Hyderabad is different…

A year after India lowered the Union Jack and raised up the Tricolour, one man was worried like hell. Sitting in King Kothi palace located in the heart of Hyderabad, he dreaded at the thought of losing is his dominion and with his title and the razzmatazz that came along with it. Sitting 1000 odd kilometers away, plotting the end of this man was Sardar Vallabhai Patel, the then strong man of Indian politics.

The man who could have been the first prime minister of Independent India, Patel had achieved the impossible of integrating 600 odd princely states into a single nation. But there were a couple of them who had got away, and the princely state of Hyderabad was one of them. Sick and tired of the Nizam’s machinations, Patel sent a terse ultimatum to the Nizams on the atrocities being perpetrated by the Razakars, his private army. “If one more Hindu is slaughtered, I personally have all your wives and children killed.” warned the Iron Man. The Nizam panicked and Patel who had enough the Nizam’s dream of an independent India, sent in the Indian Army.

Gen J N Chaudhuri, who led ‘Operation Polo’ strolled into Hyderabad with his troops without much of fight, and got the Nizam’s army to surrender. Soon, on Sept 17th 1948 Hyderabad, the biggest princely state of the British India became a part of the Indian Union.

In the 1960’s Hyderabad became a part of Andhra Pradesh, which was carved out from the erstwhile Madras state. In the process it lost land which went upto Aurangabad to Maharashtra and the Bidar-Gulbarga belt to Karnataka. A city founded by immigrants became a part of the Telugu speaking Andhra. There was many reasons why Hyderabad and with the rest of Telangana was a misfit in the new scheme of things.

For one, was the language. Hyderabadis speak a mix of Urdu and Mumbaiya Marathi, which sounds weirdly different if one met up with a citizen from up north. Nakko, Kaiku, How, Kyaki, Parsoon and of course the unique one of its kind word, Abhich are all one wouldn’t hear in any other part of the state. Abhich Aatoon would in the normal sense mean “I will be there in a moment.” But for a Hyderabadi, time is a metaphor of the unknown, and that would mean, he would turn up after a couple of months. For someone from a coastal town like Visakhapatnam, that is all Greek and Latin.

Which is why Hyderabadis’ resent what they perceive is a cultural invasion of sorts from Rayalaseema and Coastal Andhra. The people from these places are in no way to blame, and luckily we have no Raj Thackeray’s to bother us with. As they say, “When in Rome, do as the Roman’s do.” Those who come to Hyderabad need to appreciate and assimilate into the cultural ethos of this city.

Hyderabad is a city that was founded by immigrants from Persia, starting out with the Qutub Shahi’s to the Nizam. Infact, till the time of the last moghul, all official proclamations of issued by the Hyderabadi rulers were hailed in the name of the King of Iran. How times have changed...

There is no other city in this country where you would find a an authentic Haleem or nibble at Osmania biscuits. We are different, and let us stay that way. What do you say ?