Sulthan Battery, Ganapathivattom, or Hennared Veedhi: What's in a name?

A small municipal town known across the country for its cleanliness and immense tourism potential, Sultan Bathery in Kerala serves as the entry point for vacationers who prefer the lively and unique northern hill destination of Wayanad. Recently, it was in the news when K. Surendran, the BJP state president and the party's candidate in the Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, announced that his party was keen to rename Suthan Bathery as Ganapathivattom if the BJP returned to power at the Centre in the Lok Sabha elections. The name Sulthan Bathery came about because this town once housed a battery or a store of weapons that belonged to Tipu Sultan, the Mysore ruler who conquered the area in the second half of the 18th century, according to Surendran. K. Sahadevan, a former municipal chairman of Sulathan Bathery, who played a significant role in the municipality's achievement of numerous national recognitions for being the cleanest town in India in the last decade, asserts that this controversy is nothing more than an organised attempt to create black marks on its long history of inclusive and composite cultures. “People are relying on hearsay rather than on historical facts that have been established through proper investigation,” said Dr. K. K. N. Kurup, a historian and a former vice chancellor of Calicut University, who added that there was no historical evidence to back up the Sangh Parivar's claims regarding Tipu's destruction of the Jain temple and the spread of terror in Wayanad.