Hyderabad, British India, and the World: Muslim Networks and Minor Sovereignty, c.1850–1950
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Reprint, 3/1/2018
EAN 9781107463080, ISBN10: 1107463084
Paperback, 364 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm
Language: English
This examination of the formally autonomous state of Hyderabad in a global comparative framework challenges the idea of the dominant British Raj as the sole sovereign power in the late colonial period. Beverley argues that Hyderabad's position as a subordinate yet sovereign 'minor state' was not just a legal formality, but that in exercising the right to internal self-government and acting as a conduit for the regeneration of transnational Muslim intellectual and political networks, Hyderabad was indicative of the fragmentation of sovereignty between multiple political entities amidst empires. By exploring connections with the Muslim world beyond South Asia, law and policy administration along frontiers with the colonial state, and urban planning in expanding Hyderabad City, Beverley presents Hyderabad as a locus for experimentation in global and regional forms of political modernity. This book recasts the political geography of late imperialism and historicises Muslim political modernity in South Asia and beyond.
Introduction
fragmenting sovereignty
1. Minor sovereignties
Hyderabad among states and empires
2. The legal framework of sovereignty
Part I. Ideas
3. A passage to another India
Hyderabad's discursive universe
4. Hyderabad and the world
bureaucrat-intellectuals and Muslim modernist internationalism
Part II. Institutions
5. Moglai temporality
institutions, imperialism and the making of the Hyderabad frontier
6. Frontier as resource
law, crime and sovereignty on the margins of empire
Part III. Urban Space
7. Remaking city, developing state
ethical patrimonialism, urbanism and economic planning
8. Improvising urbanism
sanitation and power in Hyderabad and Secunderabad
Conclusion
fragmented sovereignty in a world of nation-states.