Will Tipu Jayanti be celebrated in Karnataka? Siddaramaiah responds

Former Karnataka chief minster, Siddaramaiah and Congress strongman said that the decision on whether Tipu Jayanti would make a comeback in Karnataka will be taken by the new government if the Congress is back in power.

He was speaking at India Today's Karnataka Roundtable 2023.

"I cannot say. I am not a dictator. I am a democrat. We will have to take the opinion of all the ministers and then decide in the Cabinet," Siddaramaiah said.

When Siddaramaiah was in power following the 2013 elections, the government started observing Tipu Jayanti. The celebrations which began in 2015 ended in 2019 after the BJP government came to power. When the decision was taken to celebrate Tipu Jayanti, it was met with strong opposition by the BJP and other right-wing organisations.

The Tipu Sultan issue has been a hot one in Karnataka. This time around the BJP raked up a debate when some of its leaders claimed that two Vokkaligas Uri Gowda and Nanje Gowda had killed Tipu. This was met with protests from the Vokkaligas, who could not verify the antecedents of the two personalities.

Tipu Sultan was the ruler of the erstwhile kingdom of Mysore.

While the BJP sees Tipu as a religious bigot, and a brutal killer, some Kannada outfits have called him 'anti-Kannada, citing that he had promoted Persian as the cost of the local language.

Siddaramaiah on the other hand defended Tipu Sultan and said that it was a political allegation by the BJP that the rulers was anti-Hindu. "Did he not fight the British? Several Mysore wars took place and he had fought the British," Siddaramaiah said.

Tipu Sultan has been an election issue in the 2018 elections as well.