Publicity, Civil Liberties, and Political Life in Princely Hyderabad

Abstract

AbstractIn 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.