Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has paid tribute to Tipu Sultan, praising the 18th-century ruler of Mysore for preferring to die for freedom rather than “live a life of enslavement”.
Khan took to Twitter to express his admiration for the 18th-century ruler of the erstwhile Mysore Kingdom also known as the Tiger of Mysore.
“Today 4th May is the death anniversary of Tipu Sultan – a man I admire because he preferred freedom and died fighting for it rather than live a life of enslavement,” Khan tweeted on Saturday.
It is not the first time Khan has praised Sultan’s valour.
In February, the prime minister at a joint sitting of parliament convened in the wake of the heightened India-Pakistan tensions following the Pulwama terror attack lauded Sultan’s gallantry.
Sultan valiantly fought in the fourth Anglo-Mysore War but was killed in the siege of Srirangapatna after the French military advisers told him to escape via secret passages, but he famously replied: “It is better to live one day as a tiger than a thousand years as a sheep”.
Sultan is famous in history for introducing a number of administrative innovations during his rule, including his coinage and a new land revenue system which initiated the growth of the Mysore’s silk industry.
He is considered a pioneer in the use of rocket artillery.
Former President A P J Abdul Kalam in his Tipu Sultan Shaheed Memorial Lecture in Bangalore in 1991 called Sultan the innovator of the world’s first war rocket.