Hyderabad and Hyderabadis

This volume presents Karen Leonard’s best articles on Hyderabad and Hyderabadis, pieces published since the 1970s that evoke the singular cultural ambience of the vanished princely state. Hyderabad’s cosmopolitan Indo-Muslim culture distinguished the state from British colonial India, and Leonard captures the significant changes in state and society from the late eighteenth century to the late twentieth century, stressing the important role of the state in shaping culture and identity.

The fourteen articles focus on Hyderabad’s political history, the role of banking firms in Indian and Hyderabadi history, Hyderabadi society and culture, and issues of caste in Hyderabad. The final three articles, on Kayasths, Goswamis, and courtesans (the last previously unpublished), unsettle the assumption that caste has been adequately defined and researched, they establish the need for more historical anthropology, for more interdisciplinary work in the field and in archives. The volume as a whole argues for the importance of India’s Indo-Muslim of Mughlai heritage, highlighting the fluid and cross-cutting cultural translations in Hyderabad in ways that bring its past social and political landscapes vividly to life. (jacket)