Hyderabad

Title: Hyderabad – A Biography

Author: Narendra Luther

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2006 (First)

ISBN: 9780195684346

Pages: 423

The colonial rule was said to have united India which was till then split over numerous local principalities. But, the sad fact remained that India was still divided into nearly 560 native states at the time of independence in 1947. And, the contrast between the states was marked. There were petty chiefdoms which didn’t even have the population and resources of a fairly large town while at the same time a few states were even larger than many European nations. Hyderabad was the largest among them and its ruler, titled Nizam, ranked first in the order of Indian princes. While no Indian king was allowed to use the honorific ‘His Majesty’, which was reserved for the king emperor of Britain, Nizam came close to it with the epithet ‘His Exalted Highness’. The great effort which he had to expend to win the title reeks of the blood and sweat of Hyderabad’s people who served in its army campaigns for the paramount power. Nizam refused to join the Indian Union after independence, but the timely intervention of India through a ‘police action’ put paid to his hopes and Hyderabad was forcibly annexed to India. The people of Hyderabad overwhelmingly supported the move. This book tells the story of the city from its inception in 1592 by Mohammed Quli of the Qutb Shahi dynasty, its growth in the hands of the Nizams of Asaf Jahi dynasty and its steady progress in independent India. The book stops short of the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh into two states, which made the city the capital of Telengana state. Narendra Luther is a former bureaucrat and is an authority on Hyderabad’s varied history. He has published many books.

Mohammed Quli Qutb Shah was enamoured of a rural maiden named Bhagmati and founded a city in her honour designated Bhagnagar. It had witnessed many name changes since. It was called Farkhunda Bunyad but the mullahs opposed it. After Bhagmati’s conversion to Islam as Hyder Mahal, it was convenient for the ruler to rechristen the city as Hyderabad, though its name is technically aligned to another Hyder, which was one of the names of Ali, the Prophet’s son-in-law and the foremost imam of the Shia sect. The Muslim rule was, as usual, marked by religious bigotry. Madanna was made Mir Jumla (prime minister) of Abul Hasan Tana Shah and he was the first Hindu to get that post in the 300 years after Khalji. The wily Aurangzeb conquered the kingdom in 1687 and called in ‘Darul Jehad’ (the hostile land). He ordered cessation of all Hindu practices and customs promulgated by Tana Shah, who was a benign ruler. Temples were destroyed and mosques built in its place. Luther makes a sanitizing attempt to describe this brutality with the artful sentence “all places of pagan worship were replaced by mosques”! Such is the demur of the so called ‘secular liberal’ writers to state what had happened in history without fear or favour! Anyway, Aurangzeb put an end to the 169-year old Qutb Shahi reign and made Tana Shah a prisoner in Aurangabad. He died there and his mortal remains are preserved in a modest tomb near the grand tomb of Malik Ambar.

Hyderabad was not destined to remain under the Mughals for long. Aurangzeb’s religiously correct, politically disastrous and ultimately foolish policies and the frequent wars of succession marked the dynasty’s decline. Local governors asserted their own command over the provinces. Nizam-ul-Mulk Fateh Jung, the prime minister of the Mughal king Muhammad Shah Rangeela, ruled on behalf of the crown. Being the governor of Golconda, he established the Asaf Jahi dynasty, which ruled Hyderabad for seven generations. A great part, also the most absorbing part, of the book is dedicated to tell the story of the Nizam period. The Nizam sided with the British during the 1857 Rebellion and actively helped their war effort in 1914 when the First World War erupted in Europe. This active supported prompted the British to stop their grab of territory inside Hyderabad and the king’s title was upgraded from ‘Highness’ to ‘Exalted Highness’. Many developments which first saw the light of the day in the city are mentioned. Ronald Ross did his experiments on mosquito bites in the city and discovered the mechanism of transmission of malaria. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1902 for this discovery.

As expected, the book covers Hyderabad’s reluctance to join India after the British left and the events which preceded its capture by the Indian army. The Nizam’s clever strategy was to allow a few Hindus to become professors and vice chancellors, but totally eliminated them in appointments to the army, police, revenue and other sensitive departments, even though they constituted 87% of the population. Nizam found his direct involvement to suppress Hindus untenable and the organization Majlis-e-Itehad-ul-Musalmeen was established in 1927 with his covert patronage. Formed as a mirror image of Muslim League in British India, the Majlis sought to establish a dreaded Islamic State in Hyderabad whose political power was already in their hands. It put forward the doctrine of Ani’l Malik (I am the ruler) in 1938 which affirmed that each Muslim was the ruler of the country and the preservation of the regime was his individual responsibility, while the Nizam was only its symbol. Luther cites some examples of the highhandedness perpetrated against the majority community. Muslims were not required to stand in a queue and they could walk directly to the head of the line while those standing in it had to endure the indignity helplessly. This practice was stopped only after the Indian army had occupied Hyderabad. Any kind of responsible government would have spelled the doom of Muslim autocracy. The Majlis organized a mass conversion program to tone down the percentage of Hindus. 24000 Dalits were converted to Islam in a single year. Kazim Razvi formed a private militia called Razakars whose motto was that the “final arbiter would be the sword”. Razvi maintained that the “Razakars are not to sheathe their swords till their goal of Islamic supremacy is achieved”. Procuring illegal arms and ammunition, they indulged in brazen acts of loot, murder, pillage and rape of Hindus with a protective Nizam at the apex. But the sly Nizam dug his own grave when he decided to ban the Indian currency as legal tender in the state and to provide a loan to Pakistan of 200 million rupees. To add to these woes, Razakars began attacking Indian trains passing through Hyderabadi territory. However, they proved to be utter cowards in the end. They fled for their lives with tails firmly tucked between the hind legs before the onslaught of Indian attack, ditching their weapons and uniforms in unused wells. It was a tough time for the authorities to identify some of the Razakars from the general population. After the military action was completed, Nizam was transformed overnight from a bulldog to a poodle and meekly signed on the dotted line.

The narrative on post-independent Hyderabad is noted for the lack of long-term vision, as is expected when describing recent episodes. The book dons one of M F Husain’s paintings on Charminar as its cover. In the early parts of the book it runs like a story with richly ornate prose, while the descriptions of the medieval travelers to the city are reproduced verbatim. It is a sweet mixture of history with legend. The legend of Ramadasa of Bhadrachalam, the revival of Kuchipudi dance form by Tana Shah and the poetic escapades of Nizam Osman Ali Khan are only some of the tales expounded in the book. Luther doesn’t spare modern leaders as well. He talks of how N T Rama Rao once merged the warehousing corporation with the Police housing corporation as both entities had ‘housing’ in their names.

The book is eminently readable and highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star