Social Clubs in a Princely State: The Case from Hyderabad, Deccan

Abstract

Social clubs began in India in the late eighteenth century in the wake of British colonial expansion. Clubs flourished in colonial India’s two great administrative divisions: those areas under direct control and the indirectly controlled princely states of India. This article explores the role of clubs in Hyderabad city, the capital city of India’s largest and wealthiest princely state. Here, club dynamics operated differently. By the nineteenth century, princely state urban capitals supported two centres of power: the local Indian ruler and that of the British Resident. These multiple centres of power forced clubs in this urban environment to be less attentive to difference among members (race and class) and more attentive to reaching across divisions. An examination of clubs in a princely state urban environment, thus, reveals an Indo-British clubland, largely marked by forms of social coexistence and cooperation.