When the news of Tipu Sultan’s death at Seringapatam (1799) reached the Maratha court in Poona, the reaction was not joy – but dread. Peshwa Baji Rao II, the nominal head of the Maratha Confederacy, reportedly remarked that Tipu’s demise was to him “the loss of his right arm.”
At first glance, this seems surprising. The Marathas and Tipu’s Mysore had fought bitter wars for decades. Yet by the closing years of the 18th century, a new and far more dangerous power had emerged: the British East India Company.
Baji Rao II was a weak ruler, struggling to control his own chieftains. He understood that Mysore, under the fiercely anti-British Tipu, was the last major Indian state capable of challenging Company expansion in the south. With Tipu gone, the British would have no serious rival between the Krishna river and Cape Comorin. Poona would be next.
Even Nana Farnavis – a veteran Maratha politician and a personal enemy of Tipu – was horrified. He is recorded as saying with grief and sorrow: “Tipu is finished; the British power has increased; the whole of East India is already theirs; Poona* will now be the next victim. Evil days seem to be ahead.”
The metaphor of the “right arm” was deliberate. A right arm is indispensable for strength and action. Without it, a warrior is crippled. Baji Rao saw Tipu not as a friend, but as an essential shield. The Sultan’s fall turned a once-balanced triangle of Maratha-Mysore-British power into a direct British march toward the Maratha heartland.
A British correspondent in India, by contrast, exulted: “With the fall of Seringapatam the Empire of the East is at our feet.” He was right. Within two decades, the Maratha Confederacy was broken, and the British became the paramount power in India for the next 150 years.
Baji Rao’s lament was not mere poetry. It was a shrewd political prophecy – one that he was powerless to prevent.
Source: Kausar, Kabir. (1980). Secret Correspondence of Tipu Sultan (1st Edition) (pp.1) . Publisher: Light & Life Publishers.
Note: Poona (now known as Pune) was the powerful political and military capital of the Maratha Empire in the 18th century, serving as the seat of the Peshwa rulers
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