Tipu Sultan was the first Hindustani ruler to recognise the threat that the British East India company posed to Hindustan. Calling him a nationalist etc would not be correct as Hindustan of those days wasn’t the nation that India is today.
Big and small empires and kingdoms made up the region.
Tipu Sultan’s kingdom was one of those.
Tipu’s greatness lies in his ability to recognise the need for new technology & adopt European methods for warfare to oppose the British, and recruiting French in the army. With French help he introduced European economic, industrial and farming methods to Seringapatam, built a network of new roads, formed a State Trading Company with ships and factories located across the Middle East and established sericulture. Mysore silk is famous even today.

Thanks to four Anglo-Mysore wars and threats to trading settlements such as Madras, Hyder Ali and then Tipu’s victories and treatment of British prisoners, Tipu became a ( if not most) villianous man in Britain.
News of his death was celebrated throughout the island.

Called the Tiger of Mysore, Tipu Sultan’s symbol was the tiger and was used in all his royal and personal objects. The tiger head on his throne is in the Windsor collection. His clothes show tiger stripes, his mausoleum is painted with tiger stripes and the grave cover is also a cloth with tiger stripes.
Coincidentally the British emblem is a lion. The Seringapatam medal, awarded to those who had taken part in the siege, depicts a rampaging lion mauling a supine tiger.
Acc to Kate Brittleback “With Tipu gone, the Company was able, in his own words, to ‘fix [its] talons’ ever deeper into Indian soil.”
Tipu Sultan was the third generation of his family to be born south of the Vindhyas Anda son of the soil. The narrative of a Muslim ruler was British rhetoric which was a “result of the old animosity between Christendom and Islam, which had begun with the Crusades” writes Brittleback.

This mausoleum was built by Tipu for his father in Lal Bagh and Hyder Ali Dakhani sleeps in the middle flanked by Tipu on the left and wife Fatima on the right.
It’s structure resembles the Ibrahim Ray a of Bijapur, of course it’s much smaller with an attached mosque called Masjid e Aqsa
There’s a sense of peace and piety and everyone there showed a great deal of reverence.

#tipusultan

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/451258

This explanation by friend Salman Asif:,

Dear Rana ji – many thanks for sharing these truly riveting images. I was thinking of commenting on the previous image of dervish with a tamed lion and now this image of dervish holding a stick and walking with a harnessed bear (both otherwise predatory animals of the wild) lends me a moment to share my reading of the theme and its symbolism in these miniatures.

Although, I have not yet fully read the Persian verses given on the ‘haashia’ of this painting with much attention, however the clearest clue as to what these thematic representations reflect, that one can elicit, is possibly from the choice of verse given on the margins.

The verses refer to duality of human nature (fitrat) – that may acs as noble as a fallen angel at times, while acting as unkindly as a risen beast at other times (insaaniyat Vs haivaaniyat). These seem to symbolise, the mystic/sufic notion of ‘tazkia-e-nafs,’ (taming of the ‘ego’) – humankind’s ability to over come and tame its basic instincts often viewed in self-centred and mean pursuits of worldly pleasures – through a process of integrating one’s self with nature rather than alienating from it in a material goals based social-sphere or an urban setting. The images portray animals of the wild (flights of ego) as tame and at peace with the human figures, who are clearly in control of them.

The verse in this painting (on the top) is quite meaningful in that sense:

Dar Aatish tu dar muntazir aab-e-rehmateem

(To extinguish your scalding desire; our shower of blessings are awaiting)

Saaqi biyaar Jaam-e-arghwaane maa

(O bearer of the chalice, bring me, my share of the purple stained drink of mine)

Gallery Text :

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/451258