Introduction

Abstract

In February 1937, the American weekly magazine Time featured a cover picture of Osman Ali Khan. He was the Nizam of Hyderabad and the wealthiest man in the world. It is not surprising that he commanded the attention of the magazine during America’s Great Depression. Readers would have found his estimated wealth of 1.4 billion dollars a staggering sum.¹ His vast princely state—larger than France—held a key position in south central India, a region known as the Deccan, and was surrounded on all sides by the territories of the British Raj. They would have seen a Muslim whose descendants traced their ancestry back five centuries. In short, the Nizam and his palace-filled capital of Hyderabad presented to the reader a magnificent example of potentates and ”oriental splendor.“ However, the reader might have been surprised to learn that, while the city of Hyderabad was predominantly Muslim, and Urdu speaking, the rest of the state was Hindu and spoke mostly Telugu. In 1909, with a population of 11.1 million, roughly 85 percent of the state was Hindu, about 10 percent was Muslim, and the remaining a mix of Christians, tribals, and others.² If the inquisitive reader had wanted to know more about those people and places beyond the city of Hyderabad, their search would have yielded almost nothing.