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Publicity, Civil Liberties, and Political Life in Princely Hyderabad

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2019

RAMA SUNDARI MANTENA
RAMA SUNDARI MANTENA*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Chicago Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , July 2019 , pp. 1248 - 1277
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

This article is dedicated to the memory of Kavita S. Datla (1975–2017), who introduced me to the complex history and politics of princely Hyderabad and inspired me to cross over from archival research focused primarily on the Madras presidency and British India into the world of princely states. I am indebted to the many readers of this article over the years, in particular Kavita S. Datla, Karuna Mantena, A. Suneetha, M. A. Moid, Sunil Purushotham, Bhavani Raman, and the two anonymous readers for MAS who have all helped me to broaden my thinking on this topic and to expand my project. Audiences at Anveshi in Hyderabad, UT-Austin, Indiana University-Bloomington, Yale University, and at the University of Illinois at Chicago have offered fresh insights and allowed me to revise and sharpen my arguments.

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