Tipu Sultan Water Supply Remark Sparks Political Row in Karnataka
'The stone still stands at the KRS gate with a Persian inscription dated 1794, found during the dam's construction in 1911,' Mahadevappa said, suggesting that Tipu Sultan may have envisaged an irrigation project more than a century before the KRS dam was built under Maharaja Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV.
His remarks have drawn sharp criticism from right-wing groups, particularly the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti. State spokesperson Mohan Gowda called the minister's claims 'laughable,' saying they amounted to historical distortion. 'It is shameful for a responsible minister to mislead the public. He must apologise immediately,' Gowda said in a statement.
The group also challenged Mahadevappa's comments portraying Tipu Sultan as a religiously tolerant ruler. Citing alleged historical incidents—including the destruction of temples in Kodagu and Srirangapatna, forced conversions, and language imposition—the Samiti accused Tipu of being a religious bigot.
The controversy has revived longstanding debates in Karnataka over the legacy of Tipu Sultan, a historical figure viewed by some as a valiant freedom fighter and by others as a despotic ruler. While political parties in the state have often been divided over his portrayal in textbooks and commemorations, Mahadevappa's latest remarks have once again brought the issue to the forefront of public discourse.
The minister is yet to respond to demands for an apology
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Indian Express
8 hours ago
- Indian Express
No Tipu Sultan, no Anglo-Mysore wars in Class 8 NCERT book: Why the Centre says that's okay
On the new NCERT Class 8 Social Science textbook omitting the mention of Tipu Sultan, Haidar Ali, and the Anglo-Mysore wars of the 1700s, the Centre said in response to a question in Parliament on Wednesday that states have the 'flexibility to provide more coverage about regional personalities and events in their textbooks.' 'Education being a subject in the Concurrent List of the Constitution and the majority of schools being under the jurisdiction of the State Governments, the respective State Government may adopt or adapt NCERT textbooks or develop their own textbooks based on the National Curriculum Framework. The states have flexibility to provide more coverage about regional personalities and events in their textbooks,' Minister of State for Education Jayant Chaudhary said in response to a question in the Rajya Sabha. Ritabrata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress had asked whether the new book skips the mention of Tipu Sultan, Haidar Ali, or the Anglo-Mysore wars of the 1700s in its chapter on India's colonial era, and the reasons for this. In his response, Chaudhary said that Part 1 of the new Class 8 Social Science textbook has been developed in alignment with the curricular goals and competencies under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE) 2023. The new textbook comprises four themes: *India and the World: Land and the People; Tapestry of the Past; Governance and Democracy; Economic Life Around Us.* 'Personalities featured in these themes have been included contextually and in accordance with curricular objectives. The textbook introduces new pedagogical approaches, emphasizes refined classroom practices, and presents a focused syllabus. These textbooks encourage students to explore more through experiential learning, undertake fieldwork, and focus on evidence-based understanding. The approach adopted for the Middle Stage (Grades 6 to 8) is to provide only a broad survey of Indian civilization from prehistoric times all the way to Independence,' Chaudhary's response stated. The new NCERT Class 8 Social Science textbook was released last month. The chapter on the colonial era contains a section on early resistance movements that challenged British colonialism in the run-up to the 1857 rebellion. Here, there are references to the 'Sannyasi-Fakir rebellion' of the 1700s, the Kol Uprising, the Santhal rebellion, and 'peasant uprisings' of the 1800s. The book, however, does not mention resistance to the East India Company from the rulers of Mysore — Tipu Sultan and Haidar Ali — or the Anglo-Mysore wars of the 1700s. The earlier Class 8 history textbook referred to Mysore under Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan, and the four Anglo-Mysore wars, as part of a section on the expansion of the East India Company's rule.
Hindustan Times
10 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Uncovering the secret food trade that corrupts Iran's neighbours
In the small town of Al Aweer, about 20km east of Dubai's city centre, lorries full of fruit and vegetables approach, circle and pass each other, in a skilful dance. Think of it as a kind of bulk-trade ballet, set to a score of horns, beeps and roaring engines. At the back of warehouses, staff in branded polo shirts handle crates of fresh produce. At the front, wholesale shops entice customers from elsewhere in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and beyond. The one-square-km market, already the largest such hub in the Middle East, plans to double in size to cater to the Gulf's expanding population. It is one symbol of the region's consumer appetites. It is also the secret theatre for smuggling on a grand scale—crushing local farmers, compromising supermarket supply chains and providing a lifeline to Iran. A fruit and vegetable vendor waits for customers in Tajrish traditional bazaar in northern Tehran, Iran, Monday, June 2(AP FILE) The Islamic Republic, on the other side of the Gulf, is in a serious pickle. After its war with Israel, it is more isolated than ever. Its oil exports are still flowing, but it is struggling to collect the proceeds because America keeps cranking up sanctions on anyone helping it move money. Britain, France and Germany are threatening to restore their own embargoes unless it resumes nuclear negotiations in earnest. That is pushing Iran to find new ways to pay for the foreign goods it so desperately needs. Flooding the Gulf with fruit and veg is one of them. Iran now supplies nine out of ten cauliflowers, tomatoes and watermelons imported by the UAE, a near-monopoly built in just a few years. Chart That is a baffling phenomenon. Although Iran's food exports are not under direct sanctions, most shippers, banks and retailers think the country is too risky to bother dealing with. That should make it impossible for its farm trade to thrive. And there is another puzzle. If you visit supermarkets in Dubai, you will see few obvious signs of Iran's success. A paltry amount of shelf space is dedicated to Persian produce. So who is buying Iran's booming food exports? And where do the groceries end up? To find out, The Economist has talked to a range of farmers, wholesalers and retailers, as well as clandestine traders in Iranian goods. To confirm what they told us, we gathered proprietary trade data and corroborated it with official figures. Our investigation suggests groceries from Iran are being flogged in secret and en masse to unknowing customers across the Gulf—including countries that profess to import none, such as Saudi Arabia. The intricate supply chain reveals conflicts of interest at the highest levels. Middlemen make fortunes; local farmers get squeezed. Iran made perhaps $4bn-5bn from such exports in 2024. And it is just getting started. Blessed with a varied climate, fertile soil and ample sunlight, Iran has the natural endowments to be an agricultural powerhouse. The industry, which provides a living for 23m Iranians and 80% of their food, already accounts for a fifth of non-oil exports. The government subsidises water, fertilisers and energy until they are virtually free. It also bankrolls farmers so they can afford the nifty technology, such as hydroponics, to grow high-value produce. Iran's greenhouse cultivation has more than tripled in area since the early 2010s. Much of its modern irrigation equipment comes indirectly from Israel, a leader in the field. (It usually arrives as part of bigger packages of kit and services provided by companies based in friendlier countries, such as the Netherlands.) Lately a growing share of the equipment has also come from China and Russia. The government bestows such largesse on farmers because their foreign sales are now so valuable to the country. Their exports are one of the few ways the country can obtain the imported goods it so desperately needs. Foreign currencies, such as dollars and dirhams, are vanishingly scarce and therefore exceedingly precious. Anything that eases this hard-currency constraint is worth lavishing with vast domestic resources. The veggie-melon hegemon Neither Iran nor the UAE release up-to-date, detailed trade figures. But we managed to gather private data, based on customs reports from third countries, which provide a fresh and comprehensive picture. Although the source wishes to remain anonymous, The Economist has cross-checked its figures with partial statistics released by the United Nations and other official bodies. The numbers suggest Iran's strategy is proving wildly successful. It already dominates the market for 15 commodities in the UAE, from aubergines to melons. The story is similar, on a smaller scale, in Oman and Qatar. Volumes are soaring; quality is improving, too. Once limited to basic tomatoes on the vine, Iran now excels at the cherry variety, the trickiest kind. Sources say it is building strawberry farms which could crush the competition in two to three years. To understand how Iran's produce gets to market, start at the farm gate. Unlike oil, which is pumped by a state-owned monopoly, the country's veggies are produced by 36,000 small growers. That output is bundled and stacked onto trailers, which are towed to Bandar Lengeh in the south of Iran. It is then loaded at dawn onto smallish ships, which ferry it to Sharjah, in the UAE's north. The journey takes only six hours. Transporting a container of fruit from Iran's farms to Emirati warehouses costs just 8,000 dirhams ($2,200). Shipping fruit from Egypt or Turkey costs four times as much. Most of the Iranian produce coming into Sharjah is registered at customs. But then it has to be paid for. Doing so openly is hard, because Emirati banks are reluctant to process transactions involving Iran. The trade therefore relies on an informal payment system called hundi. It is run by tiny entities with offices across Dubai, which often feature 'transportation', 'goods' and 'services' in their company names. In the UAE, their agents collect dirhams from food importers, which they pass on to exporters of appliances, auto parts and machinery that Iran desperately needs. These goods are then shipped across the Gulf to Iran. Foodstuffs, priced in Iranian rials, flow one way. Vital manufactured goods, priced in dirhams or dollars, flow in the opposite direction. But dirhams need never be exchanged for rials. From Sharjah, local lorries pull the trailers to Al Aweer—which is where the real magic happens. The Gulf-wide trade in Iranian produce is run by the market's wholesalers, according to interviews with direct witnesses. It is they who place orders with Iranian traders, find buyers in the UAE and beyond, and orchestrate logistics. They also feed intelligence back to Iran on the evolution of consumer demand, say two market participants. Emirati merchants are behind Iran's novel push into strawberries, for example. Wholesalers rarely import from Iran directly, preferring to source the goods via one or more intermediaries. That affords some deniability. In a message seen by The Economist, an executive at one such firm makes oblique references to his Iranian offerings, boasting about the big volumes he is able to secure. Most wholesalers of Iranian goods also hide their origin by mixing them with groceries from elsewhere. Camouflaging teams sometimes occupy a warehouse's entire floor. One classic trick is to keep legitimate produce on the top layer of a box while swapping the rest for cheaper fruit. Sometimes the Iranian food is repackaged in fake versions of boxes from reputable brands, in the hope of deterring inspections. These tactics shield wholesalers from unwanted scrutiny. Hiding Iranian fruit also helps them make a lot more money. On the day we visited one trader in Al Aweer, he had a container of cut-price Iranian broccoli just outside his office. In 2024, he said, an Iranian exporter offered him ten containers a day of tomatoes—equivalent to 200 tonnes—at the cost of 1 dirham per kg (including transport). Farmers in the UAE must typically charge 2 dirhams per kg to break even; Dutch supplies cost at least five times that. By pretending they are selling full boxes of this pricier fruit, without any cheap Iranian varieties in the mix, wholesalers inflate their margins. The same goes for the supermarkets that buy their produce. Purchasing officers who turn a blind eye to the fraud often get a kickback from the wholesaler. It is not rare for managers of fruit-and-vegetable sections to do some blending themselves, too. They might mix Iranian tomatoes with Dutch varieties to make a bigger display. 'Instead of 4-5 dirhams, they sell the lot for 20-25 dirhams' per kg, says an insider. There is a lot of money to be made. One local supermarket chain is known for flying its staff in business class and lodging them in five-star hotels. Other UAE supermarkets, which include the local franchises of European giants like Carrefour and Waitrose, try harder to root out the deception. That explains why many retailers replace their grocery chiefs nearly every year. Rootless veggies and undercover kiwis The UAE is also a base for shady re-exports. One insider reckons a third of the country's imports of Iranian veggies end up in other countries. Much of this produce is smuggled. Saudi Arabia, for example, has long blocked fruit imports from Iran, a regional rival subject to Western sanctions that are tricky to navigate. The kingdom's customs officers will reject an entire shipment if they find a lone box with Farsi writing or even Persian numbers. Its enforcers also require sanitary certificates for incoming cargo that specify where it is from. Yet fooling them is easy, says an Emirati trader who does it a lot. 'We just put a sticker on the carton with a new origin: Azerbaijan, Turkey—anything but Iran.' To launder Iranian produce, traders also re-use paperwork issued for legitimate shipments: Italian kiwis and Spanish broccoli are frequent covers. This kind of fruit impersonation annoys bona fide exporters. Diplomats from various European countries have complained about it, to no avail. The crushing dominance of Iranian produce, facilitated by local firms, also makes a mockery of government plans to revive homegrown agriculture. In its national economic strategy, the UAE aims to top the Global Food Security Index—a benchmark by Economist Impact, our sister company—by 2051. Dubai is building a two-square-km 'Food Tech Valley'. Abu Dhabi is planning the world's largest indoor farm, to grow 10,000 tonnes of greens a year. Sharjah is sowing 1,400 hectares with wheat. Such flashy ventures, backed by a who's who of state funds and Western investors, are all meant to advance one goal: 'enhancing local food production'. In reality, local farms are withering. The UAE counts 35,000 estates, some of them large. One vegetable grower in Al Ain, the country's farming hub, employs nearly 400 staff to cultivate an area equivalent to 100 football pitches. He says his production of tomatoes has plummeted because a glut in overall supply has dragged prices down. The government's laissez-faire approach, he says, is 'destroying local farmers'. Emirati officials are aware of the problem. Their trade analysts have access to up-to-date data, says someone familiar with the country's government. Last year the economy ministry launched an anti-dumping investigation into mushrooms exported from Iran, according to a poster seen by The Economist. But the trade continues apace. Adding a layer of intrigue, some of Al Aweer's biggest wholesalers are controlled by people in power. Silal, an outfit founded to bolster food security during the covid-19 pandemic, belongs to ADQ, one of Abu Dhabi's sovereign-wealth funds. NRTC, a 50-year-old trader with 1,000 staff, is 41% owned by IHC, a conglomerate run by an Emirati royal. Why would the UAE—and other Gulf countries—tolerate Iran's green invasion? Perhaps they hope cheap imports will keep inflation down. They may also think that appeasing Iran will reduce the chances it lashes out against them if Israel strikes again. Some even posit that some Gulf leaders are ready to sacrifice local farming to help save scarce groundwater in a notoriously dry part of the world. Whatever the reason, relying on Iran is hardly a safe choice. Should it be bombed again, trade may dwindle. More frequent droughts are making its output increasingly volatile anyway, exposing importers to price shocks. However tempting, bingeing on Iranian produce looks like a recipe for trouble. For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics,finance and markets, sign up toMoney Talks, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.
Hans India
18 hours ago
- Hans India
One-upmanship of the bizarre kind in Karnataka
When it comes to scoring political brownie points, the Congress has often demonstrated that it can shock and disrupt the best-laid plans of its rivals, especially of the saffron kind. It is a classic action-reaction scenario, enacted untiringly, episode after episode, incident after incident in Karnataka, where the communal brand of politics has a certain presence and acceptance, the most noticed in entire south India. Quite often personal dislike for a certain rival or a certain head of administration, who had ruled the State or a vital part of it, can trigger conveniently spun theories and opinions. In this case, it is the legacy of eternally-in-the news Tipu Sultan, who is a Muslim ruler of the acceptable kind for the secular and GOP supporters, who automatically becomes a hated figure for the opposition, who have enough to justify their pique. Historians have debated for decades on his rule and what came of it for the people at large but what set off a furious set of opinions this time around was what the Minister for Social Welfare, H C Mahadevappa has said. In a recent remark, he eulogised Tipu Sultan for his visionary agricultural water supply infrastructure in the State. He even said the foundation stone for the Kannambadi Dam, now submerged under the Krishnaraja Sagar reservoir, still stands with a Persian inscription, circa 1794. Naturally, the BJP and its saffron front outfits saw red. They obviously protested downplaying of the KRS reservoir built by the Mysore ruler, Maharaja Krishnaswamy Wodeyar IV in early 20th century. The Minister was flayed for 'historical distortion' and misleading the public with his statements. The 'tyrannical' rule of Tipu with his destruction of temples and forced conversions was once again brought out into public domain by the rival party supporters, as expected. Till the time of going to press, the Congress leader has not taken any effort to mollify the protestors. In Bengaluru, the biggest pow-wow has been reserved for a credit-hogging exercise between the state government and the Centre over the inauguration of the Namma Metro Yellow Line service, scheduled for Sunday. Playing the statesman, rather unconvincingly, the Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar announced that this transport service has a primary goal of serving the public and downplayed the need to indulge in credit-hogging exercises. With the ever-ready spotlight-centred Prime Minister Narendra Modi landing in the state capital to inaugurate the service along with a few other engagements, it looks like the local politicians are keen on grabbing their share of the pie before Modi arrives and sweeps the public attention away from all of them. With the quality of urban transportation, civic life and social environment degenerating in the Garden City, it is already fast-forwarding its journey to the point of no return in all these sectors. Linguistic politics, communal debates and the rising wave of religious intolerance in various pockets of Karnataka have all kept the citizens worried about how it will end and whether there is a hopeful turn for them in the future. Whoever wishes to project themselves as the saviours must surely be mindful about how the people feel about them and their governance models. Ignoring emerging signals could cost them dearly and even lead to their downfall.
