Sulthan Bathery

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A backgrounder

Shaju Philip, April 12, 2024: The Indian Express

“The renaming of Sulthan Bathery is inevitable. The name Sulthan Bathery emerged as part of [Tipu Sultan’s] invasion. Sulthan Bathery should be renamed as Ganapathyvattam. This is not the land of Tipu Sultan who massacred Hindus and Christians… Congress and CPM want the place to be known after a criminal (Tipu),” Surendran said.

Surendran is contesting against sitting MP Rahul Gandhi (Congress) and Annie Raja (CPI) at the seat. What is the history of the town and its names?

Where does the name Ganapathyvattam come from?

Sulthan Bathery, one of the three municipal towns in Wayanad (the other two are Mananthavady and Kalpetta), has a stone temple that was once known as Ganapathyvattam. The temple, built in the prevalent architectural style of the Vijayanagar dynasty, was constructed by Jains who migrated to Wayanad from areas in present-day Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in the 13th century.

The temple was partly destroyed during the invasions of Tipu Sultan, the ruler of Mysuru in the second half of the 18th century. Between 1750 and 1790, today’s northern Kerala was invaded several times by the rulers of Mysuru, Hyder Ali and his son Tipu.

It remained abandoned for nearly 150 years. Later, it was taken over by the Archaeological Survey of India, which declared it as a monument of national importance.

And what is the history of “Sultan Bathery”?

The armies of Tipu destroyed temples and churches, and forced many in the path of the invasion to flee in order to escape forced religious conversion.

“It is believed that 25 churches were demolished… As the churches fell, Tipu’s hand came down strongly upon a significant population of Roman Catholics that had made Western Karnataka their home,” The Indian Express had reported earlier.

Tipu Sultan used the Maha Ganapathy temple in Sulthan Bathery as a battery or store for weapons for his army in the Malabar region (today’s North Kerala, including Wayanad). This led to the British recording Ganapathyvattam as “[Tipu] Sultan’s Battery”, and the name survived as Sulthan Bathery.