Wesleyan University
The Honors College
Being and Becoming Muslim:
Religious Identification in 20th Century Indian
Hyderabad
By
Kathryn Cook Zyskowski
Class of 2008
A thesis submitted to the
faculty of Wesleyan University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
Degree of Bachelor of Arts
with Departmental Honors from the College of Social Studies
Middletown, Connecticut
April, 2008
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank first and foremost my family: Mom, Dad and Rob for
constant support and encouragement, I could not have asked for more supportive
parents. To Grandpa Bob and Lynn, Grandma E and Grandpa and Grandma Z. for
making my education at Wesleyan University possible. I would like to thank the
College of Social Studies for providing an unbelievable intellectual environment over
the past three years. To the CSS class of 2008 for being great friends and intellectual
comrades: here is to the Panda, social hours and too many class hours to count. To
the teachers, mentors and friends: Cecilia Miller, Gabe Paquette, Richard Adelstein
and Gil Skillman for teaching me how to think, analyze, and write. To Peter
Gottschalk for agreeing to be my thesis advisor even though I had never taken a class
of his. Thank you for providing constant support, keeping me focused and always
excited about my topic.
Thank you to the Freeman Asian/ Asian American Initiative Summer
Research Grant for making this project possible. Without the opportunity to spend
last summer in Hyderabad, this thesis probably would not exist. Thank you to
Hyderabad for being a continual source of inspiration and a second home. At the
University of Hyderabad, thank you to Dr. Mohan Ramanan, Dr. Rajagopal
Vakulabharanam and the MA History students for introducing me to the vast and
interesting breadth of modern Indian political history. To COVA and Naandi
Foundation for providing research help and showing me parts of the city I never
would have known about.
Last but not least, thank you to all of my friends here at Wesleyan, you have
made the past four years unbelievable.
i
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
i
RELATED INFORMATIONAL MAPS
INTRODUCTION
iii
1
CHAPTER ONE: 1920’S AND 1930’S: FORMING A POLITICAL
CONSCIOUSNESS: DIFFERENT FORMS OF NATIONAL
IMAGINATION IN HYDERABAD
11
CHAPTER TWO: 1948-1956: POLICE ACTION, MUSLIM
SOLIDARITY AND LINGUISTIC POLITICS
33
CHAPTER THREE: 1970’S: MIGRATION TO THE PERSIAN GULF
AND HYDERABADI MUSLIMS AS INDIANS
52
CHAPTER FOUR: EARLY 1990’S: HINDUTVA IDEOLOGY AND THE
INCREASE OF COMMUNAL RIOTS
70
CONCLUSION: “NO TIME LEFT FOR MANGOS”
93
WORKS CITED
99
PRIMARY SOURCE PAGE
105
ii
MAPS AND REFERENTIAL PICTURES
Hyderabad State before Police Action (until 1948)
Mapsofindia.com
India after 1956: Andhra Pradesh State, Hyderabad City as Capital after linguistic
reorganization of states in 1956.
http://www.jamnagar.org/india_map.jpg
iii
The Last Nizam: Mir Osman Ali Khan
Answers.com http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/6/66/180pxNawab_Mir_Osman_Ali_Khan.jpg
Old City Today
View from the top of the Charminar looking out over the main Old City intersection
and the Mecca Masjid, to the right.
Shunya http://www.shunya.net/Pictures/South%20India/Hyderabad/Hyderabad01.jpg
iv
Map of Hyderabad Today
Hyderabad city today. Note the divide of the city along the Musi River, with the Old
City: Charminar, Mecca Masjid on one side and the New City: Banjara Hills, Hitech
City on the other side.
HCI Hyderabad: http://hci-hyderabad.org/usid2007/images/map.gif
v
INTRODUCTION
Driving back to my homestay from university, my host father asked if I had
heard about the lorry driver who crashed into a roadside fruit stand in Toli Chowki,
about half a mile away from the house. I hadn’t, and asked Mohan to elaborate. The
driver, a Hindu, lost control of the truck when it experienced break failure. The
neighborhood, Toli Chowki, consisted of mostly Muslim residents. Instigated by
rumors that the crash took two lives, bunches of young Muslim men started attacking
cars along the street, checking whether the drivers were Hindu or not, and almost
lynched the driver. An article the following morning announced that the crash
resulted in no fatalities.
We drove down the desolate road that now, a few hours afterwards, was
littered with broken glass. I asked Mohan why it happened and he responded, “You
understand. We Hindus are peaceful people, calm people. Muslims are so violent, it
is part of their blood. Hindus would never do something like that.” We arrived home
and went on with our days, but that day burnt into my memory.
Where do these stereotypes come from? How could something seemingly
innocuous lead to such a violent encounter? I had arrived in India for the first time
only two months prior. I was spending a semester abroad, taking classes at the
University of Hyderabad for a semester and renting a room from a professor off
campus. In Hyderabad I interacted with people of different caste, ethnic, linguistic
and religious identities each day. On the way to school, I shared an auto rickshaw
with barefoot village women, on way outside the city. At school I interacted with
1
mostly middle to upper class Hindus and Christians, hailing from Andhra Pradesh and
Kerala.
Within the walls of my homestay, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi were
spoken on a daily basis. Pati’s (grandma) hailed from Kerala, while Pata (grandpa)
spent his childhood in Kolkatta. Although the grandparents grew up on opposite
sides of India, both were Tamil Brahmin caste. As a result, after their marriage they
returned to Tamil Nadu and raised their children, Amma and Appa (mom and dad) in
Chennai. The children, ages 22 and 26, grew up in Hyderabad as a result of their
fathers professor placement and both spoke Hindi for their jobs. Lastly, the maid
grew up in a village outside Hyderabad and spoke only Telugu. I instantly became
fascinated with the number of different identity markers in India, and how one person
could simultaneously associate with so many different identities. For example, my
host sister was proud to be a Tamil Brahmin and spoke Tamil with her parents, yet
secretly told me she preferred Hyderabad to Chennai (the temperate weather, the
clean roads). She planned on marrying a Tamil, but stay in Hyderabad. To her
friends at work (Google) she spoke only Hindi.
Through the multitude of eye-opening experiences and interactions I had, I
became fascinated with how Indians identified themselves in relation to other
Hyderabadis. How did people in Hyderabad categorize themselves and see
themselves in comparison to other Hyderabadis? Most importantly, how and why did
religious identity dominate other aspects of identity in Hyderabad?
2
BACKGROUND AND STRUCTURE
While in Hyderabad for the summer of 2007, I worked closely with the
Confederation of Voluntary Associations (COVA). COVA is an umbrella NGO in
Hyderabad with a mission “To establish communal harmony and community
empowerment in the Old City of Hyderabad through the creation and establishment of
a network of local groups and organizations, free from any sectarian considerations,
affiliations with specific religious groups or political parties, and oriented to the
principle of service to humanity.” At COVA I worked with the research associate,
Dr. Mohammad Irfan Basha, whose specialty is documenting the Muslim
communities of Andhra Pradesh. I spent numerous hours sifting through stacks of
unpublished documents, reports and collections of interviews; trying to narrow my
topic down.
Finally, I picked one collection of interviews I definitely wanted to use and
based the chronological structure of the thesis around the interviews. The interviews
are 90 pages of interviews after the 1990 riots in Hyderabad, the worst in the city’s
history. Sixteen long time residents of the Old City1 seven Hindu, nine Muslim
respond to the question “Why is communal violence rampant in Hyderabad?” The
interviews were collected by COVA personal over a period of a few years and include
in-depth first hand accounts of communal relations and violence in the Old City. All
interviewees were long time residents of mixed neighborhoods with a history of
communal tension.
1
Old City: The historical neighborhood of what used the be the nizam’s walled
courtly city. Today the Old City suffers from lack of economic resources,
infrastructure and government attention in comparison to the ‘new city’, or all
neighborhoods on the other side of the Musi river (see map).
3
After deciding to use these interviews, I narrowed my topic to analyzing
Muslim identity in the city of Hyderabad over the course of the twentieth century. I
argue that Muslim identity and experience in Hyderabad diverges from the wider
Muslim experience in India, and that being identified as Muslim in Hyderabad today
encompasses a host of historical prejudices. The interviews identified the historical
basis for the communal divide within Hyderabad and pegged two events in the
twentieth century as specific to widening the divide between the Hindu and Muslim
communities in Hyderabad:
1. The accession of Hyderabad to the Union of India in 1948
2. The introduction of the Ganesh procession in the late 1970’s.
Following this feedback, along with comments in the interviews about
specific political parties that affected the communities, I created the chronological
order of my thesis. I look at the different identity markers which become prominent
in reaction to political events in four different time periods and events: 1930’s:
political parties emerged; 1948 and 1956: Police Action and Linguistic
Reorganization; 1970’s: migration to the Persian Gulf; and 1980’s/1990’s: rise of
Hindutva and communal violence. This paper is an argument that the identity of
being Muslim in Hyderabad has changed over the twentieth century, responding to
internal and external forces on the community. The identity of being Muslim gained
prominence in Hyderabad over the course of the twentieth century. Part of that
identity is a shared experience of downward social mobility or marginalization.
4
MUSLIMS AND HINDU RELATIONS IN INDIA
Muslims first entered the South Asian sub-continent in the 7th century and
ever since have been an integral part of India’s history. The Muslims are more
commonly associated with the Mughal imperial rule, a dynasty that ruled most of the
sub-continent from early 16th century until the mid 19th century. Throughout the
British rule of the subcontinent, there is evidence of a syncretic culture between
Muslims and Hindus in India. The British, in their effort to divide and rule, are often
pointed to for the creation of mutually exclusive categories of religious identification
on their census, either Hindu or Muslim. Early in the Indian national movement, the
Hindu and Muslim factions split into different political parties with different ideas of
a new nation state. As a result, the South Asian sub continent split into three modern
nation-states: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (previously East Pakistan). Today,
India is the world’s largest secular democracy, while Pakistan is an Islamic state. The
demarcation of these boundaries had widespread consequences for the entire
subcontinent, especially relating to religious identification.
The bloodshed during Partition was horrible for Pakistanis, Indians, Hindus
and Muslims. Yet the bloodshed did not stop with the announcements of the new
constitutions. India was founded as pluralistic, secular democracy, well aware of its
mosaic of religious groups. Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Jainists, Sikhs,
Zoroastrians and Hindus all claim to be historically grounded in India. Today, 80.5%
5
of the approximately 1.2 billion person population identifies as a Hindu.2 Muslims
are the next largest religious group, with 13.4%. Furthermore, India’s Muslim
population is second only to Indonesia. Although India was founded as a secular
democracy, there have been many claims, subvert or overt, about India being a Hindu
nation since Independence. The Muslims, the second largest religious group with a
history of political and military influence in India, have since been picked on as
foreigners and invaders. Today in India, Muslims exist as a marginalized minority.
HYDERABAD AND HYDERABADI MUSLIMS
Hyderabad is the capital of the state Andhra Pradesh in Southern India and has
a unique Muslim history and culture. Today, Hyderabad is a booming metropolis of 9
million people, India’s fifth largest city. Until 1948, however, Hyderabad referred to
Hyderabad state, a princely state ruled by a lineage of Muslim rulers, the nizams. A
Muslim-ruled state for centuries, Hyderabad is a city with a large Muslim minority of
40% of total population, while nationwide Muslims only comprise 13.4% of the
population. Today the state Andhra Pradesh is only 8.9% Muslim, yet 48% of
beggars and 28.2% of rickshaw drivers in Hyderabad are Muslim3. Thus, Muslims in
the city of Hyderabad struggle with maintaining their cultural heritage in Hyderabad
while existing as a small minority in the new state of Andhra Pradesh.
In the past few years, Hyderabad has received a lot of attention for being
central to India’s developing global economy with its HITECH City, a hub for
2
“India.” CIA: The World Factbook, 20 March 2008. 4 February 2008
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/in.html.
3
Syed Ali, “Re-membering Selves: From Nobility and Caste to Ethnicity and Class in an Indian City”
Diss. University of Virginia, 2001, 15.
6
outsourcing. IBM, Google and many other companies hold large offices in
Hyderabad, and as a result the city is sometimes referred to as ‘Cyberabad’. As the
new part of Hyderabad is burgeoning with construction projects for seven star hotels,
new highways, luxury condos and dance clubs; the Old City, the historical center of
Hyderabad, has been left out of the development and remains in slums. Furthermore,
in the past few decades the Old City has become a hotspot for communal violence
between Hindus and Muslims, following a pattern nationwide.
MULTIPLE IDENTITIES
The genre of identity politics in India has focused on viewing identities in a
singular sense. This view is a narrow and not comprehensive view of identity.
People do not have singular identities, but rather multiple identities. That said, one
particular identity may appear as a singular identity in response to a given
environment. For instance, my host sister had multiple identities: Hyderabadi, Tamil,
Brahmin Caste, Indian and Hindu just to name a few. In response to different
environments, one identity may seem like the only identity. When visiting America,
she says that she identifies most with being Indian, rather than being Hindu or
Hyderabadi. In Tamil Nadu, she identifies with her family history of being Tamil
Brahmins. The examples are endless. Given the fact that everyone has multiple
identities, how did it happen that today in India the religious identity is often seen as
the only identity?
There are many books written on the Muslims of India, the Hindus of India, or
the Sikhs. Many books have also been written on regional identities: Bengalis,
7
Punjabis or Benarasis. The truth is, almost no generalizations can be made about
India or its residents. There are exceptions to every rule, every generalization. As I
showed in my opening example, many Indians speak numerous languages and
identify with different regional areas. Therefore, I do not argue that the Muslims of
Hyderabad are only Muslims. Rather, I am interested in the circumstances when
being Muslim becomes the salient part of a Hyderabadis identity. My thesis shows an
urban, religious group who identify strongly with different aspects of their identity
over the course of the twentieth century, debunking the myth that there is AN Indian
Muslim. I argue that Muslims in Hyderabad identify strongly with being Indian, while
simultaneously identifying with Islam, and that they view Hyderabad a unique
cultural place in India; a thriving center of Islamic arts, literature, and food.
This is important because it shows that there is no one Muslim Indian identity
while also showing that Hyderabadis experienced a different version of Indian
Independence than the rest of India. Thus, some Hyderabadis today still struggle to
feel integrated in India. My thesis also shows that political and cultural leaders have
a large influence on making people believe that identities are singular.
Although each chapter focuses on a different aspect of identity that became
important for Hyderabadi Muslims at a specific time, there are a number of
reoccurring themes. The idea of nationalism, and contesting ideas of nationalisms
were present throughout the entire twentieth century. Starting in the early twentieth
centuries, competing political factions held different views about the future of
Hyderabad while in the 1990’s Hindutva ideology sheds doubt on Muslims national
allegiance to India. The Muslim community, throughout the century acted
8
defensively, responding to different outside threats of legitimacy. Another issue is
that of modernization. Through the twentieth century, India changed drastically
socially, economically and politically. As India attempts to embrace modernization,
its social groups also simultaneously cling to cultural traditions. Muslim community
is Hyderabad grapples with the balancing act of looking forward while maintaining
social traditions
LITERATURE REVIEW
Although Hyderabad is a large city with an interesting history, Hyderabadi
academics are still a small group. Here, I mention other academics who focus on
Hyderabad and how my work adds to theirs. Karen Leonard has written a book on
Hyderabadi identity in the Diaspora in her book Locating Home: India’s Hyderabadis
Abroad. Leonard has also written books focused on the Kayasth caste of Hyderabad,
focusing on how traditionally, economic opportunities determined social boundaries
rather than ideas of “purity and pollution” which dominate social boundaries in other
Indian cities. David Pinault, in his book The Shiites: Ritual and Popular Piety in a
Muslim Community focuses on practices and what it means to be Shiite in Hyderabad,
his work, while focusing on a small religious minority in Hyderabad, as the majority
of Muslims in Hyderabad are Sunni. Joyce Flueckiger, in Amma’s Healing Room:
Gender and Vernacular Islam in South India, observes different religious identities
meeting and interacting in a Muslim healing room. Lucien Benichou, in From
Autocracy to Integration Political Developments in Hyderabad State (1938-1948),
analyzes the changes in political structure leading up to Hyderbad’s accession with
9
India. In addition, many historical overviews of the city have been published, usually
focusing on pre-Indian accession.
Syed Ali, in his 2001 dissertation From Nobility and Caste to Ethnicity and
Class in an Indian City looks at how Muslims in Hyderabad negotiate various statusbased identities. Ali looks at the different stratified identities within the Muslim
group in Hyderabad, arguing that there has been a shift from hierarchical based
identities towards a more inclusive status of being Muslim, but at the same time
increased stratification based on class. My research diverges from Ali’s because I am
interested only in the different aspects of the broader category of the being Muslim.
Aware that there are an abundance of smaller identities Muslims in Hyderabad
identify with, I argue that the broader category of Muslim often trumps other
identities in Hyderabad today. Looking at this broader category, I argue that over the
course of the twentieth century different aspects of the Muslim community become
more important at different times.
10
CH. 1: DIFFERENT FORMS OF NATIONAL
IMAGINATION IN HYDERABAD IN THE
EARLY 20TH CENTURY
In the early 20th century, Hyderabad more closely resembled the 16th century
than today. Hyderabadi urban culture, influenced by a string of Muslim rulers who
hailed from Iran, was essentially Perso-Islamic. The early rulers sharply impacted the
art, architecture, literature and social culture of the city. Men donned traditional
shervani kameez and vendors served Irani chai outside the Mecca Masjid. Social and
civic life revolved around the Old City, where the Nizam, his court and government
officials resided. The Old City, a walled section of Hyderabad on the west side of the
Musi river was therefore the epicenter of culture and economy. The economic system
was primarily feudal and education medium Urdu. For the most part, cultural
syncretism marked the relationship between Hindus and Muslims. Living in mixed
neighborhoods, Hindus and Muslims shared schools and religious festivals. Yet,
although religious syncretism seemed to prevail, the fact that an autocratic Muslim
ruled the state inevitably meant biased religious and linguistic policies.
The government followed a long history of Muslim rulers. In 1685 the
Mughals conquered Hyderabad and in 1725 the Mughal’s viceroy of the Deccan,
Nizam ul Mulk, created an independent dynasty. Hyderabad city became capital of
the sprawling dynasty, reaching into four modern Indian states. Until 1948,
successive Nizam’s ruled over the dynasty and the city of Hyderabad became the
11
cultural hub of the Nizam’s rule. In 1911, Mir Osman Ali Khan was crowned as the
seventh and last Nizam of Hyderabad.
Hyderabadi experience diverged from the wider experience of British
colonialism that dominated Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay and Chennai. The city remained
relatively isolated culturally and politically. Furthermore, Hyderabad’s Perso-Islamic
culture starkly diverged from the surrounding dominant South Indian Dravidian
culture. Outside of the city of Hyderabad, residents of Hyderabad state spoke diverse
Dravidian languages including Telugu, Marathi, Kannada and Tamil, all of which
have corresponding states today in India. The status of Hyderabad as a Princely state
enhanced this isolation, as the British, rather than impose rule on the Nizam, tried to
respect his rules, values and existing institutions.
Hyderabadi urban identity in the early 20th century depended on your rank
within the Nizam government structure. The social and political elite, primarily
Muslim, comprised the nobility, higher levels of bureaucracy and those providing
direct services to the elites. The jagirdaris, or landlords, ranked high but suffered
under the Nizam’s policy of more direct rule. Muslims who did not fall into one of
the top parameters of society shared more in common with a Hindu of the same social
ranking than of its Muslim counterparts. Social ranking and thus political identity
depended firstly on one’s relationship to the court, and thus the primary identity was
not religious.
In the 1920’s, the fervor of political and cultural agitation in British India
slowly seeped into Hyderabad’s consciousness. In spite of its isolation, political and
cultural groups emerged, creating three different nationalist ideologies. The Nizam
12
and his government proposed a sovereign state rooted in generations of rule and a
Perso-Islamic culture. The Arya Samaj and Majlis-e-Ittehud-ul-Musalmeen proposed
national ideologies rooted in communal identities. In addition, a myriad of cultural
organizations emerged following communal lines. The Mulki-non-Mulki issue
proposed yet another nationalist ideology of cultural nativism rooting for Hyderabad
to remain exclusive and sovereign. Class remained one of the biggest markers of
political identity in the early 20th century, as divisions between economic classes were
starker than religious divides. Elite Muslims and Hindus held more similar political
and social views, yet as the 1940’s neared people began to identify more strongly
with communal parties. As these different national ideologies formed, the Nizam
remained aloof and unwilling to grant what all parties agreed upon, a more inclusive
and representative government.
NIZAM, MIR OSMAN ALI KHAN: DREAMS OF A SOVEREIGN MUSLIM
STATE
In spite of growing political agitation and consciousness across British India,
Hyderabad in the early 20th century remained a vast yet stable princely state. For the
past few centuries the nizams’ rule ran uncontested, hence the seventh Nizam did not
expect internal upheaval. In the 1920’s and 1930’s, the Nizam viewed his position as
unwavering and increasingly centralized the administration. In response to the
national independence movement, the Nizam envisioned a national idea of Hyderabad
as a sovereign state, one that patronized Perso-Islamic culture and accepted the rule
by nizam.
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The dominant political force until 1948 remained in the hands of the last
Nizam, Mir Osman Ali Khan, (1911-167). Mir Osman Ali Khan entered into the
position as Nizam at the young age of 25. Aware of his inexperience, the young
Nizam depended on carefully chosen advisors in his first years in office. Specifically,
Mir Osman Ali Khan created a close relationship with Colonel Pinhey, the British
Resident at the time.4 British residents held posts in various princely states, often
individually for the purpose of administering British affairs in the princely states.
The Nizam used these beginning years to learn the intricacies of the political system,
but as soon as he had figured out the system himself, the Nizam spent the remainder
of his time in office centralizing power, solidifying an autocratic position.
THE NIZAM’S RELATIONSHIP WITH THE BRITISH: PLAYING IT SAFE
The Nizam’s legacy included close relations to the British. During World
War One the Nizam demonstrated his allegiance through financial donations and
moral support. The Nizam’s actions during World War One characterize the Nizam
as a young leader, eager to satisfy the British so that he could concentrate on his local
rule in Hyderabad. The Nizam’s early relationship with the British also led him to
falsely believe that the British would support Hyderabad in the face of Indian
Independence.
Most prominently, the Nizam donated large amounts of cash and numbers of
army units to support the British. Here, The New York Times proclaims, “during the
World War, the dry, grave ‘Richest Man in the World’ contributed to Britain some
4
Margrit Pernau, The Passing of Patrimonialism: Politics and Political Culture in Hyderabad 19111948 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2001) 88.
14
$100,000,000 cash plus untold supplies and Hyderabad army units.”5 As a result of
his generous gifts to the British, the Nizam gained the title ‘His Exalted Highness’, a
title which implied a superior status in comparison to other Indian princes.6 The
Nizam’s generosity towards the British enabled him to enhance his power at home in
Hyderabad without reprimand from the British.
In addition to manpower and money, the British asked the Nizam to morally
side with the British during World War One. When it became clear that the Ottoman
empire sided with Britain’s enemies, the British became worried of India’s
allegiances. The Ottoman empire’s Caliphate represented the political leader of
Islam. The Caliph was symbolically a successor to Muhammad; a political leader and
defender of the faith. Not only did the British worry about pro-Turkish sentiments
stirring in India, but they were also concerned with the percentage of Indian Muslims
in their fighting army. After the Allies’ victory it became clear that they intended to
end the Caliphate. In the pan-Islamic world, this marked the end of the last Caliph,
leaving only the Nizam as the head of a large Muslim empire. In response, Indians
took up the cause of defending the Caliphates position and started a movement, which
is commonly referred to as the Khilafat Movement. The movement included not only
Muslims but also well-known Hindus, including Mohammad Gandhi.
In order to try and preempt any pan-Islamic sentiments in Indian Muslims, the
British requested the Nizam to take a stance, as the leader of Indian Muslims, and
declare that England’s position was right and just. In his speech, the Nizam countered
the idea that a pan-Islamic holy war applied to the situation, and rather proponed that
5
6
“Silver Jubilee Durbar,” Times Magazine, 22 Feb.1937: 4.
Pernau 97.
15
subjects should “remain firm and wholehearted in their loyalty and obedience, swerve
not a hair’s-breadth from their devotion to the British Government.”7 His compliance
showed that the Nizam cared more about the safety of his position in power rather
than supporting the fallen Caliphate. As a result, the British seemingly fully
supported the Nizam and allowed him to centralize his power.
EGOTISTIC: RIGHT TO WEALTH, RIGHT TO RULE
The Nizam felt validated by his hereditary lineage in his right to rule and
remain sovereign, a view that characterized the overall Muslim sentiment in
Hyderabad. The Nizam convinced himself that his subjects accepted his rule. The
Nizam’s self indulgence ultimately led to his inability to respond to the growing
political agitation in the state. His wealth stunned people worldwide, drawing
attention to the undemocratic nature of the Hyderabad state. In 1937, the Nizam
graced the front cover of Time magazine as the wealthiest individual in the world.
The article criticized his ridiculous show of opulence,
“…there is no immediate prospect for the world to see such another Indian
spectacle of pomp and power as that of the Jubilee Durbar which began in
Hyderabad with warlike display of 10,000 Hyderabad troops last week and
will close Feb. 26 when the Nizam prays in the public gardens of the Great
Mosque, entertains the eminent Indian theologians of his Dominions, and
throws open the characteristic and important Hyderabad Departmental
Progress Exposition.”8
The article continues to characterize the Nizam as self interested and delusional. In
addition to believing he held the right to rule by being a nizam, the seventh Nizam
7
8
Pernau 97.
“Silver Jubilee Durbar,” Times Magazine, 22 Feb. 1937: 1.
16
exaggerated this by proponing that Indian Muslims viewed him as necessary to their
religion. “Poems were recited and the venerable Hindu Premier read an address
hailing his Mohammedan Monarch as ‘today the sole relic of Mogul greatness in
India’. The Nizam, in his own mind, represents the carrier of culture, tradition and
royalty.” 9 The Nizam’s inflated sense of self-importance led to political
centralization, a move that upset his balance with the British.
In an effort to concentrate his power, the Nizam altered the government
structure. In 1914, he abolished his British Premier and supporting officers,
implementing direct rule.10 This lasted through the First World War, while Britain
remained preoccupied. In 1918, after a trip around the country visiting other states,
the Nizam was so confident, after being encouraged by the anti-British movement,
that he dismissed many British from service without prior notice.11 In response, in
1919, the British Resident demanded that an Executive Council be created to balance
the Nizam’s enlarged power.
As the Nizam viewed himself as the representative government, he acted
strongly against any political groups in the state. The Nizam’s stance towards
political gatherings or press revolved around whether they accepted the Nizam’s
legitimacy. Moreover, the Nizam banned political meetings and banned numerous
papers in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The Nizam was so self-occupied that he failed to
endorse a vision of a sovereign Hyderabad that the majority of his subjects could
accept. Following wider Indian political movements, political parties and cultural
organizations emerged leading up to India’s independence.
9
“Silver Jubilee Durbar” Time Magazine, 22 Feb. 1937: 5.
Luther Narendra, Hyderabad: A Biography (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006) 213.
11
Pernau 115.
10
17
Losing his political and cultural stronghold, the Nizam tried to preserve his
power until death. An article in Time magazine sums up the Nizam’s sad situation
when, in 1952, they published the first article since the Nizam graced the front cover
as the richest man in the world. This time though, the article ends with a comment
lamenting his past glory, “The good old regal powers were all gone; now [the
nobility] had nothing left but money—and the Nizam had most of that.”12 The Nizam
spent his last years living in King Kothi Palace in the Old City. He rarely left,
effectively barring himself from the political and cultural changes outside the palace
gates.
This hope of retaining Hyderabadi courtly culture marked the identity of
Muslims living in urban Hyderabad at the time. The character of the Nizam affected
the consciousness of the Muslims of Hyderabad. The Nizam’s centralization and
belief that Hyderabad could remain a sovereign state patronizing Perso-Islamic
culture affected how the Muslims of Hyderabad viewed themselves politically. The
Nizam’s funeral, in 1967, saw one of the largest turnouts in Indian history. The
Nizam’s death marked the end of a princely, and Muslim era in Hyderabad.
CONTESTING AUTOCRATIC RULE: EMERGENCE OF POLITICAL
AGITATION
Until the early twentieth century, Hyderabad city remained isolated from the
surrounding regions and therefore the growing Indian Independence movement.
However, starting in the 1920’s a political fervor entered Hyderabad. During this
decade individuals launched a myriad of cultural and political organizations. Some of
12
“Its Only Money” Time Magazine 24 March 1952: 1.
18
the most notable parties and organizations focused on nurturing religious identities.
Out of these parties a second, communal, national ideology unfolded. Groups
focused on religious and cultural revival and believed that their religious group had
the right to a political entity. With the emergence of communal political parties in
Hyderabad, religious identities started to become more salient. In 1938, the first
recorded communal riot occurred in Hyderabad, spearheading a reputation of
religious violence that the city still holds today.
A COMMUNAL NATIONALIST IDEOLOGY
How does a communal nationalist ideology come about? Bhikhu Parekh, in
his article “Discourses on National Identity” analyzes the way groups in emerging
nation-states form a collective political consciousness. Parekh notes that India was
among the first developing nations to enter a debate on national identity.13 In India,
the national political discourse attempted to answer why so many foreign invaders
historically conquered the sub continent. Leaders concluded that India’s problem was
a fundamental problem of national character, culture and social structure.14 In
response, political parties aimed to revive and glorify their culture and history.
Bikhu further contends that debates on national identity often become
polarized in developing countries. A myriad of different religious, linguistic, and
ethnic groups contest for different national ideologies and violence may erupt.
13
Bhikhu Parekh, “Discourses on National Identity” In Communal Identity in India: Its Construction
and Articulation in the Twentieth Century, Ed. Bidyut Chakrabarty. (New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2003) 116.
14
Parekh 118.
19
Another issue developing countries face is the mission of trying to reconcile political
modernization while maintaining traditional identities,
“As the two are not easy to reconcile, their deeply divided self-consciousness
periodically triggers off intense debates about who they were and have
become, where they are going and what kind of society they are
creating…The debate on their national identity then becomes polarized, fierce,
and even violent.”15
As Hyderabadis formed a political consciousness in the 1930’s, many followed a
wider Indian pattern of aligning with divisive ideologies.
Bhikhu defines political community as “a territorially concentrated group of
people bound together by their acceptance of a common mode of conducting their
collective affairs, including a body of institutions and shared values.”16 The preexisting body of shared values that religions carry made it easy for people to create
religious political parties. In India, the task of creating an Indian identity that
everyone could associate with deemed difficult as religious parties gained popularity.
In Hyderabad state, the Hindus viewed not only the British but also the Muslims as an
oppressive outside force, making it an even larger task to differentiate between
religion and politics.
As a political consciousness arose, religious political parties emerged in
Hyderabad in the late 1920’s. The inauguration of religious political parties increased
one’s awareness of the religious aspect of one’s identity. The way in which the
Nizam dealt with the growing demand for political participation affected the identity
and consciousness of his subjects. The Nizam’s stance, or rather ban, on political
activity lacked sustainability. Hindu parties and cultural organizations emerged out
15
16
Parekh 119.
Parekh 122.
20
of oppression while Muslim political parties emerged in defense of a Muslim political
entity.
Although the Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Musalmeen (the Council of the Union of
Muslims) was founded as a cultural-religious organization in 1927, within a few years
the organization entered politics.17 The party soon became the primary Muslim
political party in Hyderabad, with a belief that Hyderabad Muslims were the hakim
kaum, or ruling race18. In 1930, the Majlis elected Bahadur Yar Jung as the new
president. Bahadur Jung held the view that Muslims must maintain power and used
his renowned orating skills to rouse the Muslim population. With Jung in charge, the
organization gained a militant slant, which Bahadur used to validate the Nizam’s rule.
In a speech in Lahore in 1940 Bahadur proclaimed that “Muslims had conquered
Hyderabad through the sword and it would remain that way”.19
In spite of knowing that Hyderabad state was 87 per cent Hindu, Bahadur Yar
Jung still believed that the state should remain Muslim. In 1938, the mission of the
Majlis became Ani’l malik (I am the ruler). This expressed the belief that every
individual Muslim held a vested interest in the state’s sovereignty. Soon afterward,
Jung headed a defensive program of conversion, hoping to change the minority status
of Muslims in Hyderabad state. Over the years, Jung is credited with the conversion
of 24,000 Hindus.20 The Nizam reacted to the party’s new radical stance by officially
revoking his previous endorsement. In the span of a decade, Bahadur Yar Jung
17
Luther 221.
Praveen Swami, “Roots in History” Frontline Magazine Sept. 8-21 2007: 1.
19
Luther 222.
20
Luther 223.
18
21
transformed a cultural organization into a polarizing political party aimed at
solidifying the Muslim’s position of power in Hyderabad.
Hindu parties in Hyderabad state viewed British imperialism and Nizam
autocracy as parts of the same problem, and thus concentrating on religious and
cultural revival went hand in hand with political freedom. On the Hindu side, the
Arya Samaj became the prominent political and cultural organization. The Arya
Samaj started as a Punjabi cultural group in the late 19th century. The party is often
noted as one of the first groups to affect the structure of inter-communal relations and
establish new patterns of religious identity in the sub-continent.21 The Arya Samaj
was founded in 1875 by Dyananda Saraswati, with a mission to return Hinduism to its
pure, Vedic traditions. The Arya Samaj also aimed at modernization, criticizing
child-marriage, sati, caste and image worship as impure, polluting aspects of modern
Hinduism. 22
The Arya Samaj entered Hyderabad’s political scene in the 1920’s by starting
a vigorous recruitment drive and translating their main Sanskrit text into Telugu.23
By the 1930’s, the party took up the issue of the Nizam’s oppression of Hindus. In
1938, the Nizam banned the setting up of kunds, or prayer fireplaces, without
permission.24 The Arya Samaj took this ban as religious discrimination and started
satyagraha. Satyagraha is a philosophy and practice of non-violent resistance, most
commonly known with association to Mohandas Gandhi. The Arya Samaj became a
21
Kenneth W. Jones, “Communalism in the Punab: The Arya Samaj Contribution”, (The Journal of
Asian Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1, Nov 1968) 40.
22
Therese O’Toole, “Secularizing the Sacred Cow: The Relationship between Religious Reform and
Hindu Nationalism”, (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1999) 2.
23
Ashutosh Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civil Life: Hindus and Muslims in India, (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2002) 192.
24
Luther 225.
22
prominent Hindu cultural revival organization in Hyderabad that still makes new
today.
Swami Ramananda Tirtha started another prominent Hindu organization
centered on reviving Telugu, now Andhra Pradesh’s official state language. Tirtha
tells the story of taking the position as headmaster for a school in Osmanabad in
1929, and becoming aware of the repression of Hindus in Hyderabad. Tirtha felt
personal oppression when he tried to start a Hindu school with the instructional
language of Telugu, and the Nizam government denied permission.25 This experience
led Tirtha to develop a two-fold theory of the colonial problem Hyderabad faced, one
of feudal autocracy and British imperialism. Tirtha pronounced that the road to
political power necessitated a spiritual reawakening.
The idea of reawakening and revival were central to his philosophy. Speaking
on the growing Independence movement, he notes, “A new consciousness was
aroused from one end of the country to the other. People were awakened out of their
age-long slumbers.”26 In Tirtha’s famous book Memoirs of Hyderabad Freedom
Struggle, he shares his own spiritual re-awakening. He explains how he experienced
a spiritual transformation, “Paradoxical as it may seem, there was something of an
atheist in me till I grew into maturity. I would not visit any temple…I also denied the
existence of what usually went by the name of God.”27 This experience of personal
transformation became a motivation factor for the mass of followers to revive their
own religious faith.
25
Luther 228.
Swami Ramananda Tirtha, Memoirs of Hyderabad Freedom Struggle, (Bombay: Popular Prakashan,
1967) 9.
27
Tirtha 4.
26
23
Tirtha pointed to Muslim language, dress and public prayers as part of the
oppressive Nizam state. Using defining aspects of culture as examples of oppression,
Tirtha validated his claim that political change necessitated cultural revival.
“The parents of the students who hailed from various parts of the State would
narrate what ignominious life they had to pass through. They would speak in
low whispers when they complained about the various types of harassment at
the hands of the officialdom. To please the masters they would even don the
Fez cap. They were all Urduised, having been taught in that language at the
expense of their own mother tongue. They would say that they could not offer
worship in a public place.”
Tirtha effectively joined the movement for political freedom with a movement against
Muslim culture, dress, language and food. Tirtha acknowledged the internal class
divide between Muslims, well aware that only the elite Muslims partook in the
oppressive rule, yet he also proponed that all Muslims supported the oppressive state.
Tirtha claimed that all Muslims, however rich or poor, fundamentally held different
political interests than Hindus, “the poor ignorant Muslims felt happy at the idea that
his co-religionist was at the helm and he belonged to the ruling race.” This ideology
led people to categorize people within clearly defined boundaries. A Hindu claiming
that all Muslims, regardless of economic class, share the same values leads Hindus to
view themselves as intrinsically different. Tirtha and other leaders validated holding
a communal view because of Hyderabad’s political history. Tirtha claimed that
because the ruling party was Muslim, new political parties “Naturally [they] assumed
a communal hue as it was the domination of one community over the other in all its
outward bearings.”28 Influenced by political leaders, Hyderabadis began to reevaluate their neighbors, the people with whom they shared schools and holidays.
28
Tirtha 49-66.
24
Ashutosh Varshney, in his book Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and
Muslims in India, argues that one reason Hyderabad continues to experience religious
violence is because of the Nizam’s ban on political participation. Comparing
Hyderabad to Lucknow, another Indian city with a large Muslim community,
Varshney finds that post Independence, Hyderabad experiences far more violence.
Varshney attributes this difference to the lack of historical intercommunal civil links
at the mass level. Before Independence, the Nizam allowed little room for political
participation where lower class Hindus and Muslims could interact. In Hyderabad,
only elites partook in politics, making it easier for communal parties to gain a
foothold in the lower classes. Varshney argues, “…if politics is an arena where
participation is not only limited to the elite, then the masses have begun to act as
citizens, not simply as subjects, then mass-level integration is likely to be a stronger
bulwark of peace than a mere elite-level integration.”29 Varshney notes that civic
links—economic, political, and educational—exist only at the elite level in
Hyderabad. Stemming from the nobility-subject divide, the elite in Hyderabad today
is still very integrated, living in the same neighborhoods and sending their children to
private English medium schools, while the less wealthy have become communally
divided.
Hyderabad Muslims have remarkably fewer divides within their religious
groups than other blocs of Muslims in India. The lack of dividers within the Muslim
community made it easier for Muslims to create a political identity. In other cities,
interreligious dividers made creating a singular religious identity difficult. As mass
politics emerged in the 1930’s, “politics was superimposed on Hindu-Muslim, rather
29
Varshney 171.
25
than an intercommunal drift like Sunni-Shia.”30 Politicians recognized the
opportunity to create political blocs out of religious groups and today in Hyderabad
political affiliation is still largely determined by religious affiliation.
The legacy of communal political parties still holds in Hyderabad today.
Post-Independence, most Indian Muslims joined the Indian National Congress Party,
the nation’s dominant political party. Hyderabad Muslims, on the other hand,
remained loyal to the re-invented Majlis31. Today, the Majlis is the only viable
Muslim political party in India, which demonstrates the singular political identity of
Muslims in Hyderabad.
As citizens accrued a political consciousness centered around religious
identity, public contestations emerged. In 1938, various agitations by political groups
came to the forefront of city politics. Agitations ranged from peaceful protests to
violent Hindu-Muslim riots. Towards the end of the 1930’s, Hyderabad shattered its
reputation of intercommunal peace with a series of deathly riots. The first recorded
communal riot occurred in April 1938 over a small piece of land between a mosque
and temple. This riot, seemingly innocuous at the time, started a pattern of riots that
still persists.
A REGIONAL CULTURAL NATIONALIST IDEOLOGY: THE MULKI-NONMULKI ISSUE AND THE HYDERABAD STATE CONFERENCE
The Nizam wholeheartedly believed in the social distinction based on the
feudal structure of nobles, jagirdars and common people. This feudal social structure
30
Varshney 174.
The Majlis was banned by the Nizam in 1946 and only re-emerged in 1957, under the auspices of a
new leader.
31
26
meant that in the early 20th century in Hyderabad, one’s social ranking in court
mattered more than one’s religious affiliation. Mir Osman Ali Khan loved the noble
culture and made a point of patronizing important men of culture. Signs of nobility in
Hyderabad were family origin, art and poetry, and beauty of disposition and
language.32 Early in his career, he began to invite renowned poets, Urdu linguists and
cultural figures from Northern India to partake in his court. This pattern of nonHyderabadis being invited to the court began to frustrate native Hyderabadis. The
Mulki (Hyderabadi) non-Mulki (non Hyderabadi) movement, as it became known,
aimed to remove all non-Hyderabadis from positions of power and influence.33
The Mulki movement offered a different, non-communaly oriented vision of
national identity. Karen Leonard, in her article “Hyderabad: The Mulki-Non-Mulki
Conflict” calls the movement a “promising, indigenous cultural nationalist
movement”.34 The definition of Mulki meant Hyderabad born. The Mulki movement
aimed to satisfy the vested interests of all Hindu-Muslim subjects of the Nizam’s
state, and instead prioritize a regional identity. Although the Mulki movement built
some bridges across the growing Hindu-Muslim divide, it fell short by being centered
primarily in Hyderabad city. The Mulki issue rose out of frustration of lack of
employment, “It was felt that Mulkis—both Hindu and Muslims—were being
deprived of employment in their own State.” This concern is legitimized by
statistics—in 1933 there were 46,800 working non-Mulkis in Hyderabad, including
32
Pernau 180.
K. M. Munshi, The End of an Era: Hyderabad Memories, (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan,
1957) 20.
34
Karen Leonard, “Hyderabad, the Mulki-Non-Mulki Conflict” in R. Jeffrey (ed.) People, Princes and
Paramout Power, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978) 65.
33
27
the President and other members of the Executive Council.35 Hindus and Muslims
who partook in the Mulki movement saw directly the impact of outsiders taking their
jobs in the court. Therefore, the Hindus and Muslims were largely from the same
social class and often both spoke Urdu. In 1933, a Mulki association, the Nizam
Subject’s League was formed, catering to the similar interests of both Hindu and
Muslim educated and land-owning classes. The Mulki league officially condemned
communalism and brushed it off as an import from British India.36 Interestingly, this
regional nationalism supported the Nizam’s claim for sovereignty, and adopted the
slogan, “Nizam as the ‘Royal Embodiment’ of Deccani Nationalism’’. However, the
Nizam met the Mulki movement with displeasure when it also introduced the subject
of responsible government in Hyderabad.
The limited scope of the elitist Mulki movement, as it focused solely on the
administration and its control of the state, prohibited it from gaining popular support.
Although the Mulki movement had the potential to create a strong base of regional
cultural nationalism, the movement also revolved around one very narrow factor:
unemployment. The Mulki league proposed a vision of representative government,
where instead of groups based on religious identification, “economic interest groups
should serve as the basis for constitutional representation.”37 The Hindu-Muslim
bridge that the Mulki community created lasted only a few years. By 1937, the Mulki
movement was divided on the issue of responsible government. Hindus and Muslims
of the same class disagreed on how to share government responsibilities between
35
Lucien Benichou, From Autocracy to Integration: Political Developments in Hyderabad State
(1938-1948), (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2000) 39-40.
36
Leonard 90.
37
Leonard 90
28
Hindus and Muslims. Muslims who realized their minority position in the state
argued that a respectable ‘share’ of government would be for the Hindus to maintain
their lucrative positions in trade and money-lending, while the Muslims maintain their
‘historic’ position of official government positions and zamindars, or landowners.38
Karen Leonard argued that the Nizam’s government grossly mishandled the
Mulki-non-Mulki issue and showed its inadequacy in understanding administrative
modernization and its relation to popular political movements of the early 20th
century. While the Nizam vehemently opposed political modernization, or a form of
representative government, administrative modernization delighted him. Focusing
only at modernizing a few public services, the government’s political vision allowed
little room for more decision makers. Therefore, even amidst protest, the government
remained limited and dominated by non-Mulkis by the 1940’s. The Nizam and his
administration failed to constructively respond to any of the local political demands.
Also, by the late 1930’s the government’s ideology for a sovereign state rooted itself
in a Muslim political ideology, which the majority of the state’s subjects no longer
accepted. The Nizam’s failure to respond or to cultivate a syncretic cultural national
ideology led to Hyderabad’s demise and subsequent accession with India.
The Hyderabad Political Conference, the predecessor to the Hyderabad State
Congress, also emerged as a political organization dedicated to anti-communalism.
The party’s main goals were attaining political representation, right to assemble and
freedom of press. Throughout the 1920’s the Hyderabad Political Conference held
meetings outside of the state because of the ban on political gatherings. Muslims and
38
Leonard 90.
29
Hindus in the party held a common interest in ending the ‘autocratic misrule in the
state’ without being communally divided.39
However, the Nizam still suspected subversive communal intentions and
banned the Congress party. The Nizam’s banning notice reads, “The movement,
ostensibly political, is in fact a cloak for subversive, communal activities”40. In
response, the Hyderabad State Congress decided to use a political protest tool that had
deemed extremely effective in British India, satyagraha. The satyagraha aimed to
stand against the Nizam’s ban through peaceful, non violent protest, “…the
satyagrahis were required to declare themselves members of Congress and stand by
its ideas of responsible government, non-violence and communal unity.”41
The satyagraha had the backing of Mohandas Gandhi and lasted two months.
Unfortunately, the satyagraha failed to be effective because of communal affiliations.
At the same time that Hyderabad State Congress held satyagraha, two Hindu
communal parties, the Arya Samaj and Andhra Hindu Mahasabha also held
satyagraha. These satyagrahas undermined the Congress because people conflated
the three satyagrahas, concluding that the Congress harbored communal views. The
Nizam who arrested almost 400 participants further impeded the Congress’ efforts.42
The Hyderabad State Congress failed to effectively create a noncommunal
political party because they failed to find a potent response to the Nizam’s claim of
communal affiliations. The Congress could claim before the satyagraha that they
aimed to defend everyone’s interests, yet after the satyagraha the Hyderabad State
39
Luther 225.
Claude Emerson Welch, Anatomy of Rebellion, (Albany: SUNY Press, 1980) 214.
41
Luther 226.
42
Welch 214.
40
30
Congress, in public view, was linked to the Hindu cause. After the satyagraha and
confusions with Hindu political parties, the Nizam banned the State Congress, a ban
which lasted until 1946.
CONCLUSION
In the 1920’s and 1930’s a political consciousness became prominent in
Hyderabad. As different political entities fought for prominence, different ideas of a
national ideology for Hyderabad emerged. During this time, most ideas of
nationalism revolved around Hyderabad maintaining some sense of sovereignty. The
themes that emerge in this chapter are Hyderabad sovereignty, wanting a more
representative government and cultural and religious revival. In the end, a communal
national ideology emerged most triumphant during this time period, by which I mean
that people aligned more with communally polarized political parties by the end of
the 1930’s. This changed the identity structure in Hyderabad and made one’s religion
a more salient aspect of identity, rather than class or neighborhood identity.
The communal nationalist ideology emerged triumphant in the early 20th
century because the other groups unsuccessfully dealt with external pressures. The
Nizam and his immediate government failed to respond to the overall demand of all
the political groups, the demand for a more representative government. Furthermore,
his actions tended to favor the Muslim political groups, turning the state’s majority
Hindu population against him. The Mulki movement and Hyderabad State Congress
both tried to create political movements that bridged the communal divide, but in the
end appeared to be tinged by communalism.
31
The 1920’s and 1930’s were important for the transformation of Muslims
political identities in Hyderabad. Over the course of the 20th century, Muslim’s
political position changed drastically in Hyderabad, and this early period foreshadows
lasting contentions. As the Nizam state comes to an end, Muslims realized that they
exist only as a very small minority in the state, despite the entrenched Perso-Islamic
culture that pervaded the city. The realization of their minority status increased the
impetus of creating a singular Muslim political identity, which in turn made being
Muslim a more salient aspect of the identity structure. Following the Majlis, part of
the Muslims’ social and political identity becomes a defensive sentiment.
32
CH. 2:
POLICE ACTION, MUSLIM SOLIDARITY
AND LINGUISTIC POLITICS
India celebrates August 15, 1947 as the day of its birth as a sovereign nation.
Declaring independence from the British, India entered the world order as the largest
secular democracy, founded by leaders Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nerhu. 1947
also marks the partition of the South Asian subcontinent into smaller nations based on
ethnic or religious identity, East Pakistan (Bangladesh after 1971) and West Pakistan
(Pakistan). Furthermore, even within the boundaries of the nascent Indian nation,
newly enfranchised citizens maintained a multitude of regional, ethnic and religious
identities. Throughout Partition, Hyderabad remained neutral and sovereign. This
political sovereignty lasted one short year before India forcefully annexed Hyderabad.
The Indian army surrounded and entered Hyderabad through a covert military
operation, commonly referred to as Police Action. The Indian army immediately
discontinued the Nizam’s government and currency and changed the official language.
Suddenly, Muslims in Hyderabad faced a whole new reality, as Hindus migrated into
the city, the Muslim elite migrated to Pakistan and India established a representative
government.
Post Police Action, Urdu morphed from a courtly, literary language to a social
marker of Muslim marginalization in Hyderabad. Within the span of a decade,
Hyderabad transformed from a Muslim princely state with its own unique, composite
Indo-Muslim culture to a modern Indian state and then to the capital city of the
33
modern Indian state Andhra Pradesh. The political founders of Andhra Pradesh
reclaimed the state as Hindu and home to the ancient Telugu language, common
outside the city of Hyderabad. Muslims of the erstwhile princely state now struggled
as a religious and linguistic minority. Urdu all of the sudden marked Muslims in
Hyderabad as an alienated social group. Simultaneously, Muslims in Hyderabad
retained connections to Urdu in order to preserve parts of the ‘old Hyderabad’.
Muslims of the city contended that their affiliation with Urdu inextricably linked them
to Hyderabad, separate from Pakistan’s claim on Urdu. With the inauguration of
official, national languages in South Asia (Urdu in Pakistan and Hindi in India)
languages gained importance politically. The 1956 linguistic reorganization of south
India intensified the motivation for ethnic groups to view language as the marker of
their social group.
Urdu is particularly relevant in modern Hyderabadi identity structures, as it
marks a divergent social history from Andhras43, a linguistic-ethnic group that speaks
Telugu, who migrated to Hyderabad’s urban center and shared little social history with
the Hyderabadi Muslims. Hyderabadi Muslims whose families lived within the walls
of the city during the last Nizam shared an intellectual history centered around Urdu
poets and Osmania University. On the other hand, Hindu Andhras’ memory of this
time period are formed by Pandit Viresalingam, a social reformer and innovator of the
Telugu language. This socio-linguistic history celebrates the Telenganic cultural
43
Andhra is a term referring to primarily Hindu people who lived in the Andhra region of the state, and
in villages outside the city of Hyderabad.
34
revival, therefore, the two social groups share vastly different socio-linguistic
histories.44
This chapter will look at group identities and their affinity to fashion an
identity partly around a language. The chapter views language as a critical marker of
group identities, and looks at Hyderabad’s history with Urdu and how the identity
affiliation with Urdu changed after Police Action. The chapter covers the history of
Hyderabad’s accession to India, arguing that the Nizam’s princely state left Hyderabad
culturally isolated from the wider independence movement from Britain. The history
of the Nizam’s political decisions to remain independent and sovereign effectively
barred strong connections before Police Action to either India or Pakistan for the
Muslims. Across the Hyderabad state, different ethnic identities gained prominence
leading up to Indian independence as Marathi, Telugu and Kannada-speaking people
argued for their own states. India granted each linguistic group a state in 1956,
making Hyderabad city the capitol of Telugu-speaking Andhra Pradesh. The isolation
of those living within the courtly city led the Muslims to a greater fall during Police
Action. also emphasizes that India as a large democracy, with a myriad of ethnic and
linguistic groups, faced issues forging a coherent national identity.
Furthermore, since the Nizam’s official language was Urdu, inhabitants formed
a regional affiliation with the language divergent from the movement of Urdu as the
national language of the Muslim homeland Pakistan. Hyderabad under its rulers
gained prominence as a center of Urdu for poetry, literature and higher education.
Post Police Action, Urdu faded into the shadows of English, Hindi and Telugu. Urdu
became a marker of Muslim identity, which increasingly meant social deprivation in
44
Leonard 293.
35
Hyderabad. Urdu-medium schools no longer stood as elite institutions but are today
mostly limited to dark, one room classrooms in poor sections of the Old City.
POLICE ACTION: HYDERABAD’S ACCESSION TO INDIA
Hyderabad in 1947 stood as the largest and most isolated princely state in
India. The Nizam’s relative sovereignty throughout British rule meant that urban
Hyderabadis shared little culturally with people from other areas who had been more
integrated with British colonialism and subsequent independence movement. The
political system at the time of Independence comprised of British India and satellite
‘princely states’, where the British did not hold direct power, but rather expected
princes to comply with the British scheme. Princely states varied in the amount of
direct contact they had with the British, resulting in varied ideas about the British rule.
As Independence neared, people began to realize the different political culture of
princely states. An article in the New York Times that appeared in June 1947, three
months before Independence, states:
“British India was one thing and its fate, in theory at least, has been settled.
But this week, India and the world have been made to realize that there is such
a thing as “Indian India” or the Princely States. There are 562 of them; they
cover over two-fifths of that subcontinent with a population of nearly 100
million out of India’s 400 million inhabitants. As the map shows, they are
scattered like a jagged cross over the whole territory, providing colossal
problems of strategy, economics and administration.”45
The article continued showing a picture of the Nizam under the title, ‘Richest Prince’,
arguing that Hyderabad stood as the greatest princely ‘problem’ within India.
45
Herbert L. Matthews, “Princely Sates Pose Another India Problem: End of British Rule Forces 562
Rulers to Face Question of Future Status,” The New York Times 22 June 1947: 2.
36
Increasingly, the issue of Hyderabad became more pressing as August
(Independence) neared. By June, the Nizam declared sovereignty and made a
conscious choice not to side with either Pakistan or India, which the Indian Congress
Party and specifically Jawaharlal Nehru condemned as deplorable. Meanwhile, the
still ruling British decided to slowly step down as decision makers and left it up to
each princely state to decide whether to transfer to Pakistan or India, attempting to
avoid further territorial conflict.
Leading up to August 15th, the Nizam prepared by attempting to arrange
agreements with the British and the emerging Indian and Pakistan governments. The
Nizam aimed at retaining Hyderabad state as a Muslim state, sovereign without direct
alliances with either Pakistan or India. Through this process, the Nizam falsely
viewed the British, specifically Viceroy Mountbatten, as his ally and defender against
the Indian government. The Nizam assumed that the British would support Hyderabad
against India, but instead the British quietly withdrew.
On the eve of Indian independence, the Nizam proposed an agreement of
limited cooperation, including some military power, to India. The Nizam announced
that he would willingly contribute troops to the defense of India, but that in the event
of Pakistan and India pursuing ‘mutually hostile policies’ Hyderabad would
necessarily remain neutral.46 Furthermore, the Nizam agreed to host a popular
government, giving the state’s majority Hindu population full civil liberties. Still,
India rejected most of the Nizam’s proposals, complaining that Hyderabad’s
concessions fell short of India’s hopes. It became increasingly clear that India planned
to reject anything but total accession.
46
“Hyderabad Remains Aloof,” The New York Times 14 Aug 1947: 15.
37
By August 1948, war between Hyderabad and India seemed imminent. India
had already imposed economic and air blockades against Hyderabad. The Indian
government’s argument stated that the military wing of the Muslim political party
Ittehul-i-Musilmeen, the Razakars, torched and attacked numerous Hindu villages.
True, the Razakars had resorted to brute violence, attempting to cling onto the last
Muslim empire, yet the violence occurred in much smaller numbers than reported by
Hindu news sources. In September, India entered and quickly announced victory.
Nehru immediately ousted the Nizam’s government and formed a Constituent
Assembly to determine Hyderabad’s political future. In the meantime, India
controlled the defense, communications and foreign affairs wings.47 India originally
planned to hand over the government in mere months, yet remained in control until the
new state of Andhra Pradesh emerged, in 1956.
WHAT IS URDU?
Urdu is a language very similar to Hindi, India’s national language. Urdu is
written in a Perso-Arabic script and combines a primarily Sanskrit grammatical
structure with a mélange of Persian, Sanskrit and vernacular words. On a basic level,
Urdu is the same simple spoken language as Hindi, allowing easy communication
between fluent speakers. Urdu is native to the South Asian continent, yet associated
with Muslim rulers who carried the tradition of a Perso-Arabic script. After Partition,
Pakistan adopted Urdu as its national language, while India opted for Hindi, written in
the Devanagari script. Urdu today exists as an official language of three modern
47
Robert Trumbull, “India takes over all of Hyderabad,” The New York Times 19 Sep 1948: 1.
38
Indian states: Andhra Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh. Urdu is also a
recognized language in the national capital, Delhi.
Urdu only came to the forefront of Muslim identity in the late 19th century.
Urdu evolved out of the vernacular spoken in the northern provinces of what is now
India, having the same spoken roots of Hindi. The ruling Muslim ashraf elite
purposefully imposed the language as a courtly and literary language through their
rule. In 1869, Sayyid Ahmad Khan stated that Urdu was ‘the mark of identity’ of
South Asian Muslims. This statement must be qualified with the fact that statistics in
the 19th century in no way supported this claim. Rather, this claim emerged from the
conscious motivations of the Muslim elite to transform Urdu into a significant part of
South Asian Muslim identity, which clearly succeeded, as it currently stands as the
primary language of Pakistan and a state language in India. The elite in the 19th
century played a significant part in legitimizing Urdu as a courtly and literary
language, expanding its vocabulary and translated material. 48
IDENTITY AND LANGUAGE
Benedict Anderson, in his influential book Imagined Communities (1991)
emphasizes the effect of a national language on the national identity. Language is a
signifier, a marker of difference between regional and ethnic identities. Language
helps solidify abstract mental differences in identity by analyzing the world in a
48
M.S. Jain, Muslim Political Identity, (Jaipur and New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 2005) 83.
39
certain way.49 Language and identity are inextricably linked, through any association
of an individual or group consciousness depends on the medium of expression.
Pierre Bourdieu explicates how language as an identity marker became so
important:
“Struggles over ethnic or regional identity-in other words, over the properties
(stigmata or emblems) linked with the origin through the place of origin and its
associated durable marks, such as accent—are a particular case of the different
struggles over classifications, struggles over he monopoly of the power to
make people see and believe, to get them to know and recognize, to impose the
legitimate definition of the divisions of the social world and, thereby, to make
and unmake groups.”50
In Hyderabad, linguistic politics erupted after Police Action, as linguistic groups
demanded different states, a task they viewed as legitimizing their cultural importance.
The inauguration of modern nation-states presents a problem, considering the number
of languages in the world. In India alone, there are several hundred recognized
languages. Facing independence from the British and India’s wish to adopt a
vernacular language as the primary natural language, heated debates about the
importance of languages emerged. The idea of a national community sharing a
common identity, somewhat rests on the myth of primordial nation-states and
following that, natural national languages.51
49
John E. Joseph, Language and Identity: National, Ethnic, Religious (New York: Palgrace
Macmillan: 2004) 13.
50
Pierre Bourdieu, in John Earl Joseph, 13.
51
Joseph 99.
40
HYDERABADI INDO-MUSLIM CULTURE AND URDU
Hyderabad maintained an Indo-Muslim culture and widespread use of Urdu in
an India that increasingly bent towards British customs, rules and language.52 Karen
Leonard, in the introduction of her social history of Hyderabadi diaspora stressed the
importance of Urdu to Hyderabadis, “This aspect of Hyderabadi identity must be
appreciated even as it passes from the contemporary scene, and it is clear in the
interviews and emphasized in the conclusion.”53 After Hyderabad’s accession to
India, Urdu remained a large part of Hyderabad’s identity, especially the 40% of the
city who are Muslim. As Muslims gained a collective consciousness after Police
Action, Urdu emerged as an important identity signifier.
Syed Ali, in his dissertation, “Re-membering Selves: From Nobility and Caste
to Ethnicity and Class in an Indian City”, argued that the structure of identity among
Muslims changed drastically after Police Action. When the Nizam’s political structure
fell, nobility and caste lost importance. In light of the new political system and
changed demographics within the city, ethnicity and class gained importance as
primary identity markers. As the aristocratic system crumbled with the Nizam, nobles
and beggars began to define themselves within the broader Muslim religious
community. Muslims began to recognize their common denominators of religion and
language in Hyderabad as the political system drifted farther away from its IndoMuslim roots.
When the Indian Union dismissed the Nizam and all of the employees of the
Nizam state, it replaced them with employees from outside, almost all Hindus. Thus,
52
53
Leonard 6.
Leonard 6.
41
Urdu became a marker for the Muslim community’s common disenfranchisement and
downward social mobility. Identity structures change when certain boundaries are
charged and challenged. After the events of 1948 and 1956, the new collective
Muslim identity gained prominence, replacing the aristocratic and commoner’s
identities. Today, the Muslim identity remains salient, explaining why Hyderabad is
the only city in India with a viable Muslim political party.54
URDU INTEGRAL TO INDO-MUSLIM HYDERABADI IDENTITY
Hyderabad under Muslim rule flourished as a center of Urdu patronage and
Hyderabadis viewed Urdu as central to the city’s Islamic culture. Ather Farouqui, a
historian of Urdu politics in India, sums up Hyderabad’s relationship with Urdu and its
downfall starting with Police Action:
"Andhra Pradesh in south India offers another test case of the state of Urdu
education. The Deccan has been one of the major centres of Urdu literature
over the centuries. Hyderabad, along with Delhi and Lucknow, occupied a
significant place in promoting and sponsoring literary creativity in Urdu along
with its specific contribution to augmenting linguistic style and sophistication.
Before Partition, Urdu enjoyed both political patronage and elite support or
acclamation. Osmania University in Hyderabad state (before reorganization)
employed the Urdu medium for higher education, including engineering and
medicine."55
As a result of official patronage, the Urdu language was central to Hyderabadi Muslim
identity. Deccani Urdu, the creation of Osmania University and the Nizam’s
patronage of Urdu scholars resulted in a special connection for Hyderabad and Urdu.
54
Ali 16-21.
"Language, Legitimation, and the Identity Status of Urdu and Muslims," In: Redefining Urdu
Politics in India, ed. Ather Farouqui, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006) 47.
55
42
The government of Hyderabad pre-Police Action aimed at the city being a
center of Urdu and often invited poets and scholars to be part of their court.
Hyderabad’s significance in the world of Urdu started when the city was founded by
Urdu’s first ib-e-divan poet, Muhammad Qul Gutb Shahi (r. 1580-1611); it was the
site of the first Urdu medium university in South Asia, Osmania University; and it
offered financial assistance to many North Indian Urdu writers and reformers. In
1884, under Salar Jung, Urdu gained status as Hyderabad State’s administrative
language, replacing Persian. Hyderabad also extended patronage to a large number of
Urdu poets. After the demise of the Mughal empire and the ending of the Lucknow
and Rampur courts, Hyderabad’s patronage to poets gained more importance.
Narendra Luther, a Hyderabadi historian, claimed that after this period Hyderabad
became the ‘greatest magnet for Urdu poets’. Mushairas, or Islamic poetry reading
were featured as a large part of the cultural life of the city.56
Osmania University, interestingly, was also the first university on the continent
to be instructed in an Indian language. The university set up a Bureau of Translation,
translating almost 400 classical books from European languages into Urdu from 1918
to 1948.57 The creation of the university exhibited the depth of the Nizam’s patronage
of Urdu. The move also showed the Nizam’s wish to keep Hyderabad a Muslim state,
independent of the British. Osmania University was the first higher education school
to adopt a vernacular language as its primary medium of instruction. The choice to
teach in Urdu started a trend of vernacular medium universities in India and influenced
the fight for independence, but not in Hyderabad, interestingly. The university’s
56
57
Luther 204.
Luther 203.
43
mission stated that it wished to educate and equip Hyderabad’s youth in Urdu for the
state’s administrative service.58
The victory of North Indian Urdu as the medium of instruction at Osmania
University did not reflect the strong connection between region and language in
Hyderabad. Linguistic debates over Urdu at Osmania University in the early 20th
century exhibit an inclination for Hyderabadis to favor the regional Deccani Urdu over
North Indian Urdu. The inauguration of Osmania University as an Urdu medium
school highlighted the Mulki-non-Mulki conflict, as departments fought over which
dialect of Urdu the university should endorse. In the end, Osmania chose the North
Indian dialect as the standard, heavily influenced the non-Mulki head of the translation
bureau and Persian department.59 The disputes over linguistic differences encouraged
Deccan nationalism outside of the university, instigating movements to empower
Hyderabadis and protect Hyderabadi culture. This regional connection to Urdu
partially explains Hyderabadi Muslims’ unique identity, divergent from North Indian
Muslims and Pakistan.
TELENGANA REVIVAL AND LINGUISTIC REORGANIZATION
Political and educational groups used linguistic politics in order to claim
cultural superiority. Under the Nizam, languages other than Urdu received little to no
support, vernacular Dravidian languages received secondary status, meaning little
support from he government. In 1928, the first Telugu medium high school for girls
opened in Hyderabad and Osmania University, the leading center for Urdu in the
58
59
Leonard 20.
Leonard 23.
44
Deccan, refused to acknowledge their status, meaning that its graduates could not
attend university. In the 1920’s to 1940’s, the Nizam Government refused to
acknowledge Telugu as an official language for barristers (lawyers), politics and
education. Here we see examples of linguistic suppression by the Nizam towards
Telugu, which would be quickly reversed after Police Action.
After Police Action, there is a role reversal as Telugu becomes the primary
language of the state and Urdu is suppressed. In the early twentieth century,
Telengana cultural revivalist groups focused their efforts on expanding the sphere of
Telugu in Hyderabad. This started in 1901 when Kommaraju Lakshmana Rao
established the first Telugu library in Hyderabad city, the Sri Krishnadevaraya Andhra
Basha Nilayam. A few more libraries opened, but in 1908 the headquarters moved to
Madras because the Nizam government suspected subversive intentions. In 1921 an
Andhra cultural awareness group emerged in Hyderabad, attempting to appease the
Nizam by including his name in the title, the Nizam State Andhra Jana Sangham. The
organization’s mission ‘aimed at the social, economic and cultural revival of the
people of Telengana’.60 By 1956, the group’s mission proved successful as India
granted Telugu-speaking people a state of their own.
The new Andhra Pradesh celebrated Telugu culture and a predominant
Communist Political party, both foreign social movements to Hyderabadi Muslims. In
1953, Nehru announced plans to split up the erstwhile Hyderabad princely state into
three new Indian states based on linguistic affiliation. Andhra Pradesh (the current
Indian state with Hyderabad as the capital) emerged as India’s twenty-eighth state and
60
P.Raghunadha Rao, History of Modern Andhra (Delhi: Sterling Publishers Private Limited, 1997)
131-132.
45
the first to be formed deliberately on a linguistic basis. The new state unified about
20,000,000 Telugu speaking people. Its name commemorates an ancient Hindu
kingdom, Andhra. The decision to create the state aimed to resolve continuing
tensions between the Telugu and Tamil linguistic groups on the southeastern coast of
India, and acknowledge Telengana’s political polity.61 The original state boundaries,
however, did not reach as far as Hyderabad city, and the majority of Hyderabad state
remained a multi-linguistic state.
In 1956, the boundaries of Andhra Pradesh expanded to include Hyderabad
city, while the remains of the princely state were split into four linguistic states. This
final linguistic reorganization delineated borders in South India according to the four
main Dravidian languages: Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu. Urdu, the most
commonly used language in Hyderabad until Police Action and the language of
government and schools under the Nizam, lost its status as Telugu became the official
language. A brief history of the Telengana struggle and emergence of Telugu as a
literary language in the twentieth century demonstrates a social movement among
rural Hindus which Muslims in Hyderabad knew little about. Those who participated
in the Telengana movement felt that under the Nizam Telugu language and culture
suffered.
Today Hyderabad exists as a modern city, part of the world’s largest secular
democracy. In this setting, the Muslims of Hyderabad city has been marginalized as a
religious, cultural and linguistic group. The reversal of linguistic repression of Telugu
in the early twentieth century under the autocratic Nizam has been implemented by
61
Robert Trumbull, “India Sets up State on Language Basis,” New York Times 26 Mar. 1953: 5.
46
majority Hindu governments in Hyderabad since the 1950’s which have purposefully
marginalized Urdu speaking Muslims. Under this newly shared oppression, Muslims
emerged post Police Action sharing a salient Muslim identity and expressing their
solidarity through the common spoken language of Urdu.
EXPATRIATES ASSOCIATE WITH PAKISTANIS
Hyderabadis in India share no connection to Pakistan through Urdu, but
Hyderabadi expatriates bond over the shared language . Karen Leonard writes in her
book, Locating Home: India's Hyderabadis Abroad, that Hyderabadis who left India
soon after Police Action associated with Pakistanis in religious-linguistic
organizations. In one example, Leonard finds that a Hyderabadi medical doctor
associates with more Pakistanis than Indians in Australia. One primary reason for this
is through associations at the local Muslim and Urdu cultural organizations.62 Dr. S.
Bader Qadri left India in 1953 and continued his medical training in Pakistan before
migrating to Australia to raise a family. Although there are no Hyderabad cultural
organizations in Sydney, he currently maintains memberships with the Islamic
Association and Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu.63
Although expatriates may associate with Pakistanis, this in no way shows an
affiliation with the Pakistan nation. Furthermore, the identity of being Muslim gained
importance over being Hyderabadi for expatriates. Hussein, the father of the family
who lived in Africa, along with other Hyderabadi Muslims formed three Islamic
organizations. The Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu, formed in 1986 states its mission as
62
63
Leonard 125.
Leonard 125.
47
“culture after religion”, showing that the focus is on religion rather than nationalism.
The Sydney Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu was an offshoot of the Urdu-promoting
organization started by a non-mulki, Dr. Abdul Huq.64 This demonstrates that some
expatriates may value religious identity over regional identity when living in a foreign
country.
At the same time, most expatriates strongly associate with Hyderabad and keep
in touch with Hyderabadis through Urdu newspapers. Leonard remarks that first
generation Australians who hailed from Hyderabad share a common sense of
resentment towards second generation Hyderabadis who cannot understand nor read
Urdu. In many outposts, cultural organizations specifically aimed at educating
children in Urdu. Most importantly, the two main newspapers aimed at the
Hyderabadi diaspora are Urdu. The Siyasat and Rehnuma-i-Deccan focused on the
Hyderabadi diaspora. Articles profiled cities with high levels of Hyderabadi
expatriates, Hyderabad culture and Urdu association meetings abroad.65 This focus on
Urdu and an Urdu medium newspapers shows that those who left still strongly
associate Urdu with Hyderabad, even while creating links with Pakistanis.
Leonard found that among expatriates all over the globe, religious identity
became more important while Urdu became less tied to the religious identity. For the
first generation, Hyderabadi Urdu meant a specific urban cultural identity focused on
Islamic culture, while after Police Action being Muslim gained saliency.66 This shows
that after Police Action, Hyderabadi Muslims abroad and at home gained a salient
Muslim identity. Muslims in Hyderabad, amidst linguistic politics, stressed Urdu as
64
Leonard 290.
Leonard 224.
66
Leonard 278.
65
48
part of the religion; while Hyderabadi Muslims living in one-language nation states
assimilated linguistically yet retained their religious and urban identity.
URDU AS A SOCIAL MARKER OF MUSLIM MARGINALIZATION IN INDIA
Urdu-medium education in Hyderabad today is a social marker of lower
classes. Contrary to the elite, higher education traditions of Osmania University in the
early twentieth century, today Urdu medium education is limited to poor,
predominantly Muslim areas of Hyderabad. Dependence on Urdu medium education
means limited social mobility for the students and marks the larger community as
socially stagnant. Today, in Hyderabad, anyone who can afford English-medium
education does to increase social mobility. Government Urdu-medium schools in
Hyderabad today are poorly funded and generally neglected by the Indian government,
especially in Andhra Pradesh.
Zoya Hasan and Ritu Menon, who did a study of Muslim girls’ education in
Hyderabad after Police Action, argue that Police Action saw a marked decline in the
availability of prestigious establishments with Urdu as the medium of instruction.
This pattern created a circle of disenfranchisement hard for the Muslims of Old City
Hyderabad to escape. They are poor and limited to their neighborhood, where only
elementary establishments of Urdu exist, which further isolates the group linguistically
and religiously. Furthermore, the children have little opportunity for higher education
as most colleges do not teach in Urdu, but rather Telugu or English; a Hyderabadi
school teacher, Anwar Begum comments, “Economics is an important constraint in
getting an education. The majority of children in Urdu medium are poor, and these
49
children cannot study further.”67 The Muslim community in Hyderabad realizes after
Police Action that they are politically, economically and educationally
disenfranchised, which is magnified by the declining status of Urdu.
Wealthy Muslim families in Hyderabad typically moved out of the Old City
and sent their children to non-Urdu medium schools. In some ways, wealthy Muslims
tried to separate themselves from Hyderabad’s culture. These families placed their
children in private English medium schools and encouraged migration to the West.
Farouqui comments on the lack of interest in Urdu-medium schools, "It is only the
lower sections of the Urdu-speaking population who are continuing Urdu education in
the home and at the madrasas. The middle and upper-class sections of the Urdu
community is bidding adieu to the Urdu language and its literature, not to speak of
Urdu as a medium of instruction."68 Wealthier Muslims chose this path to ensure a
future for their children in a country where Urdu is no longer a viable option in the
workforce. Today, the only place that Urdu is patronized is by privileged Muslims is
through PhD programs at Osmania University and University of Hyderabad, where
one will constantly hear of Hyderabad’s rich history with Urdu.
CONCLUSION
Police Action affected every facet of Hyderabadi’s lives. Overnight,
Hyderabad became integrated into a new country. The political and social structure
of the city was turned upside down as Indian government officials replaced the Nizam
67
Anwar Begum and Husaini Begum, schoolteachers at Princess Durre Shehvar Schools in Hyderabad;
in Hasan, Zoya and Ritu Menon, Educating Muslim Girls: A Comparison of Five Indian Cities (New
Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2005) 96.
68
Farouqui 189.
50
and his expansive court. In an instant, the Indian army quelled any dream of
Hyderabad sovereignty. Following this political annihilation, the Indian
government’s decision to divide former Hyderabad state into linguistic states based
on Dravidian languages dealt a final blow to the Hyderabadi Muslims. Urdu
essentially became a useless language, no longer the language of economy, politics or
education.
51
CH. 3: 1970’S, MIGRATION AND A
HYDERABAD INDIAN IDENTITY
Twenty years after Indian Independence democracy thrived as India began to
emerge as its own nation-state. The Hindu majority enjoyed their newfound political
status as Telugu slowly replaced Urdu, and the Muslims adjusted to a new political
and economic reality. Amidst a cheery infancy of the Indian nation, residual
sentiments from Police Action and the emergence of Andhra Pradesh dominated social
and political life in Hyderabad. Sentiments of oppression and fear dominated some
Hindu circles, rumors spread that the Muslims were going to subject Hyderabad to
Muslim colonialism once again with massive amounts of oil money. At the same time,
religious political parties established in Hyderabad in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s
gained power creating more room for radical religious fervor. The Majlis-e-Ittehudul-Musalmeen (MIM) party, after dying in 1948, reestablished itself as an Indian
Muslim and minority party in 1957.69 This political party soon became Hyderabadi
Muslims’ choice, showing a direct departure from the Congress Party.
While the Hyderabad expatriate community expanded abroad, at home Hindus
began to worry. Work opportunities for Muslims in Hyderabad proved dire in the late
1960’s due to a change of political structure, a Hindu dominated government and the
migration of Muslim elite to Pakistan. Temporary work in the Persian Gulf offered
Old City Muslims a novel economic opportunity. Even though they held majority
power in Hyderabad, some Hindu communities became anxious that this newfound
69
Varshney, Ashutosh, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2002) 205.
52
‘oil money’ the Muslims attained was going to change the power politics in
Hyderabad.
Migration from Hyderabad to the Persian Gulf increased in the 1970’s due to
an increase in work visas for foreigners. Hyderabadi Muslims embraced the
opportunity, and visible economic gain such as fancy houses, sleek mosques and large
social celebrations appeared throughout the city. Although expatriates earned more
money, the increase in income was not large enough to change the balance of power
in Hyderabad. Families could afford minor luxuries such as home renovations and
new consumer products, but the savings after a seven-year work term could not
permanently change the economic or social structure of the Muslim community.
These visible changes, however, led Hindus to perceive a change in the balance of
power between religious groups in Hyderabad.
With memories of a Muslim ruling party still fresh in peoples’ minds, some
Hindus felt it necessary to publicly remind Muslims that they no longer held power.
Hindu groups expanded religious processions to demonstrate power and territorial
claims while leaders propagated myths. Myths of Muslim dreams of dominating India
created fear in the populous, leading to more radical religious groups and public
contestation. Part of this myth predicted a Muslim change in identity while working
abroad. Looking at the Persian Gulf countries as extreme Muslim nations, Hindus
feared that Hyderabadi Muslims would create a unified, pan-Islamic identity while
working in the Gulf that would necessarily diverge from an Indian national identity.
Despite the fear by some Hindu groups that migration to the Persian Gulf would result
53
in a pan-Islamic identity, Hyderabadi Muslims remained primarily fixed on Hyderabad
and therefore India, as the center of their identity.
This chapter is an exploration of the narratives and events in the 1970’s that
led to an unprecedented amount of communal violence in the 1980’s: Was the threat
of anti-national sentiments perceived in a real sense, or twisted to suit a political
purpose? What was the effect of migration on Hyderabadi Muslim identities? What is
the importance of increased religious processions? Are these issues religious, political
or both?
THE HINDU MYTH ABOUT MUSLIMS
Myths about a pan-Islamic identity sustained a long history in South Asia.
Historically, Muslim dynasties in South Asia cherished Middle Eastern lineages, just
as the Nizams of Hyderabad maintained direct ties to Persia (Iran). Stemming from
these historical facts, British and Hindu political figures conjured images of Muslim
dreams of pan-Islamic world domination. Migration to the Persian Gulf caused a
resurfacing of myths in a new era of nationalism and global work opportunities. As
Hyderabadi Muslims migrated to Muslim countries for work, some Hindu groups
evoked images of strengthened political and economic ties with outside Muslim
nations. Some Hindus believed that Muslims held a secret plan to re-colonize India,
and thus any ties to outside Muslim countries signaled that Muslims were not loyal to
the Indian nation.
Through identifying against the ‘other’, the Hindus created the Muslims in
their mind as an aggressive unified block, “descendents of the depraved and tyrannical
54
medieval rulers who demolished temples and forcibly converted Hindus to Islam”. We
will discuss the effects of identifying the fight against Muslims as militaristic and
national further in the following chapter. This myth of Muslim unity, as Mushiral
Hasan explicates in Legacy of a Divided Nation, has roots both in colonial and
nationalistic narratives. Therefore, a common belief among Hindus was that Muslims
preserved a pride of a conquering, ruling race and all longed for a time to regain the
empire.70
British colonists utilized the myth of Muslims to bolster legitimacy for their
presence. The British were not strangers to the idea of pan-Islamic identity either,
with, as Hasan says, “…pre-conceived notions about the strong bonds that tied Indian
Islam with the Arabian peninsula…keeping the desert faith pure in the land of idolworshippers’. Multiple British authors portrayed Muslims as a hostile, aggressive
group of conquerors, reminding the Hindus that the British were helping free the
Hindus from previous, ‘more oppressive masters’.71 Western colonists also found the
Islamic social system conservative and the education system backwards, and used this
reasoning to convince Hindus of the liberal and modernized British structure. The
British colonists also created more tension between the two religions with the first allIndia census in 1871-1872. The British census required religious identification,
allowing citiziens to say anything they wanted, but when their answers were tabulated,
they were slotted into specific categories: Hindu and Muslim. This demarcation
marked the identities as mutually exclusive. This classification of religions by an
outsider is often referred to as one of the early roots of communal violence in India.
70
Mushirul Hasan, Inventing Boundaries: Gender, Politics, and the Partition of India (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2000) 25-28.
71
Hasan 26-29.
55
Further myths abounded about a high Muslim birth rate and mass conversions
of untouchable Hindus, myths Hindus used to instill fear about the changing
populations of the two religious groups. These myths gained momentum in the
1970’s, as many Hindus thought that the new oil money offered more opportunities for
bribe-induced conversions. The Meenakshi-puram case of 1981, a supposed mass
conversion of Hindus by Muslim oil money, explicitly showed how the myths were
exaggerated to a point where Indira Gandhi, then Prime Minister of India, issued a
statement against the Muslim ‘conspiracy’. As Peter van der Veer notes in his book
Religious Nationalism, the only observable evidence for these far-fetched myths is
‘new wealth of the migrant workers and their families, observed by jealousy by all
others.’ In conclusion, while the Muslim money from abroad has not had drastic
influences on the growth of pan-Islam, it might be pointed out to Hindus that one
reason why fundamentalist Hinduism is flourishing is money from abroad. The
Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), one of the most fundamentalist Hindutva political
organizations, has gained massive support from expatriate communities supporting
Hindu nationalism.72
HYDERABADIS’ EXPERIENCE IN THE PERSIAN GULF
The historical myths combined with Hyderabad’s recent history with a Muslim
ruler created a backdrop for the expansion of myths when Hyderabadis started
working abroad. Hindus believed that Hyderabadi Muslims were taking jobs abroad
in order to create transnational alliances and generate enough savings to create
72
Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1994) 113-114.
56
instability in local politics. What the Hindus failed to see was that a large percentage
of Muslims in Hyderabad had been effectively cut off of employment opportunities
since Police Action and many families were desperate for money simply to live. The
Hindus failed to see that Hyderabad meant just as much to the Muslims as it did to
them culturally and politically. Contrary to Hindu proclamations about the creation of
a unified Islamic identity, Hyderabadis had an unwelcoming experience working
abroad.
The Persian Gulf offered opportunities for increased income, but did not offer
permanent residency. More important than economic betterment, work abroad did not
offer opportunities for cultural assimilation or participation. While Hindus imagined
cultural assimilation, Hyderabadis actively retained their identification with
Hyderabad and the Indian nation while living in the Persian Gulf. Ties between
Hyderabadis and the Persian Gulf had less to do with Islamic culture than political ties
with South Asia. The Persian Gulf states, especially Oman and the United Arab
Emirates, had historical ties with South Asia stemming from a common British
colonial experience. The British used the Gulf States as a stopping point on the way to
India, resulting in the Indian rupee as currency and Hindustani words infiltrating
traditional Arabic.73
In the 1930’s oil concessions by foreign oil companies created a pattern of
reliance on outside manpower, generating flexible, short-term and well-paid work
opportunities for South Asians. Although these were deemed valuable opportunities,
the Persian Gulf was not at all an ideal situation. The official terms ‘Citizens’ and
73
Karen Isaksen Leonard, Locating Home: India’s Hyderabadis Abroad, (Palo Alto: Stanford
University Press, 2007) 51.
57
‘non-Citizens’ created concrete boundaries in the Gulf countries, where governments
offered few political and economic rights to ‘non-Citizens’, a title encompassing all
foreign workers. Workers, hailing from neighboring Arab, South and Southeast Asian
countries were differentiated and ranked on a payment scale according to place of
origin. Immigration policies limited the acceptance of dependents through high tariffs,
which meant that women and children often stayed in India. Clearly, the immigration
and foreign worker policies in the Persian Gulf countries left little room for the
creation of a unified Muslim community bridging national boundaries. The only thing
that was certain about working in the Gulf was that it was not permanent, and thus
expatriates went into the experience psychologically prepared to stay connected to
Hyderabad.74
While working abroad, most individuals stayed intimately tied to Hyderabad
and the social scene revolved around place of origin. Karen Leonard in Locating
Home: India’s Hyderabadis Abroad, visited Hyderabad expatriates in the Gulf as part
of her study on Hyderabad expatriates all over the world. While stopping by a holiday
gathering at the Communication Towers in Kuwait, Leonard observed firsthand how
the social scene is physically demarcated according to place of origin. The
Communication Towers served as a central meeting place for all workers, yet upon
arrival workers would separate according to their cities of origin in India. Regulars at
the Communication Towers used the place as a space to recreate and reinforce the
communities and culture they missed. Not only did Hyderabadi expatriates meet on
holidays, but they created social organizations and restaurants specifically focused on
Hyderabad. The Hyderabad Muslim Welfare Association was created to help solve
74
Leonard 54-58.
58
social and economic problems back in Hyderabad. The restaurants Hyderabadis
frequented served traditional South Indian tiffin, idlis and dosas. Unwelcoming
policies by the Gulf governments created pressure on the Hyderabad community to
maintain psychological and economic ties to their home city.75
Furthermore, even Muslims who felt marginalized in Hyderabad harbored no
intentions of entering the Gulf countries’ social or religious spheres. One family told
Leonard that the relative lack of security of Muslims in Hyderabad since
Independence drove their decision to move abroad. The father reflected on the
changes since Police Action, concluding that the Hindu majority government aimed to
eradicate Islam, “N.T. Rama Rao76 is trying to kill Muslim culture, there is Telugu in
the offices, idols and puja in the offices, and we have to sign in Telugu now.”77
Although the parents worried about the ‘Hinduization’ of Hyderabad, the quick pace at
whch their son picked up Arabic generated equal concern. The family decided it was
time to move to Canada when they realized their son was more fluent in Arabic than
Urdu. This paradox shows that the family intended to maintain a Hyderabad Muslim
identity rather than develop a Middle Eastern identity.78 It also demonstrates the
visceral reaction to language that Hyderabadis hold, making it an important identity
signifier. This example explicates how a Muslim family recognized Urdu as the most
important language for their Hyderabadi Muslim identity rather than Arabic,
differentiating between Middle Eastern and South Asian Muslim traditions.
75
Leonard 75-78.
N.T Rama Rao: Founder of the Telugu Desam Party (1982) and three time Chief Minister of Andhra
Pradesh. He is also a Telugu cinema actor, director and producer.
77
Hamad Nazmuddin in Leonard, 193.
78
Leonard 193
76
59
Another man reminisced about how he regretted that his children did not have
many Hindu friends in the Gulf, while he grew up in Hyderabad with many Hindu
friends. As a father, he expressed difficulty in trying to explain to his children, after
the 1990 riots in Hyderabad, that not all Hindus mean harm or hold anti-Muslim
sentiments. Aside from missing out on a multi-religious social environment, he also
regretted that his children were so accustomed to the clean, modern infrastructure of
the Gulf that they hated returning to Hyderabad. In summation, most Hyderabadis
living in the Persian Gulf enjoyed some aspects of life abroad, yet held no ambitions
of permanent residency.79
Families clung to the linguistic and cultural traditions of Hyderabad, but
adjusted to the modern roads and air conditioning offered in the Gulf, making it
difficult for second generation Hyderabadis to stay connected to the city. Hyderabadi
expatriates often complained that their offspring did not identify strongly with
Hyderabad. Children born abroad felt that Hyderabad was overpopulated, crowded
and dirty; and preferred the Gulf countries modernized infrastructure of paved roads,
air conditioning and chilled drinking water.80 Additionally, they did not have to
worry about the possibility of Hindu-Muslim violence. Second generation
Hyderabadis diverged from a Hyderabad-centric identity; connecting to a ‘modern’
westernized identity, rather than a pan-Islamic identity.
Although Hyderabadis did not make efforts to expand their Islamic community
to the Persian Gulf, they did expand their Indian Muslim identity to befriend Muslims
from neighboring states, showing an affiliation to both India and Islam. Hyderabadi
79
80
Leonard 200-203.
Leonard 201
60
men built connections with Muslims from Karnatak, Kerala, and Tamilnadu. Thus,
contrary to what the Hindu political bloc observed, Hyderabadis abroad were
strengthening their Indian identity rather than creating international ties. Furthermore,
Leonard found that Hyderabadis from India socialized with Indians from other regions
rather than Hyderabadis who migrated to Pakistan and then to the gulf.81 This shows
that Hyderabadi Indian Muslims preferred to connect with Indian Hyderabadis rather
than Pakistani Hyderabadi Muslims.
As Van der Veer correctly points out, although Hyderabadi Muslims did not
create social or political links in the Persian Gulf, Indian Muslims still consider
themselves part of a larger Islamic community. Indian Muslims historically
maintained religious contacts outside of India for religious pilgrimages. Many
Muslims dream of the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca-Medina, which inherently makes the
Middle East central to their religious identity.82 Yet this does not mean that their
religious identity is the primary facet of at all times. The conflation of religious,
national and regional identities by certain political parties and figures in India is
dangerous for this reason. It is important to remember that every individual carries
multiple identities and that identities are usually not linked causally. As this chapter
explicates, wanting to travel to Mecca does not imply a switch in national identity or a
wish to become a Saudi Arabian citizen. Evident from interviews with Hyderabadis
living abroad in the Persian Gulf, factors other than religion played a more important
factor in retaining cultural identity with Hyderabad.
81
82
Leonard 203.
van der Veer 115.
61
The extreme exaggeration of Indian Muslims’ affinity towards the Middle East
resulted in some Hindus worrying that the Indian Hindu nation being in trouble of
being toppled by Muslims. In the 1970’s, nationalism in India was relatively new,
following a history of loosely connected kingships or empires of many different ethnic
groups. Political pandits reminding followers that Muslims once violently ravaged
through ‘India’, a nation-state that did not exist before 1947, results in a new
interpretation of the myth of Muslim unity. Muslim insecurities heightened in
Hyderabad as Hindu groups accused Muslims of disloyalty to the Indian nation.
Hindus proponed, overtly and covertly, that Muslims did not belong in the nation,
solely because of religious preference. We find overwhelmingly in this chapter that
Muslims who resided in India felt strong national ties, and that Muslims did not hope
that their new economic wealth could destabilize India, but rather wished to support
their community socially and economically.
Indian Muslims identify in part with Islam worldwide; it is not sufficient to
conclude that this identity conflicts with their identity as a citizen of the nation of
India. Both the economic and psychological impacts of migration lacked permanency.
The economic influx simply offered temporary relief for the majority of workers
abroad and the living situations were so temporary that not many changed allegiances
from India.
RESPONSE IN HYDERABAD: THE POLITICS OF SPACE
In response to feeling threatened by the Muslim community, some Hindus
decided to respond by defining and claiming “their” territory. One common
62
characteristic of fundamentalism is a feeling of being an oppressed minority, when
often the group stands in a large majority. What we see in Hyderabad in the 1970’s is
a politically and numerically strong group, Hindus, using defensive tactics of
territorial claims that one would associate with a minority struggling to feel
recognized. Religious processions and festivals became political, drawing strict lines
across the city and further polarizing the religious make up of neighborhoods. The
space within Hyderabad became contested, and specific places gained significance
within this struggle. In this context of habitual politicization of religious processions,
a pattern of inter-religious riots emerges.
The difference of space and place must be defined. Space is the conceptual
area, while a place is a specific locality. Within space there is room for movement and
different territories. The idea of space is inherently linked to identity, as one’s space is
where they identify themselves. Within space there are particular places that act as
signifiers in memory. These places act as markers of a territorial space that people
move about in. Places on the other hand, may or may not be related to identity
construction. Only some places become important to people, and places become
important through representing a specific narrative to someone. Places are triggers in
memory, physical reminders of something that may be important to someone.
To differentiate between the two, I will give a short personal example. I lived
in Seattle for eighteen years. I then moved to Middletown, Connecticut for university,
where I currently reside. Although I live in Connecticut and have for three years, I
have no identification with ‘Connecticut’. On the other hand, when I meet people I
still introduce myself as being from Seattle. Although I have not lived in Seattle for
63
about four years I still strongly identify with the city, its people and culture. I also
identify with the people and physical structures of Wesleyan University, which is in
Connecticut. This example shows how space and place are different in relation to
identity. The ‘places’ that mark the ‘space’ I identify with are the physical
surroundings of Seattle and university buildings at Wesleyan. For me, the Wesleyan
library evokes a connection to an intellectual community of liberal, young people from
across the United States. On the other hand, I feel lost outside of the campus. The
snowy winter and traditional East Coast houses still seem foreign to me after four
years. Space is an agglomeration of ‘chosen places’ one identifies with. A person
may live in a city for ten years and not associate with the culture of the city at all.
Peter van der Veer in his book Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in
India argues that the construction of religion is largely affected by the definition of
space and territory and movement within space. In this way, transnational migration
significantly affected the construction of religious national identities in India. After
looking at the movement of space in a transnational sense, I will now focus on a
microcosm of space, religious processions.
To understand a religious procession we have to look at its significance in
identity construction. Peter van der Veer explains how a religious ritual or procession
affects identity construction. Religious rituals are active events, through which people
are agents of identity formation, “a form of communication through which a person
discovers…the significance of his actions…it defines the ‘self’ and ‘other’ by
subjugating the other through symbolic violence.”83 Through this active participation,
territory is defined and places gain importance. As one neighborhood is a place of
83
van der Veer 108
64
self-reference in conversations, a way of identifying oneself against the others who do
not live in that area. Certain structures act as symbols of a group’s collective memory,
becoming a marker in a historical narrative.
Shrines, mosques and temples thus are common places that reference specific
self-identification within territory. These physical structures act as “loci of religious,
social, economic and political forces”. If a group of people are involved with a place,
it may become a signifier for the group, eliciting memory and gaining importance in a
groups identity. For any social group, dialogue and action with fellow members help
construct identity, but the common thread is having a shared past. Collective memory
is always being reshaped through discourse and changes over generations.84
Discourse, traditions, language and ritual actively assert the collective memory. The
individual is the agent in partaking in these activities that construct identity.
Festivals are days for remembering, reenacting and group bonding through
narratives. Peter Gottschalk, in Beyond Hindu and Muslim, proposes that through the
telling and reenactment of these narratives, a group’s history is transmitted, verified
and authorized. Narratives are important for collective memory because they
‘reference the present community in time and space’ while reasserting their shared
history.85 Religious festivals are relevant to time as they are rooted in calendar
systems, marking specific events critical to a group’s identity. These marked times are
simultaneously used to reconnect with a group’s historical lineage while strengthening
present bonds.
84
Peter Gottschalk, Beyond Hindu and Muslim: Multiple Identities in Narratives from Village India
(New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 4-22.
85
Gottschalk 69.
65
For example, let’s look at a common procession in the United States: 4th of
July parades. During a 4th of July Parade different symbols signify a connection to the
United States, reaffirming this part of one’s identity. Physically, 4th of July parades
typically abound with red, white and blue clothes and facepaint, national flags and
barbeques. The act of wearing national colors and celebrating the first day of
independence for the United States conjures an emotional response. Although the 4th
of July is a celebration, it also is exclusionary through collective narratives of the
United States emancipating itself from foreign power. Children are reminded that they
live in the best country, a country founded on freedom and dreams of a better land.
The act of processing marks a physical space while also verifying a common
history.86 Meaning is transmitted through shared, habitual actions and this is how
territory and places gain meaning. This formative physical act strengthens a
community’s identification with a space and at the same time is inherently exclusive.
The exclusivity inherent in religious processions physically demarcates a group’s
claimed space, thus marking space that is off limits to groups that view themselves as
mutually exclusive. This territorial act is a form of exerting power and is thus
formative in constructing a group identity in relation to other groups. In Hyderabad,
religious leaders specifically manipulated festivals to enhance the unifying and
territorial bi-products for a group, “The first chairman of the Ganesh festival, a
prominent Hindu nationalist in the city, openly admits that the purpose of enlarged
processions was to demonstrate to the Muslims how united the Hindus could be.”87
86
87
Gottschalk 71.
Varshney 182.
66
Processions necessarily exclude, although the exclusion is not always meant in a
negative way.
Hyderabad, unlike other cities in India, had no historical tradition of a citywide
celebration for Ganesh chaturthi. The festival was a private affair in all parts of India
until the early 1890’s, when Hindu nationalist leaders purposefully moved the
celebration into the public sphere to create unity. B.G. Tilak, one of the main Hindu
leaders in the Indian National Congress in Bombay, single-handedly transferred the
celebration to the public sphere in 1893. He aimed to threaten the Muslims through a
display of Hindu unity; he explained that “Religious thoughts and devotion may be
possible even in solitude, yet demonstration and éclat are essential to the awakening of
masses.”88
Ganesh chaturthi was confined to the household or neighborhood level in
Hyderabad until the late 1970’s, when Hindu nationalists deliberately expanded it into
a citywide procession. This shows a significant delay from British India,
demonstrating that Hyderabad remained comparatively insular until Police Action.
When questioned on the emergence of new citywide processions, a prominent Hindu
nationalist explained that the increase in renovations by Muslims was offensive,
“Muslims had started causing too much nuisance.”89 Though the Hindus started the
trend of magnifying processions, the Muslims, primarily the MIM, followed suit,
creating a new collective rite, the Pankha procession, honoring a local Sufi shrine.
88
Jaffrelot, Christophe. Ed. Steven I. Wilkinson, Religious Politics and Communal Violence (Oxford,
New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) 282.
89
Varshney, interview with Vande Matram Ramchandra Rao, Hyderabad, 23 Oct. 1993, Hyderabad.
In his youth, Rao had participated in the Vande Matram movement against the Nizam.
67
Political pressures and additional perceived imbalances due to Gulf migrations led to
over a decade of recurrent nonstop riots from 1978-1986.90
In the last thirty years, Ganesh Chaturthi processions have been miles long
surrounding Hyderabad’s central lake, Hussain Sagar. I attended Ganesh Chaturthi in
2006, against my host family’s wishes, due to a recent history of violence surrounding
the processions. Even early in the day, all businesses within the surrounding
neighborhoods were closed, with modern buildings such as IMAX heavily guarded by
police. When I attended, I had little to no sense of the history of conflicts and political
agenda behind the procession. Now I understand that the procession is used for
personal, commercial, political and communal means, as participants choose key
neighborhoods to march through.91
Since the 1970’s processions in Hyderabad have become theaters for political
violence. Today in Hyderabad, the introduction of the Ganesh Chaturthi is known as
one of the events that widened the divide between Hindus and Muslims in Hyderabad.
Festivals in Hyderabad became theaters for public displays of religious identities, as
one community member elaborates, “If a big festival is coming one uses this as an
opportunity to even out old grudges.”92 As processions and festivals expanded in
Hyderabad since the 1970’s, so do issues of communal violence. With a rise in
Hindutva ideology, communal violence became endemic in Hyderabad by the 1990’s.
90
Varshney 182-207.
Varshney 182.
92
COVA 9.
91
68
CONCLUSION
This chapter explores the tension that may arise between social groups over
the issues of space and place. Examining ideas of nationalism and neighborhood
processions, this chapter shows how integral a relationship with a place is to identity.
The Muslim Hyderabadi community, during the 1970’s, demonstrates a loyalty to
India while working abroad in the Persian Gulf. The community also exhibits a
desire for improved economic conditions, complaining of the declined status of
Muslims in Hyderabad. Furthermore, the Muslim community seemed frustrated by
having to constantly defend their legitimacy in Hyderabad, confronted with myths
and allegations. The expansion of Ganesh Chathurti brings the confrontations to the
forefront of public spaces, resulting in Hindu-Muslim violence in the 1990’s.
69
CHAPTER FOUR
1990’S: HINDUTVA IDEOLOGY AND THE
INCREASE OF COMMUNAL RIOTS
In 1990 Hyderabad witnessed its worst riots ever. Although the 1990 riots
followed a pattern of communal disturbances since the late 1970’s, the riots also
interrupted a brief period of communal harmony; from 1984-1990. The riots in
Hyderabad responded to the Babri Mosque incident. In December 1990, Hindu
fundamentalists tried, once again, to tear down a 400 year old mosque in Ayodhya,
Uttar Pradesh; more than a thousand miles north of Hyderabad. They claimed that
Babar, a Mughal emperor, previously demolished a Hindu temple dedicated to Ram, a
Hindu god-king, on the same ground.93
In Hyderabad, with communal tensions already high, riots erupted leaving
about 64 people stabbed, shot or beaten to death in three days.94 Police reported the
riots starting after a Muslim was attacked by an unidentified group over a land
dispute. Retaliating, Muslims killed a Hindu and within hours riots engulfed the Old
City. These riots lasted 10 weeks, leaving more than three hundred dead and
thousands injured.95 In 1992, Hindu fundamentalists successfully demolished the 16th
century mosque, while police stood by calmly watching. Why was there an
emergence of fundamentalist religious groups in the 1980’s? How did it affect
Hyderabad? How did it affect Hyderabadi Muslim identity?
93
Meera Nair, “Lives: A Show of Faith,” The New York Times Magazine, 28 Apr. 2002: 1.
Sanjoy Hazarika, “Muslim-Hindu Riots in India leave 93 Dead in 3 Days,” The New York Times, 10
Dec. 1990: 1.
95
Sudhir Kakar, The Colors of Violence: Cultural Identities, Religion and Conflict (Chicago, London:
University of Chicago Press, 1996) 51.
94
70
INTERVIEWS
To understand how Hindutva ideology affected Muslims in Hyderabad, I use a
collection of interviews conducted in the Old City following the 1990 riots. The
Confederation of Voluntary Organizations (COVA) collected the interviews. COVA
established itself as a local Non Governmental Organization (NGO) after the 1990
riots, with a mission of preventing communal riots and establishing communal
harmony. The COVA office resides in the heart of the Old City, in between Mecca
Masjid and the Charminar. This is also the center of where the worst of the riots
occurred in 1990.
The COVA survey aimed to “identify people who are peace-builders, and
understand their perspective on the reasons for communal tension”96. COVA
interviewed 16 people, all long-time residents of the Old City. Seven were from the
Hindu and nine were from the Muslim community; all lived in mixed localities with a
history of communal tension. COVA searched for interviewees who actively
participated in their communities, some as leaders of organizations, and others
common citizens. A few partook in the riots, either as perpetrators or rescuers.
COVA desired to compile a group of narratives, placing communal tensions in
Hyderabad within individual points of view and a historical context.
Through the interviews, a group of major issues in current Muslim identity
emerged. When asked why Hyderabad is fertile for communal violence, all answers
claimed that historical events still largely determine life in Hyderabad. Many of the
events, such as Police Action and linguistic reorganization, live freshly in the minds
96
COVA 3.
71
of Muslims today and appear in day-to-day conversation. However, the way people
viewed the past in the 1990’s is inextricably linked to the new widespread Hindutva
ideology that became popular across India in the 1980’s. Hindutva ideology
represented fundamentalist Hindu values and preached about the evils of Muslims.
Hindutva was able to gain popular status in Hyderabad in the 1980’s due to weak
political competition, frustrated youth and the creation of a culture of fear. Hindutva
promoted
Therefore, Muslim identity focused more in the 1990’s on cultural redefinition and group defense than in other periods of the 20th century. The myriad of
fundamentalist cultural and political organizations that emerged aligned with
Hindutva used a culture of fear to attract and retain followers. It is apparent, through
the interviews, that this culture of fear spread to the Muslim community as well. In
addition to focusing on unification and strength, and opposing Hindutva, Muslim
narratives also emphasized a nostalgic feeling of loss, often referring to a better ‘old
Hyderabad’.
In this chapter, I will propone that Muslims’ identity in the 1990’s may be
characterized by feelings of defense, fear and nostalgia. I will analyze what Hindutva
ideology is and show that in response to Hindutva ideology, Muslim groups focused
on defending their political and social position in India. Also, Muslim responded to
Hindutva’s claim that India is a Hindu country by creating groups with the focus of
protecting Islam in India. Next I will show how fear became an integral part of the
Muslim identity. Living in fear of violence by the ‘others’, Muslims and Hindus fell
susceptible to manipulation by people in positions of power. Fear encouraged distrust
72
between the two communities and led to polarized neighborhoods. Lastly, I will talk
about how Muslim identity is marked by a nostalgia for Hyderabad before Police
Action, and before communal sentiments dominated the city.
HINDUTVA: IDEOLOGY, METHODOLOGY AND RESPONSE
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar coined Hindutva in his infamous 1923 pamphlet
entitled Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? Hindutva today refers to any movement
advocating Hindu nationalism. This communal ideology believes that the Indian
subcontinent is homeland of the Hindus and that Hindus have been historically
oppressed in their native land: first by the Aryan invasion, then by a series of Muslim
dynasties including the Mughals, and finally by the British empire. Another aspect of
Hindutva is the idea that in order to battle against potential invaders, Hindus must
collectively strengthen themselves; proving that Hindus are not weak. This train of
thought can promote militaristic, or even violent endeavors. Although Hindutva
ideology emerged in the early 20th century in the midst of the national movement, it
only reached the forefront of Indian politics in the 1980’s. Two events in particular
drew large numbers of Hindus to Hindu nationalism: the Shah Bano97 case and the
97
Shah Bano, 1978: Shah Bano is an infamous court case in India. Shah Bano, a 62 year old Muslim
mother of 5 was divorced by her husband. By Muslim law, a husband can divorce a wife and only
have to support her financially for a limited time. Shah Bano approached the court for support from
her ex husband, and the case eventually reached the Supreme Court. In 1985 the Supreme Court ruled
that she should be given money under the 125 of code of Criminal Procedure, which rules regardless of
gender, race, religion or caste. A group of orthodox Muslims protested the case in India, stating that
the ruling defied secularism as it infringed on Muslim family law. In response, the Congress Party, the
then ruling party, appealed to the Muslims and established the Muslim Women Act 1986 which
nullified the Supreme Court’s ruling. The ruling received negative feedback from the media and
generally became known as an example of fundamentalist minority groups affecting the government’s
decision.
73
Babri Mosque case. Both cases involved a dispute or difference in opinion between
Muslims and Hindus, and both were highly politicized and publicized.
The emergence of Hindutva ideology had a large effect on the Muslim
political identity. Hindutva ideology intrinsically stood against Muslims claiming
Indian nationality, therefore threatening Muslims’ right to remain in India. Let alone
threatening their existence, it additionally threatened the validity of Muslim social
practices, like divorce procedure. How does a social group respond to a direct threat?
In response to Hindutva ideology, Muslims mirrored Hindu tactics of unification,
strength and defense. Hindutva emphasized that Hindus needed to ‘unify’ against the
‘other’ and prove their cultural worth. Muslim groups formed based on defending
and celebrating Islam in India, showing that in response to Hindutva, Muslims turned
inward to protect their own identity.
Following the emergence of a myriad cultural, religious and political
organizations dedicated to Hindu history and glory, Muslims in Hyderabad also
refocused their community. Hindutva ideology propones that Hindus are a threatened
minority in India, something they attribute to the history of colonial domination. This
‘minority-syndrome’ of perceived oppression appears as a common rhetoric of
fundamentalist groups. It is also blatantly false, in the 1990’s Hindus stood as the
83% religious majority in India. On the other hand, Muslims in Hyderabad were in
some very real ways marginalized after the creation of Andhra Pradesh.
Subsequently, both Hindus and Muslims felt the need to exhibit strength.
Organizations focused on building and showing strength through a multitude
of different tactics. Both Muslim and Hindu groups focused on fostering physical or
74
militaristic strength, necessary for survival, while also demonstrating strength through
augmented religious processions. Moreover, although Muslims did not try and claim
India as a holy land, Muslims continually displayed their claim to live in India.
Hindutva is rooted in different ideas of nation-space than traditional Western
thought. Hindutva ideology wants to rearticulate the link between an imagined
community and its geographic boundaries, placing this link within a Hindu
hegemony.98 Since the ideas of nationalism are relatively new to India, in the late
20th century political and social groups still grappled with different meanings of
nationalism. Hindutva semi-successfully linked modernist ideals with a reformed
religious creed, creating a new, and dangerous, view of a nation-space. This ideology
directly challenged Nehru and Gandhi’s distinctly western secular-democratic model
of nationalism.
There are three primary conditions of Hindutva. The first is pitrabhoo, or
being a Hindu born in Hindustan. The second is jati, or inheriting Hindu blood
through natural parents; while the third is punyabhoo, or holy land. The convergence
of these three conditions describes the perfect imagined community in the eyes of
Hindutva followers. Through the belief that the nation should necessarily be formed
in a punyabhoo, or holy land, and through this view defines who will be ‘insiders’
and ‘outsiders’.99 Satish Deshpande in “Hegemonic Spatial Strategies: The NationSpace and Hindu Communalism in Twentieth-century India” argues that the
construction of Hindutva ideology follows Foucault’s idea of a heterotopia.
98
Satish Deshpande, “Hegemonic Spatial Strategies: The Nation-Space and Hindu Communalism in
Twentieth-century India” In Ed Partha Chatteree and Pradeep Jemenatha, Community, Gender and
Violence (London: Hurst & Company, 2001) 181.
99
Deshpande 172.
75
Foucault’s heterotopia argues that a heterotopia is a territorially confined place where
there have been conscious efforts to transform it into a ‘culturally meaningful,
politically charged space’ by a specific group. In order to do this, Hindutva focused
on the consolidation, validation and reproduction of a communal worldview.100
Organizations chose to focus domestic and intimate spaces to reproduce this
worldview; hence small mohallas, homes and gullies accumulated communal
feelings.
Hindu groups focused on using processions and pilgrimages as theaters to
demonstrate their strength. In Savakar’s Hindutva, he argues that pilgrimage is
inextricably linked to questions of hegemony, power and territorial control.101 Hindu
parties began utilizing pilgrimages and religious processions as arenas to consciously
inject claims of territorial power. Pilgrimages and processions provide a perfect stage
to actively tie together many different spaces of a city: monuments and localized
neighborhoods.
Ratna Naidu, in her Old Cities Facing New Problems, argues that processions
have become “prominent political theaters for demonstrating strength and exerting
aggressive pressure on opponents, particularly Muslims. Thus, routes have been
changed to pass through Muslim localities and by major mosques, ensuring that the
potential for provocation is maximized.”102 Interviewees noticed marked differences
between religious processions that occurred before the 1970’s and those that
happened afterwards, saying the enlargement of Ganesh Chathurti changed the city’s
processional patterns. Also, many interviewees noted that Chief Minister
100
Deshpande 170-198
Deshpande 203.
102
Ratna Naidu, Old Cities with New Predicaments (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1990) 205-206.
101
76
Brahmanand Reddy’s lift of the ban on loudspeakers in the mid 1960’s influenced the
sphere of religious processions. The new allowance of loudspeakers meant that
groups could expand their sphere of influence and exhibit strength through amplified
speeches and slogans. Consequently, Muslims began to enlarge their religious and
social festivals.
In response to Hindutva’s blatant use of myths to propel their cause, an array
of extremist Muslim groups emerged in the mid 1980’s. A youth from COVA recalls
instigative speeches by Muslim political groups about the need to unify and defend
themselves. He recalls one speech where the leader explained that Muslims were
getting killed worldwide: in Bosnia, Kashmir and Palestine. The speaker encouraged
the young men to fight back, to claim revenge for the history of oppressed Muslims.
Interestingly, although Muslims living abroad did not attain a pan-Islamic identity,
groups emerging in Hyderabad tried to use the argument. Groups in Hyderabad argue
for a pan-Islamic identity to defend Muslim political power worldwide, claiming that
Muslims have been a historically oppressed religious community. 103 Organizations
preached that Muslims needed to respond by showing strength, unity and perhaps
even violence. One Islamic religious organization, Darsgah Jihad-O-Shahadath
(DJS), established itself specifically in response to Hindutva organizations in
Hyderabad.
DJS instituted itself in 1983 as an organization “To improve the religious
atmosphere…in the context of Islamic environment toward conduction, practicing
and achieving in India.” On their webpage today they explain reasons for their
establishment, saying that Hindu fundamentalists blatantly violated the constitutional
103
Muslim Youth, COVA Interviews, 47.
77
rights of minorities in India. Although the DJS is extremely concerned with the
future of Muslims in India, it wants the Muslim community to remain and thrive in
India. On their homepage is a list of eight goals, one stating ‘defending themselves’
and another reading ‘protecting the life and properties and achieving in India’.104 The
DJS ran training camps and self-defense workshops across Hyderabad and its sister
city Secunderabad, which stands on the other side of the Hussein Sagar (lake). The
camps focused on physical defense workshops, and sometimes edge on militarism.
The defense organizations that emerged in the mid-1980’s were in direct response to
Hindutva’s call for physical strength.
Hindutva political parties linked their militarism to historic figures. A story of
the appropriation of a historical Hindu warrior as the hero of Shiv Sena (Army of
Shiva), a Hindutva political party, explicates Hindutva’s militarism. Shivaji is known
for his martial exploits against Muslim rulers in the 17th century. The promotion of
Shivaji explicitly encourages communal violence, linking anti-Muslim sentiments
with the valor of martial exploits. Shivaji’s fame stems from annexing part of the
Mughal empire without the aid of an organized military. Guerilla warfare,
commando actions and the innovation of weapons were all new arenas of military
organization that Shivaji created. The example of Shiv Sena’s appropriation of the
infamous militaristic Hindi king exemplifies Hindutva’s call to militarism.
The Shiv Sena serves as an example of a Hindutva political party. The
combination within Hindutva of militaristic ideals and religious revival proved to be a
potent mix. Religious revival, with the aim of an ‘organization of self-awareness’
makes it easier for people to accept new worldviews under a purview of self
104
Darsgah Jihad-o-Shahadath, SAASONS 2005, 7 Feb. 2008 <www.djsindia.org>
78
betterment. This organization of frustrated citizens combined with radical religious
sentiment is a dangerous combination.
FEAR
The sense of fear in some ways dominates the identity structure of
Hyderabadis today. For the most part, fear does not affect the day-to-day lives of
residents, but the combination of a growing list of communal riots coupled with the
blatant manipulation of fear by people in power makes it more than noteworthy.
Citizens largely blame politicians and landlords for using fear to their advantage.
Politicians can manipulate it to gain votes while landlords manipulate it in order to
push for ‘distress’ sales surrounding communal riots. Fear is an intense and easily
manipulated feeling, as it means people are on edge and consciously insecure. Fear
of another social, political or religious group causes people to generalize and
negatively stereotype individuals from other groups. Muslims in Hyderabad admit to
letting feelings of fear determine their interactions with individuals from other
religious groups, specifically Hindus.
This ceaseless feeling of fear resulted in the consolidation of Hindus and
Muslims in isolated mandals, or neighborhoods. Once a pattern of violent riots
established itself in Hyderabad, a pattern of housing sales, ‘distress sales’, quickly
followed. Whichever religious group felt unsafe in a specific neighborhood after a
riot would put all of their houses up for sale in order to move to a neighborhood with
a higher concentration of fellow Muslims or Hindus. As the neighborhoods became
more concentrated on a specific group, interaction with the ‘other’ occurred less
79
frequently. Both Hindu and Muslim elders blamed this separation on the widespread
myths about the ‘other’ perpetrated by fundamentalist groups. Describing a speech
he heard, an anonymous youth now recognizes the categorization of the ‘other’, “If
you see a politician giving a speech in a Hindu locality you would see him digging
old stories about Gujurat but they do not speak about people dying but about a Hindu
or Muslim dying. They do not speak in terms of humanity. Their objective is to
make us fight.”105 Politicians manipulate this fear to convince people that religion is
the most important aspect of identity, rather than caring for one’s neighbors. Sudhir
Kakar, a psychoanalyst who studied the 1990 riots, explains that as Hindus and
Muslims begin to see each other in shared characteristics rather than idiosyncratic
natures, inevitable depersonalization follows.106
Evidence of landlord manipulation of distress sales comes from research at
COVA and from numerous academic books. The landlords observed the pattern of
moving after riots and started encouraging riots in order to increase the sales, which
became known as ‘distress sales’. M.T. Khan defines ‘distress sales’ during his
interview; “If a Muslim had a house in a Hindu dominant locality he was forced to
vacate and sell it to investors. Similarly where the Muslims were dominant, Hindus
were forced to vacate.”107 Researchers at COVA, after compiling their interviews,
concluded that landlords “at times have a vested interest in fostering communal
105
unnamed Muslim youth, COVA 49.
Sudhir Kakar, “The time to Kali: Violence between religious groups in India,” Social Research Fall
2000 Vol 67, Iss. 3: 4.
107
M.T. Khan, COVA 6.
106
80
violence, as it allows them to strike very profitable deals due to distress sales by
families moving to safer neighborhoods.”108
Landlords became an example of people in power utilizing the common
person’s fear for political power or quick cash. Govind Singh, a Hindu resident,
proposed that communal trouble continued in the Old City for so long because the
two communities no longer trusted each other. This lack of trust stems directly from
segregated communities. An unnamed youth explained, “There were many Hindus
and Muslims in areas like Sultan Shahi. But after the riots in the 90’s many Hindus
had emptied their houses and left…There was segregation.”109 It became so
segregated in the Old City that people began to refer to Rein Bazaar, a bazaar in the
Old City that acted as a dividing line between Hindu and Muslim localities, as the
Indo-Pak border.
The polarization of neighborhoods easily lent itself to increased polarization
in political parties. In turn, these parties had vested interests in keeping the
communities polarized in order to ensure a block vote on communal lines. M. A.
Raoof, the Secretary of the Democrats Associations, speaks sadly about the ease with
which politicians manipulated peoples’ fear, “Political parties utilized people’s
sentiments…The government could not control because it was a faction within the
ruling party that engineered the riots.”110 Since the mid-sixties, many communal
political parties have been gaining clout in Hyderabad: the Hindu Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP), Arya Samaj and the Muslim Majlis, Tamir-e-Millat and the Tahreek
Tahfooz Shaer-e-Islam (TTSI). Keeping communal tensions high, politicians
108
COVA 11.
Unnamed Youth, COVA 24.
110
M.A. Raoof, COVA 20.
109
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conformed to vote-bank politics, as elections happened conveniently right after the
Rameeza Bee incident in 1978, the Ganesh procession in 1984 and the riots of 1990
and 1996.111 Vote-bank politics refers to when a party attracts a loyal bloc of voters
from a single community.
Fear was easily manipulated in the minds of the young and uneducated.
Residents claim that organizations targeted the impoverished and noted that when
someone became wealthy, they no longer succumbed to myths. A baker, V.J. Singh a
Hindu said that the uneducated did not understand that they were being used, “the
illiterates are used in the name of religion because they themselves do not know about
religion.”112 One anonymous Muslim youth testified that for him, education did
change his outlook and that after attending an interfaith workshop, he no longer felt
compelled to partake in riots. One of the conclusions drawn from the interviews is
that once educated, either by school or an interfaith workshop, illiterates were far less
likely to fight. The Muslim youth further described how eating dinner with a Hindu
at COVA changed his outlook on life, realizing that Hindus primarily share the same
interests and habits as himself.
While residents note that illiterates and the impoverished are more susceptible
to communal thoughts, it was equally noted that an increase in wealth corresponded
directly with adhering to secularism. In this sense, it seems that the wealthy Muslims
are less fearful than the poor Muslims in Hyderabad. Govind Singh, a Hindu
resident, explained why the riots occur, “The common man commits offences because
111
112
COVA 15.
V.J. Singh, COVA 38.
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[of] anxiety…”113. He continued, explaining, “We try to impress upon people that if
a riot breaks out it is the common man who loses the most in terms of property and
employment. The rich man is unaffected.”114 Through the cycle of fear and fighting,
the poor end up twice as worse as the rich. Husseini Jehander Afsar, an active elder
in the League of Democratic Youth, discusses how money encourages even the most
susceptible to look to secularism, “All of the rowdies…After having made money
they started speaking about secularism.”115 Fear is dangerous; it encourages radical
action by convincing people that some terrible force threatens their safety, families
and neighborhoods. Here it is evident that economic frustration led people to
conclude that another religious group may be responsible for their economic
impoverishment. Thus, when the economic strife disappears, people become more
tolerant of other religious groups.
During the 1990’s, fear is one sentiment that dominated the Muslim identity.
Fear, encouraged by politicians and landlords became so prominent that today
Muslims and Hindus hardly live in the same neighborhoods. The manipulation of
fear, coupled with economic hardships and frustrated citizens caused Hyderabad to
become open to frequent violent clashes. In the face of the polarized communities,
the Muslim community also feels nostalgic for a time when they interacted with
Hindus on a regular basis.
113
Govind Singh, COVA 52.
Govind Singh, COVA 52.
115
Husseini jehander Afsar, COVA 30.
114
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NOSTALGIA
Muslims in Hyderabad, particularly in the Old City, hold a common sentiment
of nostalgia for a ‘better Hyderabad’. Nostalgia, in the Muslim community’s memory,
refers to the pre-Police Action era. This nostalgia is articulated at different times by
negative or positive memories. There is the sense of cultural and political power loss;
while there is also a remembering of time characterized by communal harmony. This
shows how the Muslim community remembers the time fondly, while many Hindu
memories are marred by images of the militant Muslim Razakars. The Old City
Muslims’ collective nostalgia refers to the depreciation of the Old City and
remembrance of a time of communal harmony. Nostalgia necessarily compares a
present situation to the past, which is perceived to be different. In Hyderabad, the
past and present are marked with a myriad of differences.
In this chapter, I am focusing primarily on Muslims living in the Old City
because their memories exemplify the nostalgic feelings characteristic of the Muslim
community in greater Hyderabad. The Muslims of the Old City hold a double feeling
of abandonment after the Muslim political state crumbled and then the financial elite
left. Anyone who had money to move, did, and they regret the fact that now their
families are parceled off in different neighborhoods. Thus, the Muslims left in the
Old City feel as though even their community is further abandoning them, following
an earlier abandonment by the Muslim elite after Police Action, when they migrated
to Pakistan.
The Muslim community in the Old City today feels a negative sense of
nostalgia, a sense of demoralization. The losses the Muslims incurred were
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employment, Urdu as the official language and the Old City as a cultural and political
destination. All of these losses result from Police Action and Hyderabad’s accession
with India. Linguistic loss is attributed to the period directly after Police Action, the
revival of Telengana and creation of a linguistic state, the Telugu Andhra Pradesh.
Urban Hyderabadis feel demoralized by the quick transition, one Old City resident
M.T. Khan explains that historically “Hyderabad remained an island politically,
historically and on communal lines.”116 Because of the unique culture Hyderabad
city managed to retain, the Muslims felt a more drastic change after Police Action.
The sentiment of feeling isolated is a part of a larger sense of Hyderabadis
feeling misunderstood culturally. Hyderabad Muslims felt that the greater Indian
government did not understand that Hyderabad’s urban culture diverges from the
surrounding South Indian Dravidian culture. The issue of Urdu as a contested
language highlights this misunderstanding. In response to the question ‘why do riots
take place in the Old City?’ Khan responded, “Along with other facts even the
Government’s attitude towards Muslims particularly towards language was wrong.
There was an all India campaign that Urdu is the language of Pakistan.”117
This response shows two sides of Hyderabadi Muslim identity, one is that
they do not see themselves aligned with Pakistan, and fault the Indian government for
this claim. Second, that Urdu is of cultural importance and carries special meaning in
Hyderabad. In addition to feeling misunderstood, Hyderabad Muslims also feel as
though they were kept in the dark about the growing Telengana armed struggle.
Khan claims that 98% of Muslims in Hyderabad were pro-Nizam and that ‘very few’
116
117
M.T.Khan, COVA 5.
M. T. Khan, COVA 4.
85
knew about the Telengana armed struggle. Those who did know about the Telengana
armed struggle, in Khan’s eyes, viewed the movement as being irrelevant to politics
within Hyderabad. Urban Hyderabadis felt culturally separate from the surrounding
Telengana and did not wish to be integrated. In addition to being demoralized by the
Indian union, the Muslim community also felt betrayed by their community leaders,
the Muslim elite who engaged in a large-scale migration to Pakistan directly
following Police Action.118
Along with their sense of cultural loss, the Muslims experienced a tangible
loss of employment opportunities. This the Muslims at times viewed in a communal
light, as M.T. Khan explains, “All the Muslims who were unemployed looked upon
Indian union as a symbol of Hindu domination and felt that they were rendered
jobless because of Indian union’s intervention.”119 The assimilation of Hyderabad
state to the Indian nation made sense, given that Hyderabad is geographically in the
center of India. Yet still, many Hyderabadi Muslims feel that this assimilation was in
some ways a show of power of Hindus over Muslims, and that the Hindus do not
wish to include Muslims in the new state. As Khan explains in his interview, the
result is that Muslims blame Hindu domination and manipulation for their lack of
employment.
Exacerbating the sense of loss of employment opportunities in the Old City is
the economic boom in the new city. Hussini Jehander Afsar, a resident of the Old
City, explains that, “People of this part feel that everything is available for the Hindus
118
119
COVA 8.
M.T. Khan, COVA 3.
86
and Muslims in the new city.”120 While residents used to be extremely proud to live
in the Old City, now they are embarrassed about the connotations this residence
carries. Vijay Singh, a baker in the Old City whose family has for ‘four generations
lived there in the last 200 years’, complains that the Old City now signified a bad
neighborhood, filled with communal feelings. “When I take my children for
admission in some institution in the new city we are denied admission on the pretext
that we belong to communal trouble prone and curfew ridden old city.”121
This is interesting because it is a sentiment held along geographic rather than
communal lines, showing a divide between the New City and Old City. This
evidence shows that Hindu Old City residents feel a similar bias. Vijay believes that
the fault lies primarily with political manipulation, but he also blames the new city
residents for cutting the Old City off. COVA’s research assistant argues that a
common thread throughout the interviews was that “over the space of a generation,
the Old City has degenerated from being a thriving hub of Hyderabad to an
‘unwanted’ appendage.”122
Partial blame is aimed at the new city, primarily Banjara Hills and Hitech
City, for injecting unwanted, modern morals into their beloved Hyderabad. Police
Action and the subsequent change in government also resulted in a new cultural focal
point of the city. The Muslim’s nostalgia for a time before Police Action is enhanced
by the emergence of a new Hyderabad, one that today is sometimes referred to as
‘Cyberabad’. Today, 20 kimoleters from the Charminar, Hitech is culturally and
physically the antithesis to the Old City. With new salons, danceclubs, fancy coffee
120
Husseini Jehander Afsar, COVA 30.
Vijay Singh, COVA 38.
122
COVA 12.
121
87
bars and Levi stores; the ‘new’ city speaks a different language of Hyderabadi
culture. Young Indian Hitec workers chat on cell phones while sporting bright t-shirt
and jeans, sometimes even wearing tank tops or skirts. Although this dress code is
still considered scandalous by most residents of Hyderabad, it is considered
blasphemy in the Old City.
The disparate worlds that now co-exist within Hyderabad were explicated in a
hit film, The Angrez. The plotline features a Non Resident Indian (NRI)123 visiting
Hyderabad to help at his uncle’s computer firm. The young man, while on a tour of
the city’s historical sites inadvertently upsets a respected old city bhai124 at an Irani
chai shop within site of the Charminar. The way the film portrays it, the men in the
Old City believe they rule Hyderabad, while on a chase to catch the young intruder
they realize there is a whole different side of the city, one where they are not
respected nor even known. The film’s critics praised the film for portraying
Hyderabad as a glorious mix of old and new, “For here, the very old meets the very
new, and you get plenty of reason to fall in love with the city all over again.”125
Although Hyderabad may strive for that perfect balance, one cannot help but sense
the Old City bhais demoralization on their trip to the new city, where Old City social
ranking mean almost nothing.
The feeling of being cut off from the new city lent itself to another aspect of
loss, the loss of Hindu friends and camaraderie. Many Muslims shared a sense of the
loss of interfaith communities in the past few decades, and view this polarization
123
Non Resident Indian is a term that refers to someone of Indian origin who lives abroad returning to
India for vacation or work.
124
Hindi/Urdu word for brother, yet in the context of crime it refers to a gangster.
125
“Andhra Pradesh: Hyderabadi humour rocks for Nikkil,” The Hindu 7 Dec. 2005: 2.
88
negatively. Residents all reminisced about a past marked by communal harmony.
Vijay Singh recalls, “Our four generations lived there in the last 200 years and
everyone lived together peacefully.”126 Khan agrees and cites specific instances of
shared festivals, which were at one time not religiously exclusive, “In the earlier
periods Hindus and Muslims were closely and culturally well knit…Muslims used to
celebrate Deepawali and other Hindu festivals and similarly Hindus participated in
Moharram and other festivals.”127 Several interviewees noted the change in the
Ganesh Chathurti starting in the 1970’s, telling personal stories about participating in
the festival ‘when it was still neutral.’ Throughout the interviews of the people in the
Old City, this practice of sharing religious festival was explained as a normal
situation, with the recent communal conflicts being abnormal.128
In Joyce Flueckiger’s book Amma’s Healing Room: Gender and Vernacular
Islam in South India, she follows a Muslim female spiritual healer Amma, who lives
and practices in Hyderabad. Over the course of the years Flueckiger spent with
Amma, she recognized a distinct nostalgia for the ‘old days’ that was not necessarily
Islam-centric. Amma and many of her generation, who were young in 1948,
characterize “former days” with “a peaceful, even familial coexistence between
religious communities.”129 Flueckiger heard many of these narratives directly after
the 1990 riots. Amma also regrets that as a result of more segregated housing
patterns her children know far less about Hindu culture than she does. Of interest,
Flueckiger makes sure to point out that this image of peace may be exaggerated in
126
Vijay Singh, COVA 38.
M.T. Khan, COVA 2.
128
COVA 6.
129
Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger, In Amma’s Healing Room: Gender and Vernacular Islam in South
India, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006) 30.
127
89
comparison to current unrest.130 This shows Hyderabadis’ nostalgia recalls a time of
tolerance and easy coexistence.
CONCLUSION
India today is confronted with the task of attempting to successfully
modernize and retain cultural traditions. India is a country wrought with history, a
country where one is reminded of the vast history every day. Walking down the the
Moti Bazaar towards the Charminar in the Old City today, within the span of a block
one will pass a mosque from the 16th century and a roadside stall selling posters from
the newest Bollywood flick. Traditional, conservative dress still dominates as people
make their way to work in rickshaws equipped with booming radios. After a brief
conversation with a pearl dealer, you will find out that he is the fifth generation to run
the store in his family.
Along with mention of the glorious days of the 17th and 18th centuries, the
political history of the 20th century plays into residents’ daily lives. A century
molded by a series of drastic political changes, the Muslims of Hyderabad today are
still trying to find their place after economic, linguistic and cultural displacement in
the 1940’s and 1950’s. Exacerbated by the rise of Hindutva ideology, communal
identities become as salient as ever towards the end of the 20th century.
Neighborhoods are clearly demarcated either Hindu or Muslim and the possibility of
a communal riot creates a subtle continual tension.
130
Flueckiger 30.
90
Although the Muslims of Hyderabad fell victim to a largely communal
ideology, the sense of nostalgia suggests that they would prefer relations to be
different between Hindus and Muslims. Residents mostly speak nostalgically of a
time when Hindus and Muslims could share neighborhoods and festivals. Most
residents acknowledge that the communities have lost trust in each other, but lack
optimism given the larger social problems that lie beneath the tension: illiteracy and
economic deprivation. Muslims want to move forward, yet feel trapped by the lack of
educational and economic mobility in the Old City today.
Residents seem generally aware of the use of political manipulation, yet do
not feel like they know how to counter the manipulation. Education and interfaith
interaction seemed to work for the few interviewees who partook, and COVA’s
workshops have fared pretty successfully since the early 1990’s. The bottom line is
that Muslims in Hyderabad need to feel better about their social position and
overcome a community awareness of forced deprivation. The community looks
backwards and reminisces about a time when they were valued in Hyderabad and has
trouble integrating into 21st century Hyderabad. The rise of Hindutva ideology
creates greater challenges for the integration and modernization of Muslims in
Hyderabad, as it influences the Hindu majority to push for further social domination.
Through this chapter I have shown how the introduction of Hindutva ideology
affects the identity of Muslims in Hyderabad. Communal ideologies explicitly
change the day-to-day interactions between Hindus and Muslims in Hyderabad and
allowed violence to paralyze the city for weeks at a time. In response, Muslims
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became defensive and fearful. Paralleling an already existent nostalgia for a time
past, Hyderabadi Muslim’s deprivation now dominates their identity.
92
CONCLUSION:
THE 21ST CENTURY, ‘NO TIME LEFT FOR
MANGOS’
Excerpt from my journal, June 2, 2007:
“I had arrived only a few hours before, yet awoke at four am to prayer call. I
opened my door, stepped out on the warm balcony and surveyed my surroundings.
Straight ahead were apartment buildings and billboards, interspersed with palm trees
and colorful saris strung upon the rooftops. The sun was only just beginning to rise.
I am jetlagged, so I make some chai and begin to explore. My apartment takes up the
corner of the building, and I soon realize that from the two balconies I can see three
mosques, a huge Christian church/school and at least two temples. I put on a salwar
kameez and set out to get to know my new neighborhood.
“After finding the bazaar, key man and milk man I find myself at a stationary
store. Buying a few notebooks, he asked me what I was doing in Hyderabad. To
make the story simple, for reasons of my limited Hindi vocabulary and the sensitive
subject I am researching, I reply that I am writing a paper on history and politics of
Hyderabad. This man, who became a friend over the next six weeks, is quite excited
that I am doing a project on Hyderabad and starts going off,
‘You should definitely include Hyderabadi biryani. Do you know Hyderabadi
Biryani? Old city you will find best. You should also talk about special
Hyderabadi Hindi, you know, not pure Hindi. Hyderabadis have their own
language, a result of being an Urdu stronghold in a Teleganic land. Oh you
must speak of the laid back attitude. You know, Hyderabad is known for its
laid back attitude.’
93
He then gets nostalgic and starts talking about the new influx of IT companies that
have entered Hyderabad, then enumerates on how the good old days are gone.
‘Have you seen HITEC City? Microsoft? Nobody has time to eat mangos
anymore. When I was little, we would sit on a cot and eat a thousand mangos.
Now people move too fast in life. There is no more time for mangos.’
I leave, quite disturbed that he has proclaimed that the world no longer has time to eat
mangos, especially since I had just purchased two kilos.”
Hyderabad at the end of the 20th century seemed to be balancing on the brink
of a new era. In 1998, the Andhra Pradesh government inaugurated a project that is
quickly and drastically changing the face of Hyderabad: Hyderabad Information
Technology Engineering Consultancy City (HITEC City). In the span of a decade,
Hyderabad has become one of the main technology centers of India, and arguably the
world. Microsoft, Google, Dell, IBM, Accenture and General Electric have all
established call centers or offshore development centers. Next year, 2009, India’s
first seven star hotel will be unveiled across from Microsoft’s office, along with a full
golf course. In March 2008, Hyderabad unveiled its first international airport, which
has been met by protests by groups in the city. Now, Hyderabad has numerous new
project campuses lined up to open in the upcoming years: Software Park, Hardware
Park, Nanotech Park and Textiles Park are among the first.
Following the influx of the software industry, new super malls and fancy
nightclubs are opening at an equally magnificent pace. The infrastructure of the city
can barely keep up; Hyderabad rushed to build a new flyover (the longest in India) to
avoid road congestion, but in the company’s hurry to erect the project, part of the
flyover collapsed only a few months into the project, crushing construction workers.
94
Hyderabad’s natural land is also disappearing fast. The University of Hyderabad,
where I spent a semester, is situated on 700 acres of nature preserves. Last year
Microsoft bought most of the land. Neighborhoods are changing so quickly that after
three months they are hardly recognizable.
Along with new software companies and fancy lounges, non-governmental
organizations (NGO) and philanthropic organizations proliferated in the 1990’s. A
number of these focus primarily on the Old City, working in Urdu medium schools
and Muslim neighborhoods. Last summer I had the opportunity to work with two
NGOs in Hyderabad: Naandi Foundation and COVA. NGOs lay the foundation for
discussion on educational and economic issues of minorities in Andhra Pradesh and
interfaith relations. COVA, as noted in Chapter 4, established itself as an
organization working towards communal peace in Hyderabad. Its logo is “Bring
Together People: To bridge differences and strengthen communities”. COVA has
started a number of peace initiatives in the city that have proven successful. COVA
organizes volunteer riot prevention programs that monitor potentially violent
religious festivals, such as the Ganesh Chaturthi. Volunteers are placed at specific
spots known to be historically sensitive. In 2004, COVA organized 600 volunteers to
police processions leading to the Hussein Sagar to immerse Ganesh idols. COVA
also, throughout the year, has volunteers stationed around the Mecca Masjid, isolating
the site where the 2002 riots commenced.
In addition to riot prevention, COVA proactively organizes communal
harmony programs. One such program is the “Joint Celebration of Festivals”, which
aims to peacefully regenerate the historical tradition of shared Hindu Muslim
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festivals. In 2004, COVA led a joint celebration of Raksha Bandhan and Id for over
200 children. COVA also coordinates interfaith street theater groups, where children
perform plays on the issues of violence and need for peace throughout the Old City.
Peace and interfaith initiatives launched by third parties prove effective in
helping to rebuild trust between the Hindu and Muslim communities in Hyderabad.
In order for the Muslim community to thrive in 21st century Hyderabad, it will be
necessary to rebuild trust with fellow Hyderabadis and welcome some changes. For
upward mobility, the Muslim community must be literate in a language other than
Urdu. This is not to say that Urdu should be dismissed, in fact I think otherwise.
Urdu is an important part of Hyderabadi identity and history, but is not an accepted
language in higher education or business.
The problem is further perpetuated by the state education department, which
rarely follows through with its stated claims. It is a state law that three languages
must be taught in all elementary schools: National (Hindi and English) and State
(Urdu or Telugu). Still, many schools in the Old City lack many promised state
resources including toilets, teachers and teaching material. Because the Old City still
speaks primarily Urdu and all signs are in Urdu, if one does not leave the
neighborhood one may not confront another language.
Last July, after many years of appeals, some Muslim castes were placed on
the backwards and scheduled caste list in Andhra Pradesh. Finally passed in June
2007, the bill reads that fifteen Muslim groups get a 4% reservation for jobs and
professional colleges. The reservation is set to counteract “social and educational
backwardness”. The law excludes upper class, or old nobility Muslims. Parts of the
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Muslim community, however, are upset by the government’s ruling claiming that “all
were equal among Muslims and that there are no caste system in Islam”. This
response, promoted by the United Muslim Action Committee, exhibits that the
Muslims wish to have community members view themselves as Muslim rather than
base their identity on economic wealth.131
Muslims in Hyderabad today grapple with who they are and the direction of
the community into the future. Understanding how Muslims arrived at their current
position in Hyderabad today is essential for understanding social interactions in
Hyderabad. The fact that the Andhra Pradesh government placed Muslims on the
backward caste lists acknowledges the social realities, for a lot of people, of being
Muslim in Hyderabad today. Although each individual identifies with numerous
different identities, I argue that the identity of being Muslim, rather than identifying
their neighborhood or economic class, gained prominence over the twentieth century
and became the most salient identifier for Muslims.
Different aspects of the broader Muslim identity are more important than
others in response to events. In the early twentieth century, as a political
consciousness awoke in Hyderabad, different national ideologies emerge. At this
time, Muslims in Hyderabad identify with their particular position in the Nizam’s
court, but begin to identify with the broader Muslim community. The Muslim
community in Hyderabad city becomes aware of their minority status in Hyderabad
state and aligns with different ideas of the future of Hyderabad state. After Police
131
Ashok Das, “4% Reservations for ‘backward Muslims’ in Andhra,” Hindustan Times, 4 July 2007:
1.
97
Action, the Muslim community bands together, defending the prominence of the
Urdu language in Hyderabad.
Faced with economic hardships and a lack of opportunities in the new Andhra
Pradesh, many Hyderabadi Muslims travel to the Persian Gulf for work in the 1970’s.
Some Hindu groups interpreted this pattern as evidence of a faltering national
allegiance by the Muslims, accusing them of attempting to build a pan-Islamic
political identity. While we see that this is far from the truth, Hyderabadi experiences
abroad reinforced their allegiance to Hyderabad and India. In the 1990’s, Hindutva
ideology gains prominence in the Hindu political circles and violent communal riots
erupt between Hindus and Muslims in Hyderabad.
Although violent incidences still occur, today both the Hindu and Muslim
communities are moving towards a place of better understanding. The inauguration
of numerous organizations aiming to bridge the gap between the two communities has
made an impact. Hyderabad’s religious groups both are trying to maintain a cultural
history while at the same time survive in modern India. The same issues keep coming
up, issues that have yet to be resolved. Ideas of Indian nationalism are still contested
as different political groups propone opposing ideas. The politics of space, following
the polarization of neighborhoods, are still tense and open to conflict. Identity is
always changing and the Muslim identity will continue to change in Hyderabad.
Hopefully soon, Hyderabadis will be able to view each other in the bazaar of at the
dhaba and recognize each other as human beings, instead of a Hindu or a Muslim.
98
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PRIMARY SOURCE PAGE
Last summer, thanks to a generous grant by the Freeman Asian-American
Association, I spent in Hyderabad researching for my thesis. I arrived in Hyderabad
on June 1st, only twelve days after a bombing at Mecca Masjid. When I arrived, the
city was on curfew, the entire Old City closed down and communal tensions high.
Mecca Masjid sits in the center of the Old City and the government and media feared
riots paralleling the 1990 riots. For the majority of the fourth chapter, I use a
compilation of interviews conducted by a research term at the Confederation of
Voluntary Associations in Hyderabad. Because of the tense situation, for the first two
weeks of my stay I was encouraged to stay on the ‘New City’ side and not to travel to
the Old City, where I had planned on conducting most of my research. Also, because
communal tensions were high, I was encouraged not to personally conduct interviews
about Hindu Muslim relations.
As the weeks passed, the situation eased and storefronts began to open. I resumed
with my plan and made my way to the COVA office, a stone’s throw from the Mecca
Masjid. I collected many unpublished documents from COVA on Muslim
populations in Andhra Pradesh. The most valuable document for my thesis was a
collection of interviews after the 1990 riots asking both Hindus and Muslims in the
Old City why they thought communal conflict still existed in Hyderabad. Sixteen
people were interviews, all long-time residents of the Old City—seven Hindu and
nine Muslim. The interviewees were selected on the basis of: a) being a resident of
the Old City living in mixed localities with a history of communal tension and b)
being involved in some kind of community work. I unfortunately do not have the
specific dates for the interviews. There are over eighty pages of interviews and write
up, here I will summarize the interviews. These interviews proved invaluable for my
understanding of what specific events still affect the minds of people in the Old City
and provided a picture of social interaction in the Old City before Police Action that I
otherwise would not have understood as well. The seven interviewees that I use in
this thesis are named below. I use these because of the length and depth of their
interviews. Throughout my thesis, I cite the interviews and write up as COVA.
COVA, Communal Conflict and Peace Initiatives in Hyderabad Deccan: Part-II,
Present Scenario.
COVA, Communal Conflict and Peace Initiatives in Hyderabad Deccan: PartAnnexure 1.
Interviewees:
1. M.T. Khan: Muslim, unknown occupation.
2. M.A. Raoof: Muslim, Co-Founder and Secretary of the Democrats
Association
3. Husseini Jehander Afsar: Muslim, member of League of Democratic Youth
(LDY) in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
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4.
5.
6.
7.
Vijay Singh: Hindu, baker
Youth: unnamed Muslim youth, student (former dropout)
Govind Singh: Hindu, joint commissioner of Police
Gopal Mukim: Hindu, Retired DSP
106