Hyderabad, British India, and the World: Muslim networks and minor sovereignty, c. 1850–1950 by Eric Beverley

Abstract

Reviewed by: Hyderabad, British India, and the World: Muslim networks and minor sovereignty, c. 1850–1950 by Eric Beverley Rama Sundari Mantena Hyderabad, British India, and the World: Muslim networks and minor sovereignty, c. 1850–1950 By Eric Beverley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Eric Beverley’s Hyderabad, British India, and the World: Muslim networks and minor sovereignty, c. 1850–1950 on the Princely State of Hyderabad at the turn of the twentieth century explores the worldly connections of a unique polity: one enclosed by the territories of British India and thus virtually limiting its territorial connections unless carefully mediated and negotiated through the British Empire. Hyderabad was one of several hundred princely states that remained autonomous enjoying varying levels of sovereignty until 1947 when British India gained independence from colonial rule. Precisely what the nature of Hyderabad’s sovereignty was forms the subject of Beverley’s research. Beverley proposes that Hyderabad was able to break free of this constraining relationship with British India by forging what he calls “Muslim internationalism” globally through a dynamic Muslim public sphere (49). Beverley further suggests that Hyderabad managed to forge international links through Muslim networks (transnational, pan-Islamist, Muslim internationalist) and with other “sub-imperial” polities. However, Beverley suggests that scholars of Hyderabad have obscured Hyderabad’s global presence by paying exclusive attention to British India and its historical trajectories as the outer perimeter of Hyderabad’s relations. This myopic view of Hyderabad limits our understanding of Hyderabad’s internal dynamics and its connections with the world outside. Beverley argues that because of its “minor” sovereignty, Hyderabad as a state managed to maintain a degree of autonomy which led to political experimentation (43). The book begins with two introductory chapters on the idea of sovereignty and minor sovereignty. Then the chapters are divided into three sections with two chapters each on “Ideas,” “Institutions,” and “Urban Space.” “Ideas” contains two chapters on the difference of Hyderabad and its cultivation of “Muslimness” and its self-representation as a modern progressive state. The second section moves to the everyday, to the workings of governance on the borderlands or frontiers of the state in its relations with the British Raj. The third moves to the theme of urbanism—specifically colonial urbanism—and how it impacted urban development in Hyderabad. All chapters cover overlapping themes of political experimentation and worldly connections that Hyderabad was able to foster and sustain until its forced incorporation within the Indian Union in 1948. With regard to the theme of political experimentation, Beverley notes: “Though thwarted by European world empires, smaller sovereign states that were not colonized provided fertile ground for refashioning political concepts and institutions in dialogue with other global examples as well as local and regional histories” (30). It is a suggestive thesis in the idea that Hyderabad provided dynamic political conditions that gave rise to alternative concepts and institutions for the political future of the region. It is an argument full of possibilities and one that needs to be made. However, this statement is made often without the author illustrating the global links that refashioned political concepts. What are these political concepts circulating in the transnational Muslim public sphere? Did political experimentation include both constitutional monarchy and representative governing bodies? How were they negotiated in the global public sphere? While the idea of experimentation is fascinating, one would like to know what social structures specific to Hyderabad allowed for political experimentation. For instance, pan-Islamism existed in British India. While it is true that British India had greater surveillance of its colonial subjects, it nevertheless did not put a stop to the expansion of political discourse (in the English and vernacular public spheres). Beverley also suggests that political experimentation was able to give rise to counter-colonial and anti-colonial geographies of power (50). This frames his discussion of pan-Islamism and “Muslim internationalism” that linked Hyderabad with global Islam or a wider Islamicate world. Another fascinating discussion Beverley explores is the bureaucratic-intellectual in Hyderabad. The question that lingers is whether outside of a racialized hierarchical structure of colonial power in British India these figures were able to function differently. Were they able to forge different moral relations with...