‘The Hyderabadis': Displacement, broken geographies, and evolving identities in the city's history

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In his literary debut, The Hyderabadis: From 1947 to the Present Day, writer and researcher Daneesh Majid curates stories of ten distinctive lives shaped by the cruelties of police action in 1948. Some of his older subjects were witnesses as well as targets of violence and displacement across what is now Maharashtra's Marathwada region and northeast Karnataka. The Nizam state's Telugu-speaking districts had not been spared of the bloodshed before and after Hyderabad's accession to a newly independent India. He chronicles their trajectories with dignity while constructing meaningful identities that evolved as a result of upheavals from Police Action to the present day.
The lives are not just casual selections. Rather, they are aggressive assertions about the authentic Hyderabad experience, deliberately challenging stereotypical hedonistic depictions of Deccani Muslims. The book also traces varied migratory patterns. Some subjects travelled to the Gulf for economic opportunity, others resettled in Karachi or Canada, while many sought refuge within Hyderabad city itself, arriving from places like Latur and Gulbarga.
Filling the gap
When it comes to showcasing these varied histories in an accessible manner, it is often the prodigal and adopted children of Hyderabad who tend to step up. In the vein of Majid's returns from the Middle East and North America, many of us who return to Hyderabad after time away find that distance can paradoxically deepen our attachment, those who migrated from Hyderabad often become its most fervent custodians, perhaps more Hyderabadi in their exile than those who never left, driven by an emigrant's compensatory performance to both explore and preserve what physical separation threatens to dissolve.
The book's exploration of displacement resembles partition literature's central themes: broken geographies, reconstructed belonging, and constantly evolving notions of identity. However, while extensive scholarship has focused on Punjab, Bengal, North India, and Sindh, Hyderabad's particular trauma has been largely unexplored until recently.
University of Pennsylvania professor Afsar Mohammad's Remaking History examined how Hyderabadi writers processed the 1948 state violence through literary responses. His focus was 'Muslimness' during the 1947–50 era, before and after the Police Action. Where Mohammad's academic approach emphasised memory-keeping through Urdu and Telugu literature, Majid tackles a more compelling question: how did ordinary people actually rebuild their lives after such profound disruption? Through this, Majid doesn't attempt a common minimum definition of what constitutes a Hyderabadi. Instead, his selections implicitly argue: negotiate this difficult version of Hyderabadi identity first, and the rest will follow.
Remarkably, it is not the Charminar on the book's cover but the modest literary institution Idara-e-Adabiyat-e-Urdu near the Irrum Manzil station that perfectly illustrates the author's underlying emotional current. During countless commutes, I caught fleeting glimpses of this building, but never investigated its significance. Through Mejid's reverent telling and imagery, we learn of Idara founder Professor Zor's dream to transform this library-cum-learning centre into a premier Urdu university. Zor's persistence and love for Urdu pushed him to manifest a fragment of his vision, while Majid's drove him to document this partial realisation.
This pattern echoes Hyderabad's story itself.
Conceived as the preeminent city in the modern Islamic world, diminished by historical forces, yet sustained in fragments through successive acts of intellectual commitment. What moved me in this chain of devotion is how an enduring love for abstractions (language, city) becomes concrete through those who refuse to let dreams disappear. Works like this transform readers into chroniclers themselves, ensuring that the real Hyderabad passes forward, with fragments becoming seeds of possibility.
Alongside the Idara, the narrative's expanse encompasses overlooked geographies within the erstwhile Hyderabad state, like Latur, Kohir, and Basavakalyan. And this canvas includes localities within the present-day city itself, like Falaknuma, Doodhbowli, Gowliguda, Haribowli, and Mughalpura. Even if they appear as casual name-drops at times, their specificity evokes the same curiosity I feel when riding a bus as the conductor calls out an unfamiliar stop like 'Ghode-ka-khabar!' And that immediate urge to discover the origins behind such intriguing names is exactly what makes Majid's geographic sensibility so endearing!
'Hyderabadis still kept their heads down no matter the exploitation in the Gulf [...] The economic power that came about because of Gulf money has also made it possible for us to take the othering happening in present-day India somewhat in our stride.'
— ~ Chapter 3 of the book.
The survival lens
The prism of survival and breadwinning, however purposeful, creates systematic blind spots. All chapter titles belong to men, an inevitable consequence when examining resistance to Razakar attacks, earning abroad, communist politics, and academic pursuits within historical patriarchal structures. Women appear as supporting characters (Halima Bi, Oudesh Rani Bawa, Amena Begum, Shruthi Apparasu), but their narratives remain peripheral. Given this gap, I recommend readers supplement The Hyderabadis with Professor Nazia Akhtar's Bibi's Room, which centres around three women of 20th-century Hyderabad.
The survival framework also obscures the aesthetic dimensions that animate Hyderabadi life. While Majid identifies Hyderabad as the 'humour capital', we encounter neither examples of this wit nor critical examination of the occasionally misogynist mizahiya mushaira programs. Also absent are the entrepreneurial innovations (Zinda Tilismath, the iconic medicinal products magnate), popular cinematic expressions (like The Angrez released in 2005), or matrimonial traditions (Dakhni Dholak Ke Geet or folk wedding songs). These omissions flatten Hyderabad – once considered the apex of the Muslim world – to gritty perseverance devoid of grandeur.
Yet, there is much to relish in Majid's research process, revealed through little anecdotes about discovering fascinating primary and secondary sources via fellow Hyderabad enthusiasts. In Chapter 10, a bookstore recommendation leads to an unexpected narrative thread; a family friend connects him to Mr Saxena, whose late wife, Sheela Raj, turned out to be the very author of the material he had been studying. These serendipitous connections situate the academic fervour driving this work.
The book also deftly navigates Andhra–Telangana tensions in the 1960s and 70s while examining caste associations, favouritism, water politics, and land disputes. Particularly illuminating is how committed Marxists Chukka Ramaiah (Chapter 7) and Raj Bahadur Gour (Chapter 9) wrestled with Mulki versus Andhra Telugu identities, especially when the centralising communist agenda called for 'Visalandhra', a project originally conceived in opposition to the Nizam.
What remains conspicuously absent from the book is the Muslim voice during this tumultuous period. Did survival struggles suppress their assertiveness? Why did MIM maintain such dominance over democratic challengers like MBT (Majlis Bachao Tehreek), which broke away precisely to contest dynastic control and corruption? What wisdom might figures like Bahadur Yar Jung, one of the early MIM ideologues of the 1920s and 30s, offer for today's political calculations?
The absence of these perspectives carries added weight given Majid's concluding calls for greater integration. With migration options to the Gulf and North America considerably narrowing, Hyderabad's Muslims must anchor themselves more firmly in soil that belongs as much to them as to anyone else. Perhaps the very resilience documented in these ten lives offers a foundation for more confident Muslim politics today.
Surya Teja is a Researcher and Software Engineer at Avanti Fellows, a non-profit developing open-source tech for public schools.