#BullehShah

Bulleh Shah · c. 1680–1757

In the books · 1 chapter

Who this is

Soldier, then state-builder — commander of the Mysore army by 1759, effective ruler of Mysore from 1761 to 1782 while a Wodeyar king sat nominally on the throne.

“The "rockets' red glare" in the American national anthem descends from British Congreve rockets, and the Congreve rocket was reverse-engineered from iron rockets captured in Mysore — the weapon of an Indian ruler who could not write his own name.”

— The Great Indians, Ch. 160

The big idea, in the book's words:

“A man who could not read or write rose from the rank of a petty officer to run the best-drilled, best-audited army in eighteenth-century India, put iron-cased war rockets into mass production, and twice forced the East India Company to accept terms it did not want.”

— The Great Indians, Ch. 160