As many as 64 artefacts belonging to the 18th-century Indian ruler Tipu Sultan fetched £1.23 million after two major Indian bidders vied with each other at a controversial auction at Sotheby’s in London in May 2005.

The chief attraction, a gold-inlaid sporting gun belonging to Tipu Sultan and decorated with Tipu’s signature, the roaring tiger, was sold for £100,000. The beautifully engraved gun was presented to Lord Cornwallis after the defeat of Tipu at Srirangapatnam in the former Mysore state in south India in 1799.

The tremendous interest in the auction was evident from the very first item to go under the hammer: an officer’s sword and gilt-edged saber with a tiger on the hilt, which fetched £13,000—well over the estimated price of £4,000.

The artifacts included swords, porcelain tiger toys, bows and arrows, armbands, guns, tents, and even a tiger paw taken from the legs of Tipu’s throne. There was much demand for a pearl model of a tiger mauling an English solider, Tipu’s favorite image, which fetched £26,000. This is an iconic representation of Tipu’s powerful persona: he fancied himself “The Tiger of Mysore,” devouring recalcitrant Englishmen who came his way.

In a perceptive article in the Guardian newspaper on the eve of the auction, William Dalrymple, author of the best-selling The White Moguls, described how Tipu was a thorn in the flesh of the British Raj. “He was portrayed as a Muslim dictator whose family had usurped power in a military coup,” he writes. According to British sources, this chief of state was an “intolerant bigot” a “furious fanatic” with a “rooted and inveterate hatred of Europeans” who had “perpetually on his tongue the projects of jihad.” He was also deemed to be “oppressive and unjust ... [a] sanguinary tyrant, [and a] perfidious negotiator.”

It was, in short, time to take out Tipu Sultan of Mysore . Richard Wellesley was sent out to India in 1798 as governor general with specific instructions to effect regime change in Mysore and replace Tipu with a Western-backed puppet. Recent work by scholars has succeeded in reconstructing a very different Tipu to the one-dimensional fanatic invented by Wellesley .

The flamboyant liquor baron and MP, Vijay Mallya, has bought several of Tipu Sultan’s former belongings and restored them to India where he means to set up a museum.

Tipu, it is now clear, was one of the most innovative and far-sighted rulers of the pre-colonial period. He tried to warn other Indian rulers of the dangers of an increasingly arrogant and aggressive west. “Know you not the custom of the English?” he wrote in vain to the Nizam of Hyderabad (one of the world’s richest men) in 1796. “Wherever they fix their talons they contrive little by little to work themselves into the whole management of affairs.”

One of the buyers of Tipu’s artifacts, for which he spent £500,000, was the Indian liquor baron and MP, Vijay Mallya, whose empire—now the second biggest in the world in volume—is based in Bangalore , the capital of former Mysore state. For Mallya, retrieving Tipu’s artifacts is plainly a matter of lost honor. He is undeterred by the row over the import and reexport of Tipu’s 3.5-foot golden sword with a diamond-studded scabbard, which he bought at another London auction in 2003 for $350,000. He shipped it to India and then sent it earlier this year to be displayed at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. 

Mallya is a flamboyant figure who loves the media and speaks his mind. His Kingfisher beer once sponsored the West Indies cricket team. His group’s turnover exceeds $2 billion a year. He bid against Osian’s, a Mumbai-based art auction house, also on the telephone. Supposedly neither knew of the other’s identity during the auction.

Mallya said as a proud Indian he would like to bid for as many treasures of Tipu as possible so that he could restore them to where they originally belonged. He said he had consulted India ’s Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on the procedures concerning the import of antique items that he said rightfully deserve to be in India . Mallya intends to set up a museum to house Tipu’s antiques.

The MP expressed surprise over the objections from India ’s Central Excise and Customs on his decision to first import and reexport Tipu’s sword to the United States . “As an Indian citizen, I thought I was doing something good for my country by acquiring this famous sword,” he stated. “I have kept the finance minister fully informed, both personally and in writing, on the import and reexport of the sword that was once wielded by the Tiger of Mysore.” He said Chidambaram had granted him exemption from customs duty to be paid on the sword.

On the eve of the 2004 parliamentary elections, Mallya brandished the gleaming sword— with a 36-inch (90 cm) blade—at a rally of his party workers in Bangalore . He also displayed the sword for a week at Srirangapatnam, the capital of Tipu’s kingdom near Mysore , in May 2004, to mark the anniversary of the ruler’s death.

From the engraved border of the blade, it is learned that the glittering sword was seized by British troops after Srirangapatnam fell after Tipu’s death. The British Army later shipped Tipu’s many artifacts to London .

The sale came amid strong protests by many people in India , as well as non-resident Indians. They said the treasures were “looted” by the conquering British at the Battle of Srirangapatnam in 1799—a defining moment in Britain’s colonial sweep of India—and ought to have been handed back to either the government of India or Tipu’s descendants who live in Kolkata.

The sale was preceded by strong protests by Indians abroad, who registered their outrage by e-mail. Web sites such as Sulekha encouraged its members to write their protests to Sotheby’s.

“The British, when they ruled India , virtually walked away with many rare artifacts and treasures from the various kings and empires,” the Web site said, adding, “It was literally a royal loot and scoot.” The appeal was reproduced on the Cultural Property Protection Net, a global list-serve.

However, there was no Indian government move to either buy back any of the artifacts or try to block the sale. According to Indian diplomatic sources, there is no government policy on the issue. “We have to look at these on a case-by-case basis. There’s so much of Indian art abroad—the government cannot buy all that back,” sources quoted on a news Web site said.

A previous Indian high commissioner in London , L. M. Singhvi, was instrumental in intervening in the matter of provenance of rare and valuable Indian artifacts, managing to put a stop to an auction on one occasion.

He persuaded wealthy Indian businessmen to buy back a manuscript belonging to Indian Nobel literary laureate Rabindranath Tagore and then handed it back to the West Bengal state chief minister. In the 1990s, the government also bought at a London auction letters written by Gandhi to his son.

**Darryl D’Monte is the founder-president of the International Federation of Environmental Journalists. He is also the chairperson of the Forum of Environmental Journalists of India (FEJI) and a syndicated columnist and freelance writer. He has published two books: Temples or Tombs? Industry Versus Environment: Three Controversies (New Delhi: Center for Science & Environment, 1985) and Ripping the Fabric: The Decline of Mumbai and Its Mills (New Delhi: OxfordUniversity Press, 2002). He was previously the resident editor of the Indian Express (1979-1981) and of the Times of India (1988-1994) in Mumbai. Your e-mails will be forwarded to him by contacting the editor at artculture@iolteam.com. 

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