Description

This article considers the political transition from empire to nation-state in South Asia. Beginning with discussions of federation in the 1930s, it emphasizes the importance of the princely states to all-India discussions of political reform and to their legislative results. Situating Hyderabad’s unlikely bid for independence within this longer history of debates about the constitution of an independent India, this article seeks to uncover the political and legal possibilities explored by Hyderabad’s administrators and people on the eve of independence. This range of possibilities drawn from historical precedents, examples from within the British Commonwealth, and the possibility of a federated South Asian Union also engaged a public within Hyderabad interested in how a politically diverse constitution postindependence might affect their own aspirations for political change.