Therefore, Dr Pande was extra careful. Whenever he came across a 'fact' that looked odd to him, he would try to check and verify rather than adopt it uncritically.
He came across a history text-book taught in the Anglo-Bengali College, Allahabad which claimed that 'three thousand Brahmins had committed suicide as Tipu wanted to convert them forcibly into the fold of Islam'.
The author was a very famous scholar, Dr Har Prashad Shastri, head of the department of Sanskrit at Calcutta University. (Tipu Sultan (1750-99), who ruled over the South Indian state of Mysore (1782-99), is one of the most heroic figures in Indian history. He died on the battlefield, fighting the British.)
Was it true? Dr Pande wrote immediately to the author and asked him for the source on which he had based this episode in his text-book. After several reminders, Dr Shastri replied that he had taken this information from the Mysore Gazetteer. So Dr Pande requested the Mysore University vice chancellor, Sir Brijendra Nath Seal, to verify for him Dr Shastri's statement from the Gazetteer. Sir Brijendra referred his letter to Prof Srikantia who was then working on a new edition of the Gazetteer.
