against the Mughals.
In Madurai, in the
meanwhile, the venerable Tirumala Nayaka was succeeded by Muttu Virappa Nayaka
II in 1659 (602). That same year, the Sultan of Bijapur attacked Madurai and
Tanjore.
Tanjore had previously
accepted the suzerainty of Bijapur, so this may have been owing to the Nayaka’s
having shown signs of defiance. Tanjore had refused an alliance with Madurai,
and was the first to fall. Madurai held out from its fortress in Trichy. Famine
and disease broke out, and in the end Bijapur withdrew after exacting tribute
from Madurai.
Muttu Virappa Nayaka died
at the same time. As his successor, Chokkanatha Nayaka, was young, his
officials, led by his prime minister, Dalavay Lingama Nayaka, conspired against
him. Lingama Nayaka even managed to form an alliance with the Tanjore Nayaka.
But Chokkanatha was able to hold his own, and Lingama Nayaka was eventually
forced to flee to Tanjore (603).
Famine and disease
continued to stalk Tamil country. Portuguese reports say that the Dutch took
gross advantage of the situation to capture slaves from among the starving
natives: “They enticed them to the coast with the bait of abundant food; then,
when their number became pretty large and their strength a little recouped,
they piled them up in their ships and transported them to other countries to be
sold as slaves.” (604).
Madurai continued
battling Mysore and Tanjore. The Raja of Mysore managed to take Coimbatore and
Salem from Madurai in 1667. In 1676, Mysore also took the province of
Satyamangalam from Madurai, along with important forts on its northwest.
The Madurai Nayaka
Chokkananatha had fared better against Tanjore, which he routed two years
earlier in 1674, killing the reigning Nayaka, Vijayaraghava and his son. He
installed a foster brother, Alagiri Nayaka, on the throne of Tanjore (605).
Loyalists of the dead
Vijayaraghava Nayaka were not happy with the appointment of Alagiri of Madurai
to the throne of Tanjore. Tanjore had always had Nayakas with regal connections
to Vijayanagar, and its nobles thought of themselves as of a higher status than
the House of Madurai.
Alagiri’s court still had
officials from the previous regime. In 1675, they reached out to the Sultan of
Bijapur asking for his support in deposing Alagiri. The plan was to install a
puppet raja in the person of a young boy called Chengamala Das who was said to
be of Vijayaraghava’s clan. It was claimed that Chengamala Das had been
smuggled to safety when Chokkanatha of Madurai had defeated Vijayaraghava.
Bijapur deputed its most
prominent general, the Maratha Ekoji, to oversee the transfer of power in
Tanjore. Ekoji was none other than the half-brother of Shivaji. Ahmadnagar and Bijapur
had engaged Marathas as soldiers and courtiers since the time of Shivaji’s
grandfather, Maloji Bhonsle and his father, Shahaji. The latter had joined the
Bijapur Sultanate after the Mughals annexed Ahmadnagar. In 1675, when Shahaji
died, he was succeeded in his position in the Bijapur Sultanate by his
favourite son, Ekoji.
Ekoji initially installed
Chengamala Das on the throne of Tanjore as instructed, but instead of returning
to Bijapur, he stayed on in the neighbouring town of Kumbakonam. The situation
in Tanjore was unsettled, as Chengamala Das appointed his own people as
ministers, and the Vijayaraghava loyalists who had conspired to install him,
were not given the position that they had expected (606).
In the middle of all this, news came of the death of the Bijapur Sultan. Bijapur would now be distracted with its own succession battles. Ekoji seized the opportunity to depose Chengamala Das and took Tanjore for himself. Thus began the reign of the Marathas in Tanjore, which continued for about a century-and-a-half, until the British took over.
Continued after photos below
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The reckoning came in
1677. Shivaji made an alliance with the Sultan of Golconda to invade Tamil and
Karnataka country, and was soon at the gates of Tanjore. Shivaji’s southern
campaign is described in Chapter 18. Suffice it to say here that the outcome a
year later was that Ekoji lost all his possessions to Shivaji.
He managed to take back Tanjore
on payment of a large price. He also had to tolerate as minister Raghunath
Hanumante who had served him before going over to Shivaji, and who was
instrumental in the formation of the alliance between Golconda and Shivaji
which had enabled the latter to reach Tanjore.
The history of Shivaji is described in the next chapter.
In the years that
followed, Mysore, Tanjore and Madurai repeatedly challenged each other without,
as in the case of many contestants in the Deccan theatre before them, either
gaining or losing much territory to each other. The balance of powers required all states
to be at more or less constant war with each other, and the three parties played
a musical-chairs of alliances with each other in the process.
One consequence of this
rivalry was the rising power of the Setupatis of the Ramnad Kingdom on the east
coast. They were in a position to tip the balance in favour one or other of the
three competing powers of Mysore, Tanjore and Madurai. They extended their
influence to Pudukkottai, which became an independent principality, usually with
allegiance to neighbouring Tanjore. Travancore (Kerala country) was a tributary
of Madurai, but not a very obedient one. Madurai often had to go to war against
Kerala to exact tribute.
Another feature of the
times was internecine strife in Madurai and Ramnad, which Tanjore and Mysore
never failed to try and exploit to their advantage. At one time, even the town
of Madurai itself was taken by Mysore, and the Raja of Madurai had to hide in
Trichy.
Shambhaji succeeded Ekoji
in Tanjore. He besieged Madurai, then under Mysore. In this, Shambhaji was
aided by Bednore, the traditional rival of Mysore. The Setupatis, on the other
hand joined Mysore. The Raja of Mysore was badly defeated, and had to withdraw
from Madurai. He also faced trouble in Mysore proper where heavy taxation to
fund his war in Madurai led to a popular revolt.
As an aside, it may be
noted that this was when Aurangzeb was the Mughal Emperor. So his jiziya was
not the only instance of oppressive taxation in the time. In Mysore, you had a
rebellion by Hindu subjects against taxes imposed on them by their Hindu raja.
Portuguese reports of the
time say that the revolt in Mysore was brutally repressed by the raja: “The
king of Mysore, incensed at their insolence, sent an army to carry fire and
sword everywhere, and toss the rebels on the point of the sword, without
distinction of age or sex. These cruel orders were executed. The pagodas
[temples] of Vishnu and Shiva were destroyed and their large revenues
confiscated to the royal treasury. Those idolators who escaped the carnage fled
to the mountains and forests, where they lived a miserable life (607).”
Madurai was twice ruled
by a woman (608). The first of them, Rani Mangammal, was the dowager of the
Nayaka Chokkanatha. She ruled for nearly two decades as regent to their infant
grandson.
Mangammal is remembered
as one of the greatest rulers of Madurai. She allied with the Mughals, then
under Emperor Aurangzeb, to keep her immediate rivals in South India at bay. In
other words, Hindu royals in South India looked upon the Mughals, even
Aurangzeb, as potential allies. So much for the Hindutva representation of the
Mughals as “enslavers” of India.
By 1693, the Mughals were
at Gingi trying to recover the fort there from the Marathas. The Mughals were
able to exact tribute from Tanjore and Mysore. In 1697, Mangammal of Madurai
recovered some possessions from Tanjore with the help of the Mughal, i.e. Aurangzeb’s,
commander, Zulfikar Khan.
Madurai’s tradition of
religious tolerance continued under Nayaka rule right to the end. Rani
Mangammal gave donations and grants of village-revenues to mosques and dargahs
in her domains (609). She also patronised Brahmin agraharas and protected
Christians, even using her influence to free missionaries imprisoned by the
less tolerant Setupatis (610).
However, Christians faced
persecution by the Setupatis on the east coast – this was also the region where
the Jesuits were most successful in converting the locals, including eventually
from among the ruling clans of the coasts (610A).
In the late 17th
century, a Jesuit called John de Britto, who had converted a Marava prince
called Tadiya Teva who was married into the Setupati clan, was brutally executed by the
Setupati king, and his remains left on public display.
As it turned out, this was
counterproductive. As in many attempts in India to repress religious freedom
and inflame communal passions, this act of the Setupatis ended up boosting the
cause of Christianity more than ever. People were repelled at the brutality of the
treatment meted out to de Britto. Legends grew of miracles wrought by his mangled
remains, and Christianity took firm root in Tamil country.
The Setupati king himself
adopted a friendly attitude toward Christianity in his last days and this was
also the attitude of his successor, Vaduganatha Teva.
This change of heart
among the Setupatis toward Christianity is noteworthy, as their capital of Rameshwaram
is considered to be the place from where, in some versions of the Ramayana, Ram
built the bridge to Lanka to fight Ravana. The Setupatis were considered to have
been the guardians of that bridge; “setu” means bridge and “pati”, in this
context, means guardian.
Continued after photos below
Mother Mary is worshipped by the flock of San Thome
Church as Our Lady of Mylapore Interestingly, while the 17th century witnessed such sharp conflict between the Setupatis and the Christians, there appears not to have been similar trouble between the Setupatis and their Muslim subjects. The 17th century saw the emergence of what David Shulman terms the language of “Tamil Islam” under the influence of sufi poets and hajis in coastal Tamil country (611).
The Setupatis patronised two major Tamil Islam Muslim
poets, Citakkati and Umaruppulavar. Umaruppulavar was the student of a great
Hindu poet, Muttupulavar.
Legend has it that when Umaruppulavar went to study
Arabic sources on the life of the Prophet, the Qadiri Sufi teacher, Sheikh
Sadaqattulah, first refused him as he was dressed like a Hindu (Tamil). But God
came to Sadaqattulah in a dream, urging him to teach Umaruppulavar. He went on
to write the Cirappuranam, the story of the Prophet in Tamil.
Shulman writes that the Cirappuranam is in the style
of the Tamil Ramayana of Kamban, and uses the landscape imagery of the Sangam
poems that we read about earlier. The
language of the Cirappuranam typifies Tamil Islam, with Arabic and Persian loanwords.
Tamil Islam is written in both Tamil, and an adapted
Arabic script. “Both streams of this corpus reveal highly intertextual modes of
quadrilingual Tamil – a thorough mix of normative grammaticalized Tamil,
Sanskrit, Arabic and a dash of Persian, to which we can add a flavouring of
colloquial Tamil. The image of Umaruppulavar dressed as a Hindu yet studying
Arabic and writing a Tamil sira perfectly encapsulates this organic, interwoven
polyglossic culture, which as Ronit Ricci has shown, reflects the creative
overlapping of both Sanskrit and Arabic cosmopolitan, trans-regional idioms,
always locally inflected and transformed (612).”
Another Muslim Tamil poet trained by a non-Muslim is
Kacimpuluvar, the student of Tiruvatikkavirayar. Shulman notes the ease with
which Tamil and other South Indian languages, which he calls the “Republic of
Syllables”, expanded to include Muslim Tamil writers.
Writing as Tamil Muslims they were a distinct but
integrated part of a wider literary world. “One might even go so far as to
characterise that world as “secular” in the sense that communal identities,
hypertrophied today under the pressure of modern nationalism, were configured
differently, and less antagonistically, three hundred years ago. The syllables
worked their magic and generated aesthetic delight without reference to the
religious proclivities and ritual performances of the poets who uttered them (613).”
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