Mark Wilks, who participated in the third Anglo-Mysore war, wrote that Tipu would resort to anything to ward off defeat, “The religion which he rever… - Mark Wilks

The country of Calicut is situated on the coast of the ocean, and is named Malabar: its breadth does not exceed twenty-three coss [one coss= 2¼ miles] and its length is nearly two hundred. The Mahommedan inhabitants are called Pilla [Mapilla] and the infidels Naimars; and the rainy season lasts six months, and mud continues throughout the year, the roads are excessively difficult, and the inhabitants prone to resistance, dividing their time between agriculture and arms. Such is the excess of infidelity, that if a Mussulman touch the exterior wall of a house, the dwelling can only be purified by setting it on fire. From the origin of Islam in Hind, to the present day, no person had interfered with these practices, except the revered [Haidar Ali] who is in paradise, after the conquest of the country . . . and during the twenty-five years that the country of Calicut had belonged to this dynasty, in as much as twenty thousand troops were maintained for its occupation, and the revenues never equaled their monthly pay; the balance, to a large amount, was uniformly discharged from the general treasury. Notwithstanding all this, the actual circumstances of the country were never properly investigated, until his Majesty, the shadow of God, directed his propitious steps and remained three months in that country. He observed that the cultivators (instead of being collected in villages as in other parts of India) have each his separate dwelling and garden adjoining his field; these solitary dwellings he classed into groups of forty houses, with a local chief and an accountant to each an establishment which was to watch over the morals and realize the revenue; and a Sheikh-ul-Islam to each district for religious purposes alone; and addressed to the principal inhabitants a proclamation to the following effect: ‘From the period of the conquest until this day, during twenty-four years, you have been a turbulent and refractory people, and in the wars waged during your rainy season, you have caused numbers of our warriors to taste the draught of martyrdom. Be it so. What is past is past. Hereafter, you must proceed in an opposite manner; dwell quietly, and pay your dues like good subjects; and since it is a practice with you, for one woman to associate with ten men, and you leave your mothers and sisters unconstrained in their obscene practices, and are thence born in adultery, and are more shameless in your connections than the beasts of the field; I hereby require you to forsake these sinful practices and live like the rest of mankind. And if you are disobedient to these commands, I have made repeated vows, to honour the whole of you with Islam, and to march all the chief persons to the seat of empire. Other moral inferences and religious instruction, applicable to spiritual and temporal concerns, were also written with his own hand and graciously bestowed upon them.

They finally offered to surrender and were given an option of either a ‘voluntary profession of the Mahommedan faith, or a forcible conversion, with deportation from their native land. The unhappy captives gave a forced assent, and on the next day, the rite of circumcision was performed on all the males, every individual of both sexes being compelled to close the ceremony by eating beef.’

Thus terminated a dynasty composed only of two Sovereigns, the first of whom had risen from obscurity to imperial power, and the last, educated as a prince had fallen in the defence of a hereditary crown; resembling in some of the circumstances of its close, the fate of the Roman capital of the Eastern empire; substituting like that catastrophe, in place of the fallen dynasty, not only the power of a new Sovereign, but the influence of a new race; yet exhibiting the marked contrast, of kindling, not quenching in its fall, the lights of science and civilization.