Hyder Ali

Ruler of Mysore (r. 1761-1782)

• Born: 1722
• Birthplace: Budikote, Mysore, India
• Died: December 7, 1782
• Place of death: Chitor, India

Hyder Ali was an uneducated Muslim soldier who became the de facto ruler of Mysore, in southern India. He established an efficient administration, a powerful modern army, and a small navy. He successfully fought against the Marāthās, the nizam of Hyderabad, and the powerful British East India Company, and he made himself the dominating power in southern India.

Early Life

Little is known about Hyder Ali’s family, who were Muslims, or his early life, except that Hyder Ali’s father, Fateh Muḥammad, was employed by Durgah Quli Khan, the Mughal commander of Sira, Karnatakata. He died when Hyder Ali was about seven years old. A member of his family, Hyder Sahib, was in the Mysore army in the service of the raja of Mysore, and so was Hyder Ali’s elder brother, Shahbaz. About 1749, Hyder Ali joined them, also as a cavalry officer. Mysore had pledged allegiance to the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707), so many Mughal officers, especially cavalry officers, became part of the Mysore forces. Indian muskets were inferior at this time, and the elite of Indian armies was the cavalry, that is, highly skilled archers mounted on fine breeds of horses. Hyder Ali proved himself a charismatic leader, full of energy, common sense, and sound judgment. He clearly recognized that the greatest danger to Mysore and other Indian states was the growing power of the British.

Life’s Work

In 1749, Hyder Ali was involved in the Siege of Devanhalli and Arcot, where he observed and came to appreciate European military equipment, tactics, and organization. European armies were superior to Indian armies in the matter of discipline and esprit de corps. Soldiers trained as a group and were given uniforms and regular pay, which instilled loyalty. By contrast, Indian solders were often mercenaries, hiring out to one army after another. A soldier’s greatest loyalty was to his horse, the means of his livelihood. European troops moved together by order, giving them greater confidence in numbers. They were drilled to fire in volleys and to load quickly, so they could fire two volleys before an Indian cavalry charge reached their lines. Hyder learned and adopted all these tactics.

In 1753, Hyder was appointed faujdar (military commander) of a Mysore stronghold, Dingidul. By 1755, he was hiring French military officers to organize his arsenal, his workshop, and his artillery. The combination of trained infantry drilled in the European manner equipped with flintlock muskets, unusual in India at that time, along with traditional Mughal cavalry, made his army a very powerful one. He attacked the surrounding poligars (petty chieftains), defeated them, and acquired a vast fortune. He became renowned for his audacity and courage.

In 1757, Hyder was appointed the commander in chief of the Mysore army when the state was attacked by the Marāthās. He repulsed them, thereby acquiring great renown and favors. The raja of Mysore was the nominal ruler of Mysore, but by 1761, Hyder Ali had supplanted him, and the raja was retired and placed under house arrest in his palace; he was shown to the people only once a year. Hyder Ali had become the de facto leader of Mysore.

Hyder Ali invaded his neighbors’ lands and extended his territory, but in 1766 he was defeated by a coalition of the Marāthā Madhav Rao (d. 1773), the peshwa (head of the Marāthā polity); the nizam; and the British. In response, he paid tribute to the Marāthās, captured Mangalore, and defeated the British army of Bombay. He realized that the British—who had a growing army, an equally powerful navy, and control of Bengal after the Battle of Plassey (1757)—represented the greatest threat to his power. Accordingly, he allied with the nizam of Hyderabad and attacked the British in 1767, commencing the First Anglo-Mysore War (August, 1767-April, 1769).

The British were intent on controlling Mysore and southern India after they had captured the northern Sarkars from the French in 1758. Although the nizam deserted Hyder at the beginning of the campaign, Hyder pushed the British back to the gates of Madras and forced them to sign a treaty very favorable to Mysore. It included a defensive alliance between the British and Mysore. In 1771, the Marāthās attacked again, and, much to Hyder’s disgust, neither the nizam of Hyderabad nor the British came to his aid, in spite of the treaties they had signed with him. Hyder was forced to retreat to his fort at Seringapatam to negotiate terms, which included paying a large indemnity and returning territory to the Marāthās. It was a humiliating defeat, and Hyder vowed revenge on the British.

Hyder attacked the British, sending some ninety thousand troops into the Carnatic and commencing the Second Anglo-Mysore War (1780-1784). A precipitating factor of the war was the British capture in 1779 of the French settlement at Mahe, which lay within Hyder’s territory. This capture compounded the 1771 betrayal and the tendency of the British to march troops across his territory without permission. Hyder was beseiging Arcot when he learned through his military spies (harkaras) that Colonel William Baillie and his force were camped at Pullalur. On September 10, 1780, Hyder and Tipu with the cavalry and his French general Lally with the artillery attacked and annihilated the four-thousand-man army; only sixteen out of eighty-six European officers survived.

Baillie died in captivity on November 13, 1782. The British then sent another army under General Hector Munro (1726-1805), the hero of the Battle of Buxar (1764). Hyder defeated Munro too, even though the French, who had promised Hyder their support, deserted him. He inflicted the worst defeat on a British army in India. Munro fled back to Madras, leaving his artillery and baggage for Hyder to capture. Hyder celebrated his great victory by commissioning a wall-to-wall painting in his palace in Seringapatam, the “Baillie-Lally Yudh.” He was now the supreme force in southern India.

When he heard of this disaster, the British governor-general, Warren Hastings, finally organized a formidable force under Sir Eyre Coote (1726-1783), who traveled to Madras by sea while another force marched by land. Coote met Hyder and defeated him in three battles in 1781 at Porto Novo, where Hyder lost more than ten thousand men, and at Pollilur and Sholinghur. A few months later, however, Hyder’s son, Tipu Sultan, routed the British at the Coleroon River. Hyder retired to Arcot, and his son assumed power. Hyder died in December, 1782, after the British fleet had captured Nagappattinam, warning his son that the British were the greatest danger to Mysore.

Significance

Along with the nizam of Hyderabad and the British, Hyder Ali at the height of his reign was one of the most powerful forces in southern India. Over the next half century, these three powers would fight to control the south of India. Although the British would defeat and kill his son Tipu Sultan in 1799 at the Battle of Seringapatam and incorporate much of Mysore into their empire, Hyder Ali is considered by some Indians to be their first nationalist freedom fighter. For thirty years, he was able to withstand the advance of the British. It has been believed by some historians that had he received better support from the French, Hyder Ali would have been able to drive the British from southern India completely, thereby preserving Indian independence in the south.

Bibliography

Fernandes, Praxy. The Tigers of Mysore: A Biography of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan. New Delhi: Viking Press, 1991. Intended as a study of Tipu Sultan, the book was expanded to provide a background study of Hyder Ali as well.

Gordon, Stewart. The Marāthās, 1600-1818. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. This book is one of the volumes of The New Cambridge History of India. Provides an account of Hyder Ali’s military techniques in the face of superior Marāthā military power.

Habib, Irfan, ed. Confronting Colonialism: Resistance and Modernization Under Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan. New Delhi: Tulika, 1999. This volume of twenty-five essays came out of a conference to commemorate the bicentenary of Tipu Sultan’s defeat by the British at Seringapatam in 1799. Seventeen years after his death, Mysore finally fell to the British.