Foreword
Buffeted by Time: Hyderabad in the Twenty-First Century
THE HYDERABAD I grew up in may have struck the outsider as provincial. For one, it was spatially compact. Abids was the glittering city centre, to be visited on special occasions. Mir Alam Mandi was a veritable cornucopia of fresh produce and exotic spices. The dawasaaz shops of Purani Haveli were the bases of apothecaries who occasionally doubled up as physicians, diagnosing as they dispensed. Anyone who needed anything printed came to the tightly clustered group of print shops in Chhatta Bazar. The automobile dealers of Osman Ganj, the bangle sellers of Lad Bazaar, even the hooch joints of Dhoolpet-there appeared to be tightly knit networks of commercial communities that made up hubs of economic activity. Residential areas acquired their own economic character. The uber-rich had begun moving to Banjara Hills, while middle-class enclaves like Himayat Nagar and Vijaynagar Colony were preferred by the office-going class. Festivals were defined by their rituals, many of them non-religious. Kite-flying on Makar Sankranti, dessert-consumption on Eid. The city had a rhythm that was distinctly different from the bustle of Bombay, the sarkari stuffiness of New Delhi, the orderliness of Madras and the chaos of Calcutta Scratch the provincial facade of Hyderabad however, and a palimpsest of a cosmopolis emerges. What was an Arab community doing in Barkas? How did the Kayasthas and Bilgramis of north India migrate here? Why did Hyderabad have an Iranian consulate even though it was not a national capital? Did it have anything to do with those famous cafes? The Marwaris from Rajasthan, the agriculturists. turned-industrialists from Andhra, the refugees of sectarian violence from Marathwada and the Indori migrants from Madhya Pradesh-all of them had found a seamless welcome in this city, enriching its culture. Daagh Dehlvi was buried here, as was Monsieur Raymond. a French adventurer whose grave was named 'Moosarambagh. This was the city where James Achilles Kirkpatrick had romanced Khair-un-Nissa Begum, where the ethereal Turkish beauties Niloufer and Durr-e-Shehwar had reigned as princesses. Nestled in the history of harmonious life were the scars of violent pasts and presents. The elders spoke of the 'Police Action' in hushed tones, and the folklore of many families-including mine-was replete with trauma from that genocidal week in September 1948. Periodic communal bloodletting in the form of 'riots' punctured the aura of inter-religious coexistence. The degradation of urban inequality was visible in the open drains of Dabirpura and Yaqutpura, contrasting against the wide avenues of Raj Bhavan and Begumpet. But overall, the atmosphere of Hyderabad veered towards the middle. We were more peaceful than violent, more tolerant than xenophobic, and more economically equal than unequal. Ye bajaa, zeest pa-piyaada thi; dhoop se phir bhi chhaaon zyaada thi. Even if we walked barefooted through life, there was more shade than sun. One aspect of Hyderabad that made me especially proud was its revolutionary ethos.
About The Book
A nuanced understanding of Hyderabad's history, culture and sociopolitical landscape
SAAZ AGGARWAL
A fascinating montage of Hyderabad and its ethos
RAZA RUMI
From the annexation of the princely state of Hyderabad in September 1948 to the formation of Andhra Pradesh in 1956 and the eventual creation of Telangana in 2014-these broad brushstrokes of Hyderabad's history are well documented. What has long been missing, however, is the perspective of the people, the different communities who lived through these upheavals-the communal violence of Independence and Partition, the push for a linguistic re-imagination of the state and its bifurcation, the long-drawn-out struggle for statehood and those who were forced to adapt to a rapidly changing India. For the first time, Daneesh Majid brings their stories to light. Drawing from generational interviews, oral histories, literature in Urdu and English, and his own personal experiences, he drafts a modern history of Hyderabad. A work of this scale and size has never been attempted before and The Hyderabadis promises to open new doors to the former kingdom's past and future.
Hindu (935)
Agriculture (118)
Ancient (1085)
Archaeology (754)
Architecture (563)
Art & Culture (910)
Biography (702)
Buddhist (544)
Cookery (167)
Emperor & Queen (565)
Islam (242)
Jainism (307)
Literary (896)
Mahatma Gandhi (372)
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