Accounts of Hyderabad often situate the city within its longer history before treating 1948 as a defining moment that reshaped its political trajectory. In The Hyderabadis: From 1947 to the Present Day, Daneesh Majid departs from this framing. Rather than privileging a narrative of rupture or decline that came after the end of princely rule, Majid argues that the city’s modern history can best be understood as a prolonged process of adaptation in which its residents repeatedly renegotiated their place within shifting political and economic orders.
The central insight is that political transitions matter less for understanding Hyderabad than the ways in which people responded to them. The integration of the princely state took place under Operation Polo, thereby dismantling the institutions that sustained the rule of Mir Osman Ali Khan, but Majid shows that the consequences of this moment were neither uniform nor immediate. Instead, it unfolded unevenly across social groups, professions and generations. For some, particularly those embedded in the administrative and cultural hierarchies of the old regime, the transition entailed a loss of status and influence. Others, however, found new opportunities within the expanding institutions of post-independence India.
What distinguishes this book from conventional urban histories lies in its method. The city’s transformation is constructed through a series of interlinked biographies of journalists, intellectuals, activists, and political figures, and their lived experiences. These biographies serve not simply as anecdotes but as analytical windows into the city’s changing political culture. Through them, Majid shows that public life in Hyderabad was shaped by ideological struggles, leftist mobilisation, agrarian movements and student activism, rather than identity alone.
This perspective complicates any attempt to reduce Hyderabad’s post-1948 history simply to one of communal division. While sectarian tensions do exist, they operate along other fault lines such as the Mulki versus non-Mulki debates, the Telangana movement, and the long-standing “insider–outsider” anxieties in the Deccan. When read together, these dynamics highlight the competing notions of belonging, rather than a city that is trapped in binary identities.
Equally significant are the questions of economic and transnational change. From the 1970s onward, rising migration reshaped Hyderabad’s social world, linking its neighbourhoods to distant labour markets, especially to the Gulf. Moreover, as remittances began to flow in, they reconfigured the social hierarchies and fostered new aspirations, while the onset of liberalisation saw the rise of “Cyberabad”, further reflecting how global capital was reshaping the city’s landscape. By situating these economic and social shifts alongside movements, notably the campaign for Telangana statehood, Majid situates Hyderabad within broader global and regional developments.
Far from indulging in nostalgia, the result is a study that emphasises the city’s incredible resilience. By grounding these changes in lived experiences, The Hyderabadis ultimately suggests that the city’s defining characteristic has been its capacity to absorb upheaval without losing its plural and evolving character, even while continually remaking itself.