Tipu's swords and a house in Cornwall

Tipu Sultan’s legacy continues to fund the ambitions of the descendants of the second Earl of Cornwallis. Tipu Sultan was the ruler of the Mysore kingdom spanning a large part of what is now Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. And as the world is occupied with more weighty matters, his looted possessions, another symbol of colonial brutality, briefly slipped into public view in London. Lots 100 and 101, went on auction on October 26 and 27 at Christie's, as part of the Islamic and Indian Art Week. Beautiful but mute spectators to a continuing injustice.

- Lavanya Regunathan Fischer

Two of the items, one valued at between 1.5 and 2 million pounds and the other 80-100,000 pounds, were swords from the personal armoury of Tipu Sultan. The higher value sword said to have been worn by the Sultan and containing the tiger emblem of the king known as the Tiger of Mysore failed to make its list price though the second sword sold for higher than expected. The presumption was that the expected buyers from West Asia were discouraged from bidding due to the current international political and economic climate. The swords, part of a group of objects from Tipu’s palace on auction, were presented to Cornwallis after Tipu’s killing.

The description accompanying these antiques talked accurately enough of Tipu Sultan being fiercely opposed to the East India Company’s campaigns to establish British imperial control in India and his being regarded as the greatest enemy of the British in India. But then went on to paint a slightly more romantic picture of Charles Cornwallis who “was appointed Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of British India in 1786 and played a substantial role in the conflict between Tipu Sultan and the East India Company”.

Cornwallis had made his reputation in North America and continued to have a stellar career as an imperial emissary in India. Cornwallis and his alliance succeeded in defeating Tipu in the third Anglo-Mysore war. But Tipu was defeated and killed in Srirangapatna in 1799 in the fourth Anglo-Mysore war.