DURING HIS TENURE with the Golconda Sultanate, Mir Jumla launched a series of invasions against various Nayakas, Palegars and Nawabs throughout southern India.
In 1643, he attacked the imposing fort of Udayagiri, one of the impregnable strongholds of the extinct Vijayanagara Empire. It fell thanks to the treachery of a Hindu commander named Mallayya. This singular victory altered his name from Mir Mohammad Sayyid Ardistani to Mir Jumla.
In 1646, he raided Chandragiri, then controlled by the incompetent and mercurial Sriranga III and pounded him into submission.
The same year in December, he encircled the Dutch at Pralayakaveri (Pulicat) who quickly appreciated the ancient wisdom that discretion was the better part of valour. They submitted.
From Pralayakaveri, Mir Jumla led a bloody and incendiary trail all the way to Vellore, encountering no opposition. His march of naked terror and untrammelled plunder throughout Ponneri, Poonamalee, Kanchipuram and Chingleput was strewn with thousands of innocent corpses. Entire villages and towns were depopulated. The “Big Mosque” that we see in Poonamalee was formerly a Hindu temple. Mir Jumla demolished its upper portion — Gopuram and Kalasham — precisely during this death-march. It was converted to a mosque in 1653 by Rustom, the son of an influential Golconda aristocrat named Astirabad Dhulfiqar.
In April 1647, the Nayaka of Vellore surrendered and offered to pay him a tribute of 50 Lakh Pagodas. In October, Mir Jumla was conferred the Nawab title by the Sultan of Golconda.
In 1650, Nawab Mir Jumla set his eyes upon Gandikota.
THE BATTLE OF GANDIKOTA easily ranks as one of the epic military dramas in the history of South India. Apart from but due to its strategic location, it proudly and defiantly stood as an inconquerable Hindu bulwark against Muhammadan power long after Vijayanagara had been extinguished. It held out against both the Bijapur and Golconda Sultanates even when large areas in its vicinity — Kurnool, Anantapur, Gutti, etc., had been gobbled up by Muslims.
The doughty Pemmasani Chinnathimma Nayudu was the Raja of Gandikota when Mir Jumla decided to wrest it in 1650. He would be the last of the distinguished Pemmasani lineage to rule the place.
Mir Jumla left Golconda with a massive and well-equipped force comprising infantry, cavalry, and a formidable artillery train. Arriving in the vicinity of Gandikota, he first expelled the Matli chieftain, Anantaraja Devachoda who was ruling in the vicinity of Kamalapuram. Anantaraja eventually fled to Ikkeri, Karnataka. His flight was the glum sunset that plunged into permanent darkness the brilliant Matli Kshatriya dynasty hailing from the Telugu Chola bloodline. Anantaraja was the adopted son of Kumara Ananta, who had constructed three gopurams in Tirupati: the Govindaraja temple’s Gopuram, Gali Gopuram and Kotta Gopuram (the second Gopuram from Alipiri).
Next, Mir Jumla pocketed the whole territory belonging to the subordinates of Anantaraja. This was a vast expanse that included Porumamilla, Badvel, Duvvuru, Chennuru, and Kamalapuram.
In the final leg, Mir Jumla encamped at Mylavaram, about six kilometres from Jambulamadaka (now Jammalamadugu. Its original name literally means, “a lake filled with nutgrass”).
From Mylavaram, Jumla sent the following ultimatum to Pemmasani Thimma Nayudu: in the interest of your safety, surrender your fort. Thimma Nayudu laughed at this and sent his rebuff: I have enough provisions to last twelve years. If you are man enough, give me battle and take the fort.
That signalled the declaration of war.
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO IMAGINE the physical geography of the Battle of Gandikota that occurred 375 years ago. The French gemologist and merchant, Jean Baptiste Tavernier who visited Gandikota around the same time gives us a vivid description, which helps us visualise the scene:
"Gandikota is one of the fortified towns in the Kingdom of Carnatic. It is built on the summit of a high mountain, and the sole means of access to it is by a very difficult road, which is only 20 or 25 feet wide, and in certain parts only 7 or 8… On the right of the road, which is cut in the mountain, there is a fearful precipice, at the base of which runs a large river.
"On the top of the mountain there is a small plain about a quarter of a league wide and half a league long [1 League = 5 Kms, approx, in old British measurement]. It is cultivated with rice and millet, and watered by many small springs. At the level of the plain to the south, where the town is built on a point, the limits are formed by precipices, with two rivers which bound the point at the base ; so that, for access to the town, there is but one gate on the plain side, and it is fortified in that direction with three good walls of cut stone, the ditches at their bases being faced with the same stone…Consequently, during a siege, the inhabitants had to guard a space of only 400 or 500 paces wide."
Tavernier also describes Pemmasani Thimma Nayudu as “the Raja who was…considered to be one of the best and bravest commanders among the idolaters.”
The full details of the war and its outcome will be narrated in the next instalment of this series.
To be continued
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