"In the midst of his savage purpose, Haidar was, we have to concede, a man. He was not a mere monster, who mechanically perpetrated cold-blooded deeds. Despite the tendencies of the times and his own baser instincts, to which he fell a prey sometimes, there is enough in him to show that he was a humanized being. It is this humanizing touch in him that helped to individualize him and make him convincing as man among men. That explains to some small extent the great hold he had upon the imagination of the men of his time . . . we have seen in him thus far the play of at least three conflicting motives and passions—his love for money as means to an end, the end being political mastery; his hatred for everyone who comes in the way of attaining that mastery; and worse than either of these, his personal animosity against Nanjaraja [Wodeyar], whom he dreaded far more for his cunning than ever for the power that he might, perchance, wield against him to his discomfiture at a moment when he least expected it . . . when his personal feelings, however rise, as now and then they certainly do, superior to these animal instincts in him, then Haidar becomes for the moment a far different person and a truly impressive figure. His directions carry moral weight; his doings assume a mighty purpose; his fights lift him above the sordid and brutal ideas to which he seems to have been born heir to; in a word, he becomes a sort of symbol, despite his birth, religion and up-bringing, of the national fight that Mysore put up to avert the awful tragedy that the 18th century witnessed in Southern India."