Hyder Ali could not read, yet out-counted Mysore's accountants
Hyder Ali entered the army as a soldier's son with no schooling and never learned to read. His memory for figures was so sharp that he matched trained accountants, and his tight grip on money helped carry him from junior commander to master of the southern Indian kingdom of Mysore.
His birth date is uncertain, with sources offering years from 1717 to 1722; around 1720 is the usual estimate. He was born in Budikote, in today's Kolar district of Karnataka, the fifth child of Fath Muhammad, who led 50 men in a bamboo rocket unit used mostly for signalling. When his father died in battle, Hyder and his brother Shahbaz took up soldiering, first serving the Nizam of Hyderabad.
The succession fight after the Nizam died in 1748, the Second Carnatic War, gave him his chance. Mysore's army joined the siege of Devanahalli in 1749, and Hyder fought alongside French commanders such as Dupleix and de Bussy. By 1755 he led 3,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry, was growing rich on plunder, and as military governor of Dindigul hired French advisers to train his gunners. With a Brahmin financial aide, Khande Rao, he built an accounting system with checks that tracked every kind of income, loot included.
Money bought loyalty. Summoned to Srirangapatna in 1757, he found the army close to mutiny over unpaid wages and sorted it out. In 1758 he made the Marathas lift their siege of Bangalore, and the next year a smaller force under him beat a much larger Maratha army. By 1759 he commanded all Mysore's troops, and the young king Krishnaraja Wodeyar II granted him the title Nawab, the first Mysore ruler to hold it.
By 1761 he was chief minister and the real power behind a figurehead king. Allied with France, he used French craftsmen to build up his artillery and arsenal, and led Mysore against the East India Company in the first and second Anglo-Mysore wars. Benjamin Franklin knew of his courage. When he died on 7 December 1782, his eldest son Tipu Sultan inherited a kingdom stretching from the Krishna River to the Arabian Sea.
Source: Hyder Ali
