Introduction
The princely state of Hyderabad was the site of a thriving civil society in the early twentieth century with a dynamic political landscape. Discussions on the role of the state, civil rights, publicity, and representative government abound in Hyderabad's public organizations representing the views and interests of the multiple linguistic and religious communities. Two glaring questions confronted the Nizam's Administration in the 1930s: the question of sovereignty, which here means specifically the political future of the princely state of Hyderabad, and the problem of civil liberties (that fueled peoples’ movements). As Ian Copland has suggested, the Indian princes floated varying sets of political ideologies and not all agreed on the goal of political reforms within the British empire. In the second decade of the twentieth century, the princes were simultaneously angling for more influence in managing the relations between the British government and the states while also demanding greater autonomy for the princely states in managing their own internal affairs. In 1916, the princely state of Bikaner's Ganga Singh sympathetic to the Indian National Congress's modern wing's desire for Dominion status (what the settler colonies such as Canada and Australia already had) requested that the British government should make self-government within the British empire the ultimate goal.Footnote 1 This was a progressive goal from the princes inspired by the Indian National Congress's anti-colonial nationalism and agitational politics. This set the princes on track towards multiple interpretations of self-government. In a sense, the princes could have potentially asked for more autonomy and to be left to themselves to rule within their territories without the interference of the British government. In other words, British India's devolution of power could have been interpreted as greater autonomy for princely states. However, the British administrators (and progressive princes) rather interpreted the idea of self-government as setting the princely states on a track of developing self-governing institutions within the states. During these conversations, Hyderabad was strongly resisting political reforms that would interfere with internal governing institutions.Footnote 2 Despite the resistance of Hyderabad's Administration to taking on the challenge of introducing representative institutions within the state to give voice to the interests of the people, the discourse of self-government had a profound impact on civil-society/public organizations. It invigorated Hyderabad's civil society through the formation of a number of influential organizations.
The 1930s did not give rise to the first voluntary associations in Hyderabad; rather, the active civil-society organizations at this time put considerable pressure on the political debates of the time. The dramatic debates of the 1930s illustrate the Hyderabad state Administration's complicated and oftentimes ambiguous response to the end of empire in South Asia. There was a dynamic relationship between the Hyderabad state Administration and political leaders and groups articulating political interests for a democratic future for the people. For this reason, the Administration pursued two contradictory paths: on the one hand, a course to reclaim Hyderabad's sovereignty through renegotiating their prior relationships and treaties established between the British and themselves, which did not necessarily include voices from the political leaders of emerging constituencies; on the other hand, in the early decades of the twentieth century, a burgeoning civil society began to make demands on the monarchical state for expanding democratic institutions and to extend greater rights to its people. In particular, this article will examine the discourse of civil liberties taken up by these associations and how it impacted the state Administration's position towards representative government. The early decades of the twentieth century in Hyderabad became a battleground between the state Administration and the burgeoning public sphere that the Administration could not contain.Footnote 3 I argue that civil liberties were taken up by public organizations in Hyderabad and simultaneously by the Indian National Congress (INC) as their strategy to put pressure on the Hyderabad government and to force it to enter into discussions on charting a path for representative government in princely states. The discourse of civil liberties presented a rhetorical strategy for both the Hyderabad civil-society groups and the INC to enter into dialogue with the Hyderabad Administration on what form of government the state will develop as a transfer of power takes place at the end of empire. Was it a strategy to bypass the intransigence of the Hyderabad states Administration and their constitutional debates and take it to the streets? Indeed, it may have been the case considering the many deadlocks Hyderabad's constitutional debates faced. Ultimately, this article ends with a discussion of why civil-society groups were unable to coordinate their efforts in negotiating with the Administration an inclusive political future for the state of Hyderabad.
Civil liberties and the British empire
While the princely states were in the midst of pursuing constitutional questions with the British government in India and in Britain, there were important parallel discussions being conducted by the Indian states’ people that spoke to their multifaceted political aspirations. The INC began to take interest in Indian states and political reforms in the late 1920s, deviating from their previous policy of non-interference in the Indian states.Footnote 4 In 1927, associations bringing together representatives drawn from Indian states in the West and the South formed to increase their involvement in Congress activism in British India as well as to bring to the attention of Congress the condition of the Indian states’ people. Even before the founding of the All Indian States’ People Conference by the INC to influence and nurture movements for political change in the princely states, Indian states had already witnessed the growth of political activity on the ground.Footnote 5 Barbara Ramusack, in her charting of this history, has suggested a shift from petitions to public demonstrations. We see this in Hyderabad with the proliferation of public organizations in the 1930s. As opposed to the explicit communal identities of the Arya Samaj and the Hindu Mahasabha, Hyderabad's lesser-known local organizations were seeking political change through demands for the freedom to congregate and freedom of speech. The infamous Gasthi 53 that restricted political speech was the source of much grievance for many of these groups. The Government Order Gasthi 52 was put together in September 1921 to ban social or political meetings that explicitly brought up political issues and to restrict the entry of outsiders from British India stirring up local politics. The Gasthi 53 superseded the Gasthi 52 in 1929, which specifically banned any political meeting without prior permission.Footnote 6 Within these constrained socio-political conditions, civil-society organizations employed the rhetoric of civil liberties as a way to make inroads towards demands for free political expression and to gradually propose changes towards representative institutions.
How did public associations in Hyderabad push the discourse of civil liberties to force the Hyderabad government to take their interventions seriously? Hyderabad was a reluctant discussant of political reforms and the idea of federation as documented by many historians who have written on the mixed attitude of the Hyderabad Administration towards the discussions and negotiations with the British during the height of Indian nationalism. First, in order to understand why the INC, as an external organization, decided to put pressure on the Hyderabad state, I look at the formation of the Indian Civil Liberties Union (ICLU) and one of its founder's perspective on the importance of civil liberties in the anti-colonial struggle against the British empire. It is important to locate and disaggregate the motivations of the ICLU within British India and its relationship to the princely states. I ask how the ICLU became an important tool for the INC to make its demands on the princes to consider the rights of their subjects. For the ICLU and the INC, the coordination of the movement towards greater rights for British Indian subjects and the subjects of the Indian princely states in the broader anti-colonial struggle was important. It is within this framework that I turn to the formation of the ICLU.
In 1936, Ram Manohar Lohia, famed Indian nationalist and socialist, published a short book on the origins of civil liberties in Europe. At the same time, the ICLU was founded in Reference Lohia1936 by Jawaharlal Nehru. The founding of the ICLU is important in that it created an outfit that could disseminate the discourse of civil liberties across borders to British Indian neighbours. This discourse then could be legitimately employed by British Indian subjects to criticize the domestic policies of its princely neighbours. Nehru interestingly had met with leaders of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) of Britain and decided that India would benefit from such an organization. In principle, the ICLU was to work independently to act as a check on political parties and institutions within British India. The ICLU believed it was critical to have in place institutional mechanisms to check the power of political parties, especially dominant ones. Nehru wrote:
In America, England and France powerful civil liberties unions, of a purely non-party character, have been established to resist all such encroachments and their activities have borne substantial fruit. In India the necessity for such a joint effort embracing all groups and individuals, who believe in civil liberties, is obviously even more necessary than elsewhere.Footnote 7
Nehru also believed such an organization would serve as an organ to publicize on an international level the curtailment of liberties in British India. This would not only support democratic struggles within British India, but, in the long term, would work to build a solid base for the extension of democratic institutions in an independent India. Ram Manohar Lohia tracked the emergence of civil liberties as a discourse central to democratic polities to nineteenth-century France, Britain, and the United States—then strategically shifted his attention to the British empire. Lohia suggested that the French ‘League of the Rights of Man’, formed in 1898, first articulated an agenda for the protection of civil liberties of individuals and groups within a bounded national territory as well as also beyond those national boundaries. He wrote: ‘The League intervenes on every occasion where injustice, an arbitrary act, an abuse of power or an illegality is done against the individual, the associations and the peoples. Its action consists in appeal to public conscience. Presentations to public authorities, petitions to Parliament, publication of literature, conferences and demonstrations.’Footnote 8 Different modes of publicity, namely the petition, or publication in print or public demonstration, would publicize the act and prick the conscience of the public and enable political debate. Early twentieth-century India saw an increasing awareness on the part of the people of the power of publicity for politics. While print and newspaper predate this period, it is clear that newspapers and journals thrived in this new era of publicity.Footnote 9 The ICLU, founded by Nehru in this new era and given historical weight and legitimacy by Lohia, had greater urgency.
The NCCL (1934) in Britain was formed to defend ‘freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom of thought and expression, full rights for all peoples under the British Parliament, democratic control of government’.Footnote 10 Lohia naturally extended this declaration by the NCCL in Britain to the British colonies where, in Gambia, Nigeria, Trinidad, Sierra Leone, and India, political parties were banned and leaders arrested and imprisoned without trial for carrying on the normal work of civil society within a democratic government. The idea of the ICLU being an independent unit outside of an official political party was that it could be the stage for what Lohia called the eternal struggle waged by the citizen against the state. Therefore, the civil liberties union's aim was to ‘throw the searchlight of publicity on legal, judicial, executive, police and private excesses’.Footnote 11 The idea of civil liberties then cut across national boundaries to apply to citizens in multiple polities within an international order that recognized a commonly held notion of rights. The interwar period was ripe for this mode of discourse when ‘colonial peoples and oppressed masses all over the world are thinking out an alternative Society and are propagating and organizing and striking for its acceptance’.Footnote 12 The discourse of civil liberties mobilized in anti-colonial movements in India was composed of two elements: (1) rights as bounded entities and (2) rights that carried their moral force from their being part of a universal discourse that applies to all people regardless of the political imaginary. Of course, the ends of these political movements were ultimately a movement towards people's government—or popular sovereignty that operated with elections and representative legislatures. Rights were conceptualized as abstracted and universal while, at the same time, they could only be enforced within a polity that guaranteed people's sovereignty. In other words, rights were both bounded entities and universal. It was precisely their universal quality that allowed anti-colonialists to mobilize against empire and (not allowing a state of exception to rule colonies differently) employing the rhetoric of civil liberties and rights.Footnote 13
In Hyderabad, the discourse of civil liberties was mobilized by a diverse set of British Indian actors including the INC, the Arya Samaj, and the Hindu Mahasabha and, more critically, by public associations formed within Hyderabad. On 3 March 1938, Pattabhi Sittaramayya, a prominent member of the INC (author of the monumental three-volume The History of the Indian National Congress (1935)), sent a letter on behalf of the All India States’ People's Conference (AISPC) (a newly formed group headed by INC members to oversee political and social movements emerging within the princely states) to the Nizam's Administration on the absolute necessity of protecting civil liberties in all forms of governments:
I beg leave to invite your attention to the fact, which is no longer disputed in all civilized Governments, that Civil Liberties of the citizens form the very foundations . . . of National Government in any country. While there are democracies under which Civil Liberties are being abridged most unexpectedly there may be personal rule under which such liberties are allowed. The question, therefore, of Civil Liberties has become, more or less, independent of the forms of Government and is really an idea of the benevolence of the rule that obtains in a land.Footnote 14
Sitaramayya employed the discourse of civil liberties in its universal framework to convey to the native governments of the princely states that, while the INC cannot negotiate the form of government the natives states may adopt, they would nevertheless call for full civil liberties to be enjoyed by the people. In the end, the AISPC did negotiate the form of government the princely states would take as they merge in a union. Here, what I would like to remark upon is the use of the discourse of civil liberties as a rhetorical strategy to enter into political negotiations with princely states. As outlined by Lohia, the call for civil liberties could traverse political boundaries between British India and princely states. This was a clever move on the part of the INC and its wing, the AISPC. Sitaramayya attempted to separate the question of representative government and the question of civil liberties in order to make their intervention in what were deemed to be the internal affairs of the princely state less threatening. The same year, a petition was submitted to the Nizam through the president of the Executive Council pleading for the government to honour the integrity of the state by encouraging political life within it. The petition repeatedly called the period under discussion a ‘New Era’ in cultural and political awakening and, if Hyderabad took the lead, it had the potential to demonstrate to other ‘backward’-looking Indian princely states the viable political futures they too could pursue. The petition declared that ‘[t]he development of public consciousness, which is the corner stone of the success and progress of the “New Era,” is a work which no progressive Government can well afford to check or be indifferent to’.Footnote 15
Civil liberties and publicity in Hyderabad
To chart the centrality of public life shaping a new politics in Hyderabad, I turn to a dynamic figure in Hyderabad in the 1930s: Mandumula Narsing Rao. As the founder of Raiyat, an Urdu-language newspaper, Narsing Rao engaged and contributed to producing a vibrant public, political life during the years leading up to Hyderabad's merger with the Indian union. In his memoir, Narsing Rao introduces himself as hailing from a small village outside of Hyderabad (Talakondapalli) where he was taught Urdu and Persian by a tutor with rigour.Footnote 16 While Telugu was the medium of the local school he attended, Narsing Rao's father wanted him to have good prospects for work and learning Urdu and Persian made good sense, since they were the languages of Administration in Hyderabad. While Urdu was not a mandatory primary language in local village schools, higher educational opportunities in Hyderabad required literacy in Urdu.Footnote 17 His father encouraged him to purse higher studies in Urdu, which seemed to Narsing Rao quite unusual in retrospect, leading him to enrol at the Dar ul Ulum High School near Charminar. In contrast, his peers, such as Burgula Ramakrishna Rao and Suravaram Pratapa Reddy, both prominent Telugu intellectuals in Hyderabad, were encouraged by their families to attend English medium and/or British Indian colleges for gaining useful skills and job prospects. Narsing Rao, having achieved high levels of proficiency in both Urdu and Persian, felt confident to lead an Urdu daily in the city of Hyderabad—a city that he moved to as a student. Urdu was not his mother tongue and his friends often questioned why he was so loyal to it rather than Telugu.
At the time that Raiyat was founded, in 1927, the prominent newspaper Golkonda Patrika was already established by Suravaram Pratapa Reddy and another English daily, New Era, was brought out by Sayyad Asadullah, both close friends of Narsing Rao. Newspapers from British India were also available in Hyderabad, such as The Hindu from Madras, the Mahratta from Pune, and the Amrutha Bazaar Patrika from Calcutta. While the Hyderabad Bulletin was in circulation in Hyderabad, there were Telugu newspapers coming out of Nalgonda (Nilgiri) and Warangal (Telugu Patrika) in Telangana. It is clear that newspapers were ‘threatening’, as Narsing Rao suggests, for the Hyderabad state because of the volatility of disseminating the political debates and languages streaming in through Hyderabad's borders from British India. According to Narsing Rao, in the second half of the 1920s, there was a general cultural and political awakening in Hyderabad with the establishment of newspapers and journals that generated publicity conducive for political debate. The importantly placed Kotwal (or Police Commissioner) Raja Bahadur Venkata Rama Reddy helped Narsing Rao to publish Raiyat at his own printing press.Footnote 18 Narsing Rao employed Pandit Narendraji (who later became a prominent leader of the Arya Samaj in Hyderabad) and Osmania University graduate Basheer Ahmad Taheer.
Narsing Rao argued that newspapers ought to be both watchdogs to monitor government activities and policies but should also facilitate the awakening of the people to their own interests: ‘In a state without political parties—in order to influence opinion—to confront people's problems—to bring into view the hardships and happiness of its people to the government—that is the purview of newspapers.’Footnote 19 Clearly, for Narsing Rao, newspapers contributed to a vibrant public political life that simultaneously informed a public by scrutinizing government policies. A public sphere, then, would provide the essential intermediate space for interaction between the state and society, enabling dynamic political life—something that Narsing Rao, through his newspaper work and his public engagement, worked towards. Ideally, a liberal public sphere envisioned by Narsing Rao would work to articulate the political interests of the people that would then inform/shape political reform. There is nothing new in this understanding of a free press, however; newspapers at this time carried a heavy burden in absence of formal and legitimate political parties as well as press censorship. Despite these limitations, newspapers and print media, with limited circulation, shaped the terms of political debate as seen through the proliferation of newspapers in Telugu and Urdu in Hyderabad at this juncture. At the same time, it is important to acknowledge the limited nature of the liberal public sphere in a society with low levels of literacy where public oratory played a large role in disseminating information and framing political discussion.Footnote 20 Along with the circulation and exchange of ideas through print, the era of mass politics and organization gave rise to public political oratory, as argued by Bernard Bate in British India. Bate suggests that, in the years 1918–19, mass politics arrived in Madras presidency when speakers in Telugu and Tamil turned away from the use of English in public meetings to the vernaculars. This turn to the vernaculars was momentous in that it signalled the shift to the era of mass mobilization towards democratic politics.
Narsing Rao writes that there was a turning point in the late 1920s, just at the time when he was starting his newspaper, when Hyderabad youth—Osmania University graduates and others returning from European universities—expressed new political desires and sentiments. Ali Yavar Jung (Ali Yar Khan), Baqar Ali Mirza, and Fazlur Rahman were such figures.Footnote 21 They formed a new association called the Anjuman-i Taraqqi-i Hyderabad—which also included prominent figures such as Padmaja Naidu, Dr Latif Sayyad, and Burgula Ramakrishna Rao. Ali Yavar Jung was appointed the president of the Anjuman. However, after his return from Oxford, Ali Yavar Jung was also appointed a lecturer of History at Osmania University.Footnote 22 Unfortunately, the Anjuman did not last longer than three years, when Ali Yavar Jung was asked to join the Nizam's Administration as the Constitutional Affairs adviser by Sir Akbar Hydari during the Round Table Conferences. Broad social issues that the Anjuman took on were classic social-reform concerns such as child marriage. Narsing Rao writes that, because child marriage was still prevalent in Hyderabad, a movement was started to address this. A group gathered at the Reddy Hostel (established in 1917 by Kotwal Venkata Rama Reddy) at Osmania University. In attendance was Abdul Haq, who was professor of Urdu there. Ali Yavar Jung, Burgula Ramakrishna Rao (became Chief Minister of Hyderabad 1952–56) and M. Narsing Rao all gave speeches on this occasion. Disappointed with the Anjuman's quick demise, Baqar Ali Mirza left Hyderabad and made his way to Allahabad to work with Jawaharlal Nehru, whom he became acquainted with in Brussels when they both attended the International Congress against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism in 1927.Footnote 23 Mirza was part of the communists circle in Germany with Virendranath Chattopadhyay.Footnote 24
Another organization that shared membership with the above associations emerged as politically significant in the 1930s. Suravaram Pratapa Reddy, the founder of the Golconda Patrika, was one of the leaders of the Andhra Mahasabha (AMS), which was beginning to become a central voice for Telugu intellectuals in Hyderabad. Narsing Rao attended the first meeting. The AMS met in 1930 with Suravaram's chairmanship in Jogipeta, Medak. Some of the social issues discussed there included child marriage, the status of widows, and the education of dalits.Footnote 25 Narsing Rao writes that one of the stipulations that the Hyderabad government made on the AMS was that it should not be led by non-mulkis (outsiders or non-residents of the princely state of Hyderabad)Footnote 26—presumably fearing that British Indian elements would infiltrate Hyderabad public associations and influence politics within the princely state. This was a legitimate concern, as there was an Andhra Mahasabha in the Madras presidency at the time, agitating for a separate province to be carved out of the Madras presidency for Telugu speakers. However, Narsing Rao comments that this request to keep non-mulkis out of the AMS was ironic considering the presence of non-mulkis in the upper levels of the Nizam's Administration. The most prominently placed non-mulki in Hyderabad at the time was Sir Akbar Hydari, who took leadership in the constitutional discussions on Hyderabad's behalf at the Round Table Conferences in London in the early 1930s. Soon after, we see a proliferation of associations emerging in the 1930s from the Swadeshi League (1930), whose members shared a previous association with the Anjuman-i Taraqqi-i Hyderabad, and then later Padmaja Naidu joins in, forming the Nizam's Subject's League in 1935. The Hyderabad State Congress (HSC) does not appear officially until 1938. The absence of the public presence of the HSC may have contributed to the vitality of the regional groups of Hyderabad representing the three significant linguistic groups besides Urdu: the AMS, Mahratta Parishad, and Karnataka Parishad.Footnote 27
Mandumula Narsing Rao, whose membership spans the Anjuman-i Taraqqi-i Hyderabad, AMS, Nizam's Subjects League, and finally the HSC, represented a balanced liberal critique of the princely state of Hyderabad. Activists who founded the AMS, on the other hand, harboured a diversity of political ideologies and critiques of Hyderabad and the Nizam's Administration. The Hyderabad government itself became extremely suspicious of Suravaram Pratapa Reddy's Golconda Patrika and that suspicion carried over to the AMS as well. The suspicion was due to Reddy's connections with Telugu intellectuals in the Madras presidency and the AMS operating there. The Information Bureau in Hyderabad took exceptional interest in Golconda Patrika’s articles and its political commentary. The Information Bureau kept track of all the political critiques meted out on the Hyderabad Administration. Largely due to this kind of monitoring of its activities, the AMS in the 1930s tried to present itself as purely a cultural and social organization—supporting libraries, calling for the teaching of Telugu, pushing an agenda of cultural revival of sorts—as well as a social-reform organization discussing issues of child marriage and caste discrimination.
The second AMS meeting was held in Devarakonda and students from the Reddy Hostel attended this meeting—most prominent of those students in attendance was Ravi Narayana Reddy (the future AMS leader and communist leader of the Telangana Revolt). The social and cultural issues they discussed were considered to be bordering on political and the Hyderabad government was reluctant to grant permission for the next meeting for nearly three years. The Information Bureau seemed to be particularly sensitive to any insinuation that judged the Administration as being inadequate. In a confidential memo to Ali Yar Khan (Ali Yavar Jung), the director of the Information Bureau, dated 28 April 1936 regarding Suravaram Pratapa Reddy and his Golconda Patrika, Aziz Ahmad writes:
Mr. Reddy does not show much sense of responsibility . . . . It is gratifying to learn that Mr Reddy is trying his best to see that the paper is neither anti-Government nor communal. But he considers the article under reference as pro-Government. If this is his conception of Pro-Government attitude, then one can only wish that he was anti-Government.Footnote 28
It was clear that the Information Bureau felt that the Golconda Patrika had been printing controversial articles on the Nizam's Administration and state policies. In the 1930s, a series of letters between Suravaram Pratapa Reddy and the Information Bureau were exchanged where Suravaram had to often defend the opinions and articles published in his newspaper. The contentious issues included opinions expressed by the Patrika on the migrations of Andhras from British India who were taking over Telangana land—that the Hyderabad government should try to protect the Telangana peasants from these property transfers. Suravaram defended the article published in the Patrika to the Information Bureau by pointing out this was a question of protecting mulki concerns—something that the Hyderabad Administration purportedly tries to protect. He writes to the director of the Information Bureau in a letter dated 25 April 1936 explaining why the article under question is not expressing anti-government opinion, but was rather pro-government: ‘The whole trend of the article which will strike one who reads it as a whole was to point out that lacs of nonmulkies are ousting mulkis and such migrations should be stopped.’Footnote 29 He repeatedly manages to convince the Information Bureau to not revoke the circulation of the Golconda Patrika in the state of Hyderabad.
Another set of issues of concern to the Information Bureau was with regard to the Patrika’s articles on the place of Telugu in Hyderabad. While the AMS and the Golconda Patrika attempted to promote Telugu within the Hyderabad state, language issues became political in the Administration's eyes. A longish article by M. Hanumantha RaoFootnote 30 that sparked the interest of the Information Bureau was a call for the use of vernacular languages in the local courts. The article compares British Indian practices with Hyderabad, which seemed to have aroused suspicion that Golconda Patrika harboured an anti-government stance and that the Patrika was delving into articles of a ‘political’ nature. Accusations of the newspaper becoming too political could lead to calls for its dismissal. The Information Bureau had a policy of approving a list of newspapers that were given permission to be published as well as circulated within Hyderabad—this was called the ‘White List’. The Information Bureau also translated an article for governmental scrutiny published in the Golconda Patrika that was defending the Andhra movement. The Patrika published an article in January of 1936 by Sayed Mohamad Abbas entitled ‘Unity or Disintegration’ in which the author was questioning the goals of the Andhra Conference. He was implying that an assertion of regional affiliation by the Andhra Conference could potentially lead to the disintegration of Hyderabad and furthermore that the Andhra Conference was haphazardly toying with political problems.
An article refuting Abbas's criticisms was published immediately in the next issue in February. The author of the latter article writes, referring to Abbas:
Even though he is a graduate, the writer could not adequately define politics. Every atom in this world he had described as ‘politics’. He has, obviously, not taken into account the government's view of politics. He has not understood the conduct of the Andhra Conference . . . . All economic problems, he says, are political problems. The Government has given us the idea that to be non-political means to be loyal, to be mild in criticizing the acts of Government, and to obey law. Is there any meaning in saying that there is politics in asking Government to mitigate taxes in an area, or to ask it to begin early the Tungabhadra Project, or to repair a tank here and a canal there?Footnote 31
Suravaram draws attention to the contradictions in the Hyderabad Administration's policies concerning freedom of speech and civil liberties. He rightly asks whether the Administration considers that, for a Hyderabad subject to be loyal, they must be ‘non-political’. Clearly, these were the boundaries of speech that journalists such as Narsing Rao and Suravaram had to learn to navigate. However, Suravaram continues that the people of Hyderabad do possess the right to question governmental policies concerning taxes and other issues of an economic nature (again, not ‘political’). The right to question governmental policy is what Suravaram decries as an inalienable right committing to the idea that these rights of civil liberties do not impinge on the Administration's idea of the ‘political’. Clearly, the idea of the political understood by Hyderabad activists in public associations is to question the form of government that Hyderabad should take and the problem of political representation—both of these freedoms they were not unrestrictedly permitted. In questioning what is defined as political, the Golconda Patrika pushes the limits of permissible speech within Hyderabad.
Just before the Round Table Conferences, Raiyat was asked to cease its publication in response to their publishing of articles that were critical of the Nizam's Administration handling of the railway strikers in 1928.Footnote 32 While newspapers were taking up political and social matters of the day to publicize the gradual progress of political reforms in Hyderabad, the Administration was simultaneously keeping track and monitoring them to see what debates were taking place in the public sphere and whether they would threaten the public peace. The Nizam's Political Department (Constitutional Affairs Secretariat) kept track of what was published in the Golconda Patrika, which it saw as sensational journalism unnecessarily rousing the political passions of the people. On 23 May 1938, the AMS was printing pamphlets on ‘vetti’ (form of bonded labour prevalent in Telangana countryside) to teach ‘harijans’ to reform caste practices, reports the Nizam's Political Department.Footnote 33 They further state that:
Untouchability is gradually disappearing from this village owing to the efforts of some public-spirited caste-Hindus. Every day a caste-Hindu leads a Bhajana party in the local Harijan School for Children. The Golkonda Patrika is also being read out to the Harijans. The pamphlets published by the Andhra Maha Sabha on Vetti and other subjects are being read out to the Harijans. Owing to these efforts of the caste-Hindus the Vetti has almost disappeared from this village.
Here, it seemed the political department was interested in monitoring these activities and not necessarily putting a stop to them if they remained purely ‘social’ issues, not ‘political’. However, there was a concern that radical reform efforts might upset existing social forces—this is where the charge of communalism was used to limit the political critique of the Golconda Patrika. From the articles gathered by the Information Bureau, Golconda Patrika seemed very much engaged in political critique—while Golconda Patrika was not accused of being ‘communal’, it was charged as expressing ‘anti-government’ sentiment. Both the Golconda Patrika and its association with the AMS were seen as expressing ‘regional’ interests. While promoting culture was deemed fine, even the discussion of language instruction in schools became a political issue. The regionalism expressed by the Hyderabad Andhra Mahasabha and Golconda Patrika was ultimately seen as threatening to the political future of Hyderabad, as the Administration was keeping a steady eye on the AMS in the Madras presidency and its demands for a separate province.
The limits placed on the formation of political groups and the monitoring of political speech was enabled by the Gasthi 53 (a circular), put into place on 21 November 1929. The circular contributed to the rise of the rhetoric of civil liberties becoming central to many of the public organizations that emerged in the 1930s. On 21 September 1937, the Hyderabad Bulletin (which was put out by the Information Bureau of Hyderabad) published the honorary secretary of the Gasthi 53 Committee, M. Hanumantha Rao's address to the Executive Council:
We are on the threshold of great expectations . . . . Your Excellency's fame as the maker of modern Hyderabad was never so clearly understood as it is at this moment. The fatherhood of a new and popular constitution for the State is to be yours. At such a juncture I request your Excellency, on behalf of 53 Gasthi Committee, to rescind the Gasthi and give the proposed reform a happy start . . . . The Government was pleased to issue a communiqué after that, but the Gasthi has not been altered. In the districts it is becoming increasingly difficult for the people to be vocal. I implore your Excellency to rise to the golden occasion and like the perfect statesman that your Excellency is, fulfill the popular expectations by rescinding the above Gasthi.Footnote 34
Because the purpose of the Gasthi 53 was to restrict public life and political debate (being conducted without the oversight of the government), numerous members of the HSC appealed to the Hyderabad government to lift the ban on public meetings and political discussion as ‘anti-government’ in order to nurture public life and political education. The charge of being anti-government when engaging in political critique of governmental policies seemed especially egregious in that these journalists and activists who formed public associations were committed to Hyderabad and its political future. Sirajul Hassan Tirmiji, president of the HSC, wrote a letter to the Hyderabad Executive Council with concerns over the Gasthi and its uses to suppress free speech and association. He congratulates the Nizam's Administration for initiating much-needed constitutional, educational, and administrative reforms in the previous decades ‘such as the Legislative Council, the vernacularization of education and the separation of the Judiciary and Executive’.Footnote 35 He urges the Executive Council to remove this remaining civil ‘disability’ because the restrictions associated with the Gasthi 53 deprive people of their fundamental rights of speech. He writes that, furthermore, the Gasthi runs contrary to the reforms the Nizam's government itself has initiated. The unease with which political reforms were carried out by the Nizam's Administration is directly related to the censorship of the formation of political associations who would necessarily begin to represent particular constituencies. The Gasthi's existence and the Nizam's Administration's indecision as to how to allow ‘political education’ through the formation of political associations demonstrates an underlying fear of the formation of political constituencies. Tirmiji contends that, with the impending constitutional reforms announced by the Nizam's government, the Gasthi must be cancelled because political culture needs to be encouraged in the state. In fact, he writes, it is the duty of the government to give people a political education to train them to take up administrative posts.
To further rub the wounds of the Hyderabad Administration's indecision concerning political discussion of Hyderabad's future, the ICLU, whose president at the time was Rabindranath Tagore with Sarojini Naidu as chairman, sent a letter to Sir Akbar Hydari (president of the Executive Council) on 13 December 1937 addressing the issue of lifting the ban on political processions:
Meetings and processions and such other public demonstrations have become a necessary part of the life of every society that wishes today to preserve and promote the various institutions within it which help its growth. Politics is a dominant part of life and liberty of lawful demonstration must be granted by the State to all political creeds. Toleration, on which political and civil liberty depends, must be extended to all irrespective of likes and dislikes. An order of the kin you have issued will not only be an encroachment on the freedom of public demonstration but will chock social progress at its very source.Footnote 36
The ICLU used its position from within British India to push for civil liberties across the border in Hyderabad precisely what the Gasthi 52 and 53 were enacted for to prevent the politics of British India to seep into Hyderabad. It is important to keep in mind that the INC through the HSC and the Arya Samaj was planning for public demonstrations in Hyderabad: mainly planning for the 1938 Satyagraha. Sir Akbar Hydari, in a speech to the Legislative Council of Hyderabad in 1938, pointed to the necessity of policies restricting some civil liberties. The reason for restrictions is to restrict the spread of communalism, which he considered the greatest threat to the integrity of Hyderabad's spiritual and physical frontiers:
It is in defense of these that a ban has now been imposed on certain outside newspapers found guilty of spreading communal ill-feeling in the State and not stopping even at telling the most glaring falsehoods. Statements like the one that Hindus in the State were not allowed to ride or to wear white and had to pay jizya—a statement corrected later as having been made due to ‘a strange mistake of the typist’—or that women and children were assaulted, tortured or killed during the disturbances in the City when not a single woman or child was so much as touched, are typical of the lies circulated by them.Footnote 37
The Arya Samaj and the Hindu Mahasabha did not desist from using the rhetoric of civil liberties to publicize what they characterized in communal terms as the oppression of ‘Hindu’ subjects in a ‘Muslim’ polity. Hydari rightly criticizes the sensationalism of Arya Samaji and Hindu Mahasabha propaganda outlets. For these reasons, the restrictions placed on Hyderabad organizations and political meetings were to defend the integrity of Hyderabad from separatist and communal sentiments. He specifically mentions that civil liberties should not be parochial and in reference to ‘Hindu’ civil liberties or ‘Muslim’ civil liberties. With the Arya Samaj and Hindu Mahasabha seeking to overturn Hyderabad's controversial and fragile policy to keep at bay communal violence from erupting within its borders, even overtly non-communalist associations such as the AMS were held in check by the Hyderabad Administration. Someone like M. Narsing Rao, who was part of the HSC, the AMS, and entered into talks with the Hyderabad Administration, steered clear from communalist organizations and represented the liberal gradualist position with regard to political reforms.
The Majlis-e Itthehad al-Muslimin was founded in 1928 to organize all Muslims into one single association and to attempt to represent their interests as a whole. The organization was to counter the impact of Hindu groups such as the Hindu Mahasabha and the Arya Samaj, both of which had become vocal religious groups purporting to represent ‘Hindu’ interests in ‘Muslim’ Hyderabad. The Majlis felt that, in the communalized atmosphere that the Hindu Mahasabha had cultivated, Muslims in Hyderabad had no choice but to organize. In the course of the 1930s, the Majlis began to function like the AMS in addressing issues of literacy, starting reading rooms for its constituents as well as continuing its programmes of eradicating ‘un-Islamic’ customs.Footnote 38 By the end of the 1930s, with discussions of constitutional reforms initiated by the Hyderabad Administration and the Nizam Subjects League, the Majlis began to shift its focus to politics and to begin to articulate a specific political agenda. The Majlis proclaimed itself as an organization representing the political interests of Muslims and it stood for the defence of the Nizam state and Muslims in general. Furthermore, it declared specifically that it would also uphold parity between Muslims and Hindus in any constitutional arrangement. More specifically, the Majlis argued for a majority representation for Muslims in any legislative body in Hyderabad acknowledging its ‘Muslim’ character. The Majlis became representative of Muslim interests parallel to the HSC and were prepared to enter into discussions with the liberal leaders of the HSC on political reforms. With the growing tide of political dissent and calls for greater fundamental rights and civil liberties to be granted to Hyderabad's people, the Hyderabad Administration responded to calls for political reform and the political participation of Hyderabad subjects by inviting the leaders of HSC and the Majlis's Bahadur Yar Jung.
Reforms and the question of political representation
On 2 September 1937, Sir Akbar Hydari, president of the Executive Council, read out a Firman appointing a Reforms Committee with Dewan Bahadur Aravamudu Aiyengar as the chairman. The report was submitted on 31 August 1938. The Reforms Committee, headed by Aiyengar, decided to present functional representation as opposed to territorial representation as the best way forward for Hyderabad within its current political climate. Functional representation is a system that allows the representation of group interests, as opposed to territorial representation, which uses the principle of electing a representative for constituents of a demarcated territory. The report makes a case for functional representation in the following passage:
It has been contended that functional representation will intensify the tendency already existing of dividing the people into groups and classes. The fact is that from the standpoint of interests, the constituencies will be so wide that the question of divisions would scarcely arise. In fact, the division by interests will not be so pernicious or disruptive as the division of a people on the basis of language, religion or race. The system, in so far as it will develop a country-wide outlook, or a common State consciousness, has everything in its favour.Footnote 39
The pursuit of functional representation provided an alternative to what the committee saw as the dangers of majoritarianism and regionalism (referring to the dangers of the division of people on the basis of language, religion, or race). Kasinatharao Vaidya—an active member in the HSC—was asked to take part in the Reforms Committee discussions. However, he offers a dissenting opinion opposing functional representation. Vaidya's dissent is described by the Reforms Committee in their report and reactions of the committee to the dissent as well. Vaidya's dissent, which came late in the process, was in line with the dominant opinion of the HSC and the INC on the question of functional representation, as they favoured territorial representation. This is clear in the communication between HSC members and the INC.
Meanwhile, the AISPC, through Pattabhi Sitaramayya, communicated with the Hyderabad Administration that a ‘federation’ scheme would only be possible if the Indian princely states organize within their borders a form of responsible government and furthermore that their people are guaranteed fundamental rights and civil liberties.Footnote 40 Sitaramayya criticized the Reforms Committee and accused it for turning back the conversation to the days of the 1909 Minto-Morley reforms and that their proposals, especially for a structure of functional representation, do not reflect the current state of political reforms as being discussed by the INC and the Government of India. After the Government of India Act of 1935 and the elections of 1937, the INC responded to the challenge of addressing the princely states with much more confidence than before and this is reflected in Sitaramayya's views of federating with the princely states. The British began discussions on the idea of an Indian federation in the 1920s, leading to the Simon Commission Report, published in 1930, in which the British maintained that the princely states were constitutionally linked to the British Crown, not the Government of India. Meanwhile, the INC, through the Nehru Report of 1928, began to propose that the treaties and obligations of princely states should be passed on to the Government of India from the Crown.Footnote 41 This was resisted by the princes, especially Hyderabad, at the Round Table discussions in the early 1930s. However, by the late 1930s, the INC felt emboldened to demand that the princes make fundamental changes in order to join the Indian federation.
The All India States’ Workers Convention, held in February 1938, also referred to a federation and what the princely states had to do in order to become equal and dynamic partners in the union. A federation scheme for the states will not be accepted, Sitaramayya writes, if they are not based on, first and foremost, ‘Responsible Government’; next, a popularly elected legislature to represent the government; third, to guarantee the fundamental rights of citizenship and the protection of those in the federal constitution; and, finally, the rights of federal citizenship.Footnote 42 The INC firmly pushed forward a federation scheme but with stipulations that there were certain fundamental changes that had to take place within princely states such as Hyderabad for them to become fully part of any future federation schemes. The Reforms Committee's proposals arguing for functional representation were dismissed by the INC. The Hyderabad government began announcing the reforms in 1939 and into the 1940s, which received much criticism from all sides of the political spectrum. The criticism from the INC was that it was fundamentally misguided to propose functional representation, as its own commitment had been to territorial representation for the future Government of India. Jawaharlal Nehru, in September of 1946, wrote to Swami Ramananda Tirtha and explained to him that the INC opposed the reforms and asked that Tirtha and the HSC should attempt to postpone the implementation of the reforms and voice their opposition through peaceful boycotts (not a full civil disobedience movement). Nehru clearly wanted to keep negotiating with Hyderabad without the threat of a full civil disobedience movement. He also suggested to Tirtha that the Nizam seemed open to change, which gave Nehru hope that negotiations might lead to necessary political reforms in Hyderabad and a fully responsible government. Tirtha, however, after a meeting with Aiyenger, decided to reject the reforms scheme entirely.Footnote 43
The charismatic leader of Majlis-e Itthehad al-Muslimin Nawab Bahadur Yar Jung found the constitutional reforms inadequate in that they did not address a concern that was of utmost importance to the prominent organization: the critical issue of separate electorates for Hindus and Muslims. When the discussions of the Reforms Committee were taking place, Bahadur Yar Jung of the Majlis presenting ‘Muslim’ opinion and M. Narsing Rao presenting ‘Hindu’ or Congress interests were brought together for what were referred to as ‘Unity Talks’. Prior to this, and even prior to Akbar Hydari's announcement of the Reforms Committee in September of 1937, in June of 1937, a meeting took place between public leaders, both Hindu and Muslim, orchestrated by the Administration. The public men included Nawab Bahadur Yar Jung, M. Hanumantha Rao, Kasinathrao Vaidya, and Akbar Ali Khan.Footnote 44 The discussion took place on the existing points of differences between Hindus and Muslims to see whether they could come to any resolutions. The discussions were concerned with seven major points: (1) Tabligh and Shuddhi, (2) policies of the Ecclesiastical Department, (3) local vernaculars in the school curricula, (4) religious instruction in schools, (5) public services, (6) demand for the cancellation of circulars relating to public meetings, private schools, music in front of mosques, religious processions and ceremonies, and physical culture centres, and (7) finally, the expansion of a Legislative Council. These issues would continue to dominate the political reforms discussions, especially in the unofficial committees of Hyderabad public intellectuals and leaders. After a report was produced from these meetings (16 in total), the Aiyangar Committee was formed later that year and the Hyderabad People's Convention to further the agenda put forward by this committee. The points of concerns do not explicitly cover the issue of federation and paramountcy, which were both seen as concerning the external relations of Hyderabad. The matters concerning religion were primarily related to showing equal treatment to other religious matters, as the Hyderabad state has taken in regard to Islam. For vernacular schools and language policy, the idea was to ensure that the mother tongue was used at the primary level and that it should extend to secondary level as well, with Urdu as a compulsory second language. There seemed to be no objection for Urdu to be the medium at the university level at Osmania and other universities. In addition, it was agreed that Muslim students should be compelled to learn a local language as a second language up to the lower-secondary stage. Having settled the cultural matters fairly easily, the murkier discussions of political reforms still remained on the table.
This meeting informed the well-publicized ‘Unity Talks’ between Nawab Bahadur Yar Jung and M. Narsing Rao in 1938. From the earlier talks, there were many points of convergence, except for some exceptional political questions. The press at the time represented these talks as directly the result of the HSC's participation in the 1938 Satyagraha in which many Congress members were jailed along with the students at Osmania University, who participated in the ‘Vande mataram’ controversy when 600 students were expelled for singing the song in December of 1938 (later re-admitted in August 1939). The Congress High Command became intimately involved in the talks between the Bahadur Yar Jung and Narsing Rao. Narsing Rao became the spokesperson on behalf of the Hindus and Bahadur Yar Jung for the Muslims in Hyderabad. In order for both to proceed, they had to receive consent from their community leaders that they in fact were representative of their respective communities. Congress leaders Jawaharlal Nehru and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad consulted with both of these men to broker a compromise between the two communities. The Bombay Chronicle ran an article that declared that the Congress High Command was being consulted for the Hyderabad Unity Talks. Bahadur Yar Jung also, according to the Chronicle, met with Nehru and Azad in Allahabad in December of 1938.Footnote 45 Immediately afterwards, M. Narsing Rao left for Wardha to consult with Congress leaders including Gandhi. The Bombay Chronicle, in the 16 November issue in 1938, printed an article that the Unity Talks were to ‘appease popular unrest’ in Hyderabad and that these talks were to prepare Hyderabad leaders for the report of the Reforms CommitteeFootnote 46—in other words, that the talks may have been ceremonial for the Nizam's Administration to appear open to dialogue. In December of 1938, The Hyderabad Bulletin reported that the Nizam's government was prepared to accept any agreed formula that the two communities would put forward.Footnote 47
Before the ‘Unity Talks’ of August 1938, the Hyderabad People's Convention brought leaders together to discuss the constitutional future of Hyderabad. The Bombay Chronicle reported that it ‘was a thoroughly representative body and did much useful work in devising a scheme of Constitutional Reform’.Footnote 48 However, the talks broke down, with Muslim members severing their ties with the convention due to the question of reservations of seats set aside for Muslims, which could not be settled in a satisfactory manner.Footnote 49 Muslim members also cited the convention's unwillingness to consider reservation as a fundamental issue, which led to concerns over the ‘franchise and delegation of power to the legislatures’. The main concern, it seems, was to broker a deal that would take seriously the Muslim community's concerns that the delegation of power to the legislatures could be detrimental to the political power of the Muslim minority in Hyderabad. The ‘Unity Talks’ were suggested so that the two community leaders would be able to move beyond this political impasse. The talks covered much of the same issues as the earlier talks had discussed since the summer of 1937. The sessions began with a discussion of what the constitutional goals should be for Hyderabad. M. Narsing Rao suggested that the idea of ‘responsible government’ should be the primary goal of constitutional reforms. Already, at the start, there was disagreement when Nawab Bahadur Yar Jung, on the other hand, declared that the traditions and conditions of the Hyderabad state are such that they do not allow responsible government as an immediate aim.Footnote 50 Without a discussion of the minority status of Muslims and the need for reservations of seats to address community representation, there was room for Jung to revert to suggesting that the traditions of Hyderabad do not allow responsible government. However, they both agreed that:
Ministers should be made responsible to H.E.H. and the constitutional advancement of Hyderabad should be based on such a form of Government which should be evolutionary and which should afford opportunities to the different communities and classes of the State to co-operate effectively with the Government through an elected Legislature.Footnote 51
The cautious wording shows that there was much more tension a year later on the political interests of the ‘Muslim’ community and ‘Hindu’ community. When looking back at the earlier discussions of 1937, the community leaders had a great deal of agreement on much-needed reforms within the state. However, the primary issue that dominated the ‘Unity Talks’ in late 1938 was the question of responsible government and the question was unresolved in that it could not be made an immediate goal and the idea of transferring powers to the legislature was in itself disputed as much as the composition of the legislature. The question of franchise brought out the necessity to think through schemes for assuring parity between communities. Ultimately, the ‘Unity Talks’ broke down with the unresolved question of the goal of responsible government—a goal that was insisted on by Congress members.
The constitutional reforms proposed by the Reforms Committee of 1938 and the subsequent ‘Unity Talks’ proved that the problem was larger than these discussions reveal without resolving the constitutional questions of what kind of polity the Hyderabad state would adapt to—for instance, would it retain its sovereignty without interference from the Indian union and what shape would it take if incorporated into the Indian union? The political stakes were high and the Nizam's Administration had to speak to its different constituencies through their public organizations making demands on the state to expand their rights and to implement democratic changes and foster the growth of democratic institutions. Meanwhile, the Nizam's Administration also had to contend with Congress in British India, which was preparing to take over the Government of India.
When the reforms were announced starting in 1938 on the constitutional future of Hyderabad, critics emerged from all sides of the political spectrum. Even the Nizam's Administration throughout the discussion of reforms in 1937–38 held onto the idea that elected representatives through a parliament would jeopardize the principle of the Nizam as head of state—declaring that sovereignty resided in the Nizam. The Congress leaders opposed the proposed reforms because they were based on functional representation rather than territorial representation. The Majlis opposed the reforms, putting forward their own idea of a defence of the history and traditions of the Hyderabad state. The organization issued a strongly worded objection in March 1939 for the government to delay proposed reforms and threatened to begin a massive Satyagraha against the reforms. Posters were spread across the city decrying the constitutional reforms and pointing to Nawab Ali Yavar Jung as the source of the betrayal.Footnote 52 The HSC, however, emboldened by the power of the INC in British India, pursued a political strategy to oppose these reforms in totality on the basis that history was on their side—it is clear from the internal correspondence between Congress members and the rhetoric they employed in their understanding of the princes that they were indeed a feudal relic that were in desperate need of reform to introduce representative government.Footnote 53 Their confidence in being on the right side of history, however, made them short-sighted in not foreseeing or outright disregarding the ‘minoritization’ of Hyderabad Muslims—a problem that Muslim politicians could plainly see. In other words, the HSC played majoritarian politics by pushing for representative institutions or responsible government without guaranteeing safeguards for minority communities within the new constitutional arrangement. Granted the Majlis seeing that the question of reservation of seats for Muslims was set aside in discussions with HSC representatives, they tried to negotiate for Muslim dominance on the basis of the history and heritage of the Nizam's state.Footnote 54
The Majlis and Congress, as they continued to build their power bases in Hyderabad, were able to wrest control of the constitutional debates away from the discussions initiated by the Nizam's Subject's League, the Hyderabad Peoples’ Convention (1937), and the ‘Unity Talks’ between M. Narsing Rao and Bahadur Yar Jung of 1938—all of which sought to find political solutions for the unique composition and history of Hyderabad. The Majlis and the AMS started off as organizations that defined themselves as religious and/or cultural groups to give support to community efforts to promote their respective cultural institutions within Hyderabad. However, both organizations began to shift their concerns as they rose to prominence in 1930s when their discussions became explicitly political in that they began to stake political claims for their respective constituencies. The growing politicization of public associations in the 1930s can be linked to the increased use of the rhetoric of civil liberties to criticize the Nizam's Administration and its policies—especially policies that placed limits of political association and freedom of speech (in criticizing those very governmental policies). Ian Copland has argued that a growing politicization and proselytization immersed Hyderabad's associational life in the 1930s due primarily to the activism of the Arya Samaj and the Majlis through their shuddhi and tabligh movements.Footnote 55 Not only did this bring more communal strife into Hyderabad culminating in the 1938 Satyagraha, but it clearly politicized the masses, albeit through the language of communalism. Despite the communalization of mass politics, it is important to keep in sight that the discourse of civil liberties enabled non-communal public associations in and outside of Hyderabad to legitimately challenge and impact Hyderabad governmental discussions of their constitutional future. The curtailment of political discussion and association through the infamous circular Gasthi 53 opened up an opportunity for civil-society associations in Hyderabad to employ the rhetorical strategy of civil liberties in British India and the princely states to offer a critique of the rule of the Nizam. The framework of civil liberties provided a way in for these groups to not only offer critique of politics within a princely state, but also imagine political futures. The HSC, the AMS, and the Majlis along with even the earlier short-lived associations such as the Nizam Subjects’ League and Anjuman I-Tarraqqi participated in a vibrant public sphere through print media and ultimately joined ‘talks’ with the government to find political solutions to the impasse the Nizam's Administration found itself in during the 1930s. Ultimately, the inability of the Nizam's Administration to legitimately negotiate with actually existing constituencies in Hyderabad led to a series of political crises at the end of the decade.
