Rethinking Majlis’ politics: Pre-1948 Muslim concerns in Hyderabad State

In the historiography of Hyderabad State, pre-1948 Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (Majlis) figures as a separatist, communal and fanatical political formation. For the nationalist, Hindu and left politics in this region, Majlis has long stood for the ‘other’, wherein concerns articulated by it get discredited. In this article, we argue that there is a need to rethink the Majlis’ political perspective and its articulation of Muslim concerns by placing them in the context of the momentous political developments in the first half of the twentieth century. Caught between the imminent decline of the Asaf Jahi kingdom and the arrival of democratic politics, the Majlis saw the necessity of popular will but also the dangers of majoritarianism during such transitions and fought against the threat of imminent minoritisation of Muslims in the Hyderabad State. This article draws on the Urdu writings on the Majlis and Bahadur Yar Jung’s speeches that have been rarely used in Telugu or English writings on this period.