Academic literature on the topic 'The Princely State of Hyderabad Deccan'

AbstractWhilst the history of the Indian diaspora after independence has been the subject of much scholarly attention, very little is known about non-Indian migrants in India. This paper traces the fate of Arabs, Afghans and other Muslim migrants after the forcible integration of the princely state of Hyderabad into the Indian Union in 1948. Because these non-Indian Muslims were doubly marked as outsiders by virtue of their foreign birth and their religious affiliation, the government of India wished to deport these men and their families. But the attempt to repatriate these people floundered on both political and legal shoals. In the process, many were left legally stateless. Nonetheless, migrants were able to creatively change the way they self-identified both to circumvent immigration controls and to secure greater privileges within India.

AbstractIn the 1930s, there were two glaring questions confronting the princely state of Hyderabad's Administration: the question of sovereignty (or the political future of the Hyderabad) and the problem of civil liberties. This article explores the complex socio-political conditions in the early decades of the twentieth century that gave rise to the formation of dynamic civil-society institutions in the princely state of Hyderabad. In particular, it asks how and why the discourse of civil liberties was taken up by these institutions and assesses the response of the Hyderabad Administration with respect to safeguarding civil liberties for its subjects. What the historical record reveals is that the early decades of the twentieth century in Hyderabad became a battleground between the Hyderabad Administration and the burgeoning public sphere that the Administration could not control nor manage.

AbstractThis article explores the idea of federation in late-colonial India. Projects of federation sought to codify the uncodified and fragmented sovereign landscape of the British Raj. They were ambitious projects that raised crucial questions about sovereignty, kingship, territoriality, the potential of constitutional law in transforming the colonial state into a democratic one, and India's political future more broadly. In the years after 1919, federation became a capacious model for imagining a wide array of political futures. An all-India Indian federation was seen as the most plausible means of maintaining India's unity, introducing representative government, and overcoming the Hindu–Muslim majority–minority problem. By bringing together ‘princely’ India and British India, federation made the Indian states central players in late-colonial contestations over sovereignty. This article explores the role of the states in constitutional debates, their place in Indian political imaginaries, and articulations of kingship in late-colonial India. It does so through the example of Hyderabad, the premier princely state, whose ruler made an unsuccessful bid for independence between 1947 and 1948. Hyderabad occupied a curious position in competing visions of India's future. Ultimately, the princely states were a decisive factor in the failure of federation and the turn to partition as a means of overcoming India's constitutional impasse.

AbstractThrough an examination of the September 1948 event known as the “Police Action,” this article argues that “internal violence” was an important engine of state formation in India in the period following independence in 1947. The mid-century ruptures in the subcontinent were neither incidental to nor undermining of the nascent Indian nation-state project—they were constitutive events through which a new state and regime of sovereignty emerged. A dispersal and mobilization of violence in and around the princely state of Hyderabad culminated in an event of violence directed primarily at Hyderabad's Muslims during and just after the Police Action. This violent mediation of the incorporation of India's Muslims into the postcolonial order left significant legacies in subsequent decades. These events in the heart of peninsular India, and the processes behind them, have remained largely invisible or obscured in the historical record. Here I substantially revise the historiography of what happened in Hyderabad, and draw on my findings to offer an alternative perspective on decolonization in India.

Those of us who work on the Indian princely states sometimes seem to share a certain marginalization, a certain distance from the debates shaping the writing of South Asian history today. We also share, more positively, views of that history that do not focus on British colonial rule and are not based on colonial sources, views that arguably offer more continuity with pre-British history and alternative visions of the South Asian past, present, and future.

Abstract This paper discusses the political history of the Indian princely state of Janjira on the west coast of India. It was ruled by Sidis (Africans) from the early seventeenth century until the merger of princely states immediately after the independence of India in 1947. The Sidi rulers of Janjira were of African origin, having initially entered India as traders and serving in administrative capacities with the medieval Deccan kingdoms. The emphasis of this paper will be on the manner in which the rulers of Janjira were elected by a group of African Sidi chiefs or Sardars from amongst them for almost two centuries, as opposed to relying on hereditary primogeniture as a system of succession, and the implications that such a system had on the history of Janjira.

When the states’ reorganisation took place in 1956, Andhra Pradesh, enlarged by inclusion of Telangana, faced two contrary pulls. On the one hand, there was widespread pride in the Telugu language and culture, prevailing over the whole state, and, on the other, there was the legacy of the different histories of its two major parts, namely, coastal Andhra, long held under direct British administration, and Telangana, which had been a part for over two centuries of the largest princely state of India, Hyderabad. The paper examines how owing to this divergent legacy of the past, a union lasting for over half a century (1956–2014) proved unworkable, and separation became inevitable.

In its historic evolution and development, the Hyderabad city has experienced many changes since its foundation as the capital of the medieval Kingdom of Golconda in the 16th century to its present status as the metropolis of a modern state. Each historic phase of development has significantly influenced its physical, social, economic and cultural growth. Hyderabad, under the influence of Deccan, Persian and indigenous culture, synthesised and evolved its very own Hyderabadi Tehzeeb. It truly represented the assimilation (yet uniqueness) of diverse cultures which inhabited Hyderabad. More than four hundred years later, HITEC city Hyderabad today presents a different picture. Whether it is its structural and spatial expansion, infrastructural development or its socio-cultural ethos, contemporary Hyderabad has evolved phenomenally and for many natives beyond recognition. Using ethnographic approach and secondary data, the paper introspects whether the City of Pearls has retained its unblotted tolerance and Hyderabadi Tehzeeb or has given up to the challenges of modern and globalizing times. Culturally, what is it that the natives of ‘Bhagyanagar’ irrespective of their caste, creed, gender, region and religion miss in modern Hyderabad.

Like other Britons in colonial India, Sir William Sleeman had a poor opinion of the traditional holy men who still formed an important part of Indian society in the nineteenth century. Reflecting his writings on the suppression of the Thugs that would make him famous, Sleeman declared that, “There is hardly any species of crime that is not throughout India perpetrated by men in the disguise of these religious mendicants; and almost all such mendicants are really men in disguise”.1 None of these holy men were considered more dubious – more superstitious and reactionary – than the dervishes and faqīrs. In popular Indian usage the terms darwīsh and faqīr referred to a class of Muslim holy men who were considered to possess a range of miraculous powers, powers which served to demonstrate their proximity to God; and so in turn to underwrite their considerable authority.2 For many British officials, it was this authority that stood at the heart of what they saw as the faqīr problem. As the rumours that surrounded the various ‘mutinies’ of the nineteenth century demonstrate, faqīr s were seen as the perpetual ringleaders of rebellion and sedition. Nowhere were these concerns more insistent than in the circles of India's colonial armies, which more than any other aspect of colonial society relied on loyalty to a formalised and rational chain of command. Yet in spite (and in some ways because) of these fears, the commanders of the various armies under British command in India were anxious to demonstrate their respect for the autonomy of the religious rights of the Indian soldier. Through the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Islam of ‘Jack Sepoy’ or the Indian soldier fell in between this tension of covert suspicion and official respect, and in different ways the careers of a series of Muslim holy men attached to the Muslim soldiers were shaped by this tension. Over the following pages, this essay examines the careers of three faqīr s connected to the Hyderabad Contingent, the army under British command in the nominally independent princely state of Hyderabad in South India, better known as the Nizam's State. Looking out from this princely corner of Britain's ‘informal empire’, the essay uses a number of forgotten small-town texts in Urdu to begin to reconstruct the religious history of the Indian soldier from the inside, as it were, and so to create an ethnohistory of Islam in the colonial armies of the British Empire.3

‘Public memores’ are an imporant aspect in preserving a place’s culture and heritage. Actions of the government and society many times define/redefine identities of places, impacting collective memory of people in perceiving places. Conscious efforts are required to make and keep public memories alive. Insensitive and uninformed Urban Planning can lead to erasing history and heritage not just physically but from public memories as well. This Paper discusses the issues of Fading Urban Memories by taking case studies of two historic towns in the South Indian State of Telangana. Most of the Small & Medium Towns in Telangana, India, developed over the last two centuries from their historic core areas of the Capitals of erstwhile Samsthans/Zamindaris, land revenue admistration units/sub-regional authorities under the British and the Princely States’ Rulesin India till Independence in 1947. These Samsthans/Zamindars/ Jagirdars were ‘Chieftains’ of their own territories and ruled from ‘Palaces’ located in their Capital city/town. The palaces and historic areas of old Samsthan/Zamindari settlements represent local histories whose significance, memory, heritage needs to be preserved for posterity. Gadwa and Wanaparthy were two such towns, which developed mid-17 Century onwards becoming present day Municipalities of different Grades. The Department of Town and Country Planning, Govt. Of Telangana, prepares Master Plans for development of Municipalities. The surviving Fort/Palaces is marked by their present land use in the development plans, unrecognized for thier heritage status, thus posing threat to heritage being erased from collective Urban memory. The case studies presented in this paper are from the ongoing doctoral research work being done by the author at School of Planning and Architecture, Jawaharlal Nehru Architecture and Fine Arts University, Hyderabad, on the topic of ‘Planning for Conservation of Samshtan/Zamindari Palaces of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh’.