preservation politics.

 "These essays are rich in details and make for interesting reading, particularly the analysis of how paintings commissioned by Tipu to render the humiliation he heaped over the British survived with minor modifications during the colonial era despite its damaging content.

Janaki points out that it was not benign artistic appreciation that preserved it, but how ingeniously the British reinvented it as a part of the victorious heritage of Arthur Wellesley who occupied Tipu’s palace and later in British eyes became a great hero after he defeated Napolean in Waterloo. Similarly, she shows that the scarred landscape of Srirangapatna served as a site of selective memory and exotic spot to valorise British military."

http://www.thehindu.com/arts/books/article3800517.ece