Rallies were held and tributes offered to mark the 216th death anniversary of eighteenth-c entury warrior king Tipu Sultan in Mysuru and his erstwhile capital Srirangapatna near here on Monday.
While Congress leaders gathered at the office of the Mysuru City (District) Congress Committee on Sayyaji Rao Road in the morning and garlanded the portrait of Tipu Sultan on his ‘Shaheed Diwas’, large number of people paid tributes to Tipu Sultan at Srirangapatna.
Rallyists led by Kannada protagonist Vatal Nagaraj, who arrived in Srirangapatna from Bengaluru, offered floral tributes at the site near the northern fringe of the fort, where Tipu’s body was found in 1799, and Gumbaz, where his mortal remains are buried. Activists of the Kannada Chaluvali Vatal Paksha (KCVP) from Bengaluru accompanied Mr. Nagaraj, who made stop-overs at Ramanagaram and Mandya enroute to Srirangapatna to address the public.
Mr. Nagaraj said the commitment of Tipu Sultan, known as the Tiger of Mysore, was so strong for his land that he even pledged his children for the sake of the country and its people. “A statue of Tipu should be built in front of Parliament. I will speak to the Lok Sabha Speaker and leaders of other political parties in this regard,” he said.
Mr. Nagaraj also demanded that the road leading to Devanahalli, Tipu’s birthplace, be named after him. He also urged the State Government to build a memorial for Tipu Sultan on 500 acres of land in Bengaluru.
