Deploying nature in war

Battles around Bengaluru in the 18th century

January 18, 2016 12:00 am | Updated September 23, 2016 01:03 am IST

A plaque announcing the capture of Bangalore Fort on March 21, 1791. The frequent battles around Bengaluru in the 18th century strained the capacity of the land to provide for various marauding and defending armies.— File Photo: Sudhakara Jain

A plaque announcing the capture of Bangalore Fort on March 21, 1791. The frequent battles around Bengaluru in the 18th century strained the capacity of the land to provide for various marauding and defending armies.— File Photo: Sudhakara Jain

Like many other Indian rulers, Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan deftly deployed nature in strategic ways during times of war. The frequent battles around Bengaluru in the 18th century strained the capacity of the land to provide for various marauding and defending armies.

The size of these armies was large. Hyder was believed to retain an army of close to 83,000, camped in a line that stretched from Kengeri to Bugle Rock. The Marathas, experts in guerrilla warfare, burnt the fields around Bangalore to starve Hyder’s armies. In response, Hyder issued orders to his officers to break tank bunds, poison wells, burn the grasslands, and drive the cattle to the forests so as to “leave to the Mahrattas neither forage, water, nor food” (as described later by Mark Wilks, British administrator, and uncle of Mark Cubbon).

In early 1791, British troops led by Cornwallis staged an attack on the fort, capturing it on March 21. This attack, which proved pivotal to the future of southern India, almost failed because of the lack of food and fodder. Marshy conditions created by heavy unseasonal rains created difficulties for the movement of the British troops, burdened by cattle laden with heavy cannon and artillery. A diary of an anonymous soldier who fought in the battle, preserved in the holdings of the British Library in London, provides a revealing account of the battle. “Tipoo now pursued a different plan of operation and instead of fighting which does not seem to be his forte endeavoured to starve us … but a few days’ forage remained in the Pettah, and the enemies’ horse took care to destroy whatever forage they found within several miles of us … the putrid stench, from the dead cattle in camp, made us fear for the health of the soldiers, our bullocks had received no nourishment for several days except what they could derive from the smoked thatch of houses mixed with the leaves of some mango trees that grew near our camp, indeed you can barely conceive a more trying situation than ours at that period.”

Lacking fodder, cattle perished in the thousands. Visiting Bangalore in 1800, Francis Hamilton-Buchanan remarked that the route followed by Cornwallis’s troops “may everywhere be traced by the bones of cattle, thousands of which perished through fatigue and hunger”. The stench created by numerous cattle carcasses demoralised and sickened the British army. A desperate situation was created, when the invading troops realised they could not last another couple of days. Deciding against leaving defeated, they decided to stage a desperate final attempt. This attempt proved successful, paving the way for the eventual defeat of Tipu, and for the establishment of British control over the Mysore region.

During the decade of war that followed, the British and the Maratha troops continued to strain the landscape with demands for massive quantities of food and forage. It took years of hard work and planning for the landscape to recover its fertility, via the restoration of tanks and wells, and a focus on improving agriculture.

Historical accounts such as these provide us with an insight into the importance of natural resources for the survival or fall of empires. In this current time of ecological crisis, when threats of climate calamities loom large, and the nation reels from stories of farmer suicides, we would do well to look to history to understand the primacy of protecting our local food, fodder and water resources to ensure our long-term survival and stability.

(Harini Nagendra is a Professor of Sustainability at Azim Premji University, and author of ‘Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present, and Future’, Oxford University Press, India, forthcoming in April 2016. Hita Unnikrishnan is a Ph.D. scholar at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment. This article draws on material from ‘Nature in the City’.)

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