Demonization is alien to Indian thought. Demonization is actually preparing the ground for justifying the most heinous acts against the designated ‘demon’ and totally violating the widely accepted concept of a rule based dharmayuddha. It is no wonder that the so-called “war on terror” that demonizes various peoples is totally alien to everything that makes us Indian, says S Raghavan.
In the best-selling mystery-thriller novel by the American author, Dan Brown, called “Angels & Demons”, a Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon tries to stop the Illumaniti, a legendary secret society, from destroying the Vatican City. It is a typical plot, sensationally presented no doubt, about the eternal conflict between angels and demons, between good and evil. When this novel was made into a movie, the conflict looked even more sensational on the celluloid screen. But can humanity be differentiated into Angels and Demons as easily as we differentiate day and night, life and death? Is there something called pure good and pure evil?
This book consists of a collection of papers relating to the rule of Haider Ali and Tippu Sultan brought out by the Indian History Congress in 1999 on the occasion of the 200th year of the martyrdom of Tippu Sultan and the colonization of Mysore by the British colonialists. The collection has been edited by the historian Irfan Habib. The papers in these collections have been written by various historians, based in large part on contemporary records of those times.