More than a couple of years ago, I read a speech delivered by former Supreme Court judge Markendaya Katju "What is India". A fairly lengthy speech covering a good deal of topics primarily concerning pluralism and the way forward for India, I considered it to be a good read. However, 6 months earlier as I was browsing through books on History available in the Public Domain, a report in a Gazetteer struck me. Having read that report, I had decided to re-read a particular portion of the Speech again. Well, here it is:
If you go online and read the speech “History in the Service of Imperialism”, you will know how the British policy was to make Hindus and Muslims inimical to each other. For instance, B.N.Pandey has mentioned that in 1928, when he was a Professor of History in Allahabad University, some students came to him with a book written by Professor Harprasad Shastri, Professor of Sanskrit in Calcutta University, in which it was mentioned that Tipu Sultan told 3,000 Brahmins to convert to Islam or otherwise they would be killed, and those 3,000 Brahmins committed suicide rather than become Muslims. On reading this, Prof. B. N. Pandey wrote to Professor Harprasad Shastri asking him the source of his information. Prof. Shastri wrote back that the source of information was the Mysore Gazetteer. Then Prof. Pandey wrote to Prof. Srikantia, Professor of History in Mysore University, asking him whether it was correct that the Mysore Gazetteer mentioned that Tipu Sultan had told 3,000 Brahmins to convert to Islam. Prof. Srikantia wrote back that this was totally false. He had worked in that field and there was no such mention in the Mysore Gazetteer; rather the correct version was just the reverse, namely, that Tipu Sultan used to give annual grants to 156 Hindu temples, he used to send grants to the Sankaracharya of Sringeri, etc.
It's probably true that there was no mention of it in the Mysore Gazetteer, but it was indeed mentioned in the Gazetteer of The Bombay Presidency (1883 Volume XXIII)
The hitch in the terms of the treaty between the Nizam and the Marathas gave Tipu time to strengthen his northern outposts. The siege of Nargund in Dhdrwar and Tipu's treachery to its chief, the forced conversion of Hindus, the suicide of 2000 Brahmans to avoid circumcision, and the threatened attack on the Nizam stirred the Marathas and the Nizam to action.
This para appears in pg no. 443 of this book. In my opinion, this is nothing short of an Intellectual dishonesty,as B N Pandey through his speech has mislead the readers into believing that the incident didn't occur by cleverly hiding name of the source which mentioned the incident. The person whom Katju quoted- B.N. Pande has passed away long ago; so I would rather like to ask Mr. Katju why he, being a former Judge forgot to verify the sources before quoting it as part of a speech?
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