Hyderabad State

For more than two centuries the Deccan plateau of south-central India was governed by the Nizams, a line of Muslim rulers whose realm became one of the largest and richest of the Indian princely states. Founded in 1724 by a former Mughal governor, Hyderabad State passed under British protection in 1798 and survived until 1948, when the newly independent Indian government took it over by military force. Its lands now lie in Telangana, Karnataka and Maharashtra in India.

The founder, Mir Qamar-ud-din Khan, had served as governor of the Deccan for the Mughal Empire from 1713 to 1721. After winning the Battle of Shakar Kheda in 1724 he ruled from Aurangabad under the title Asaf Jah, and his other title, Nizam ul-Mulk, became the name of the office. As Mughal power waned the Nizams became independent in practice, though they suffered repeated defeats at the hands of the Maratha Empire and paid it tribute. The capital moved to Hyderabad in 1763.

The Nizams gradually lost their coastal provinces to the British, ceding the Northern Circars in 1768. In 1798 Asaf Jah II became the first Indian prince to accept a subsidiary alliance with the East India Company, placing a British force in his state and surrendering control of foreign policy. Hyderabad fought on the British side against the Marathas and Mysore and stayed loyal during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The cantonment of Secunderabad was named after Asaf Jah III.

From 1857 the chief minister Salar Jung I reorganised the administration into divisions and districts. Urdu replaced Persian as the official language in the 1880s, and a state railway linked Hyderabad to the rest of British India. The last Nizam, Mir Osman Ali Khan, who ruled from 1911, was reputed to be among the richest men in the world. The state had its own currency, airline and postal service. In 1941 it had about 16.3 million people, mostly Hindu and speaking Telugu, Marathi or Kannada, while the ruling class and administration were largely Muslim.

When British rule ended in 1947, the Nizam declined to join either India or Pakistan. Hyderabad signed a standstill agreement with India in November 1947, but relations broke down amid accusations on both sides: India pointed to the Razakars, an armed Muslim militia led by Qasim Razvi that was accused of widespread attacks on Hindus, while Hyderabad complained of an economic blockade. A communist-led peasant uprising was also under way in Telangana. Hyderabad appealed to the United Nations Security Council.

On 13 September 1948 the Indian Army entered the state in an operation code-named Operation Polo and officially called a "police action". The Nizam's forces were quickly overwhelmed, and he announced a ceasefire on 17 September. Severe communal violence followed. A mixed-faith committee led by Pandit Sunderlal, appointed by Jawaharlal Nehru, reported large-scale reprisals against Muslims in Marathwada and Telangana, mostly by local Hindus, with soldiers sometimes standing by and sometimes taking part. Its report, not made public until 2013, gave what it called a very conservative estimate of roughly 27,000 to 40,000 dead; other scholars and observers have put the toll at 200,000 or higher.

A military governor ran the state until civilian government was restored. The Nizam accepted the Indian constitution in November 1949 and became the state's ceremonial head, the Rajpramukh, when India became a republic in January 1950. In the 1956 reorganisation of states along linguistic lines, Hyderabad was divided among Andhra Pradesh, Bombay and Mysore. The city of Hyderabad is today the capital of Telangana.

Our 1800 map shows Hyderabad as the Nizam's Dominions, in the heart of the Deccan, alongside the Maratha Confederacy and the kingdom of Mysore, at a time when the state had recently entered its alliance with the British.