Hydera-bad to possibly nation’s best

A view of the Financial District in Hyderabad, Telangana. Pic/X/@adakshtrader

As someone familiar with both cities should know, Hyderabadis are Delhiites of India's South. A sense of entitlement, of course, naturally permeates the rent-seeking rich in most political capitals.

As New Delhi has been, since 1911 (and for the seven cities before it). Likewise, for Hyderabad, that pretty much remained the capital of India's richest, largest princely state for 224 years, under Asaf Jahi dynasty, or Nizams, as it were.

That's until the Indian government took over Hyderabad state, through military intervention, termed Police Action, post-independence, in 1948.

The party language of Hyderabadis, I notice, is a mix of showy brashness, and warm generosity. The latter lasts so long as the former doesn't prevail over a prickly ego.

For a popularly favourable surname, an usher at a casino in Goa told me, he followed a simple rule: Watch a Reddy enter, just follow the money!

A friendly, young, well-connected Reddy has got me into a night-spot in the after-hours, while the city's presumably shut. It's essentially to know someone in Hyderabad. I'm told, a guy behind me just a flashed a gun at the terrace bar. I don't turn around to verify.

The cover of the book, The Hyderabadis, by Daneesh Majid

Albeit in the newer landscape of Hyderabad (around HITEC City), my host is an old-time local, I know - from his peculiarly Dakhani Urdu which, apparently, also bears traces/influences from Marathi, Kannada, Telugu; the spoken parts that the Nizams once ruled.

To North Indians, this makes Hyderabad a rare city comfortable with Hindi, in the South, where so many of them moved, chasing IT dream jobs, late 1990s onwards.

As for the buzzingly nocturnal scene, my theory is a city organically upgrades its nightlife, if a movie industry resides in it. Hyderabad got its showbiz only around late 1980s-'90s.

Which explains hot addresses, Jubilee/Banjara Hills, that blossomed with Hyderabad's Film Nagar, built from scratch, once Andhra Pradesh's superstar-turned-CM, NT Rama Rao, invited his colleagues, to move Telugu film production, from Madras to his hood.

He offered grants. Visionaries like Ramoji Rao wildly invested. Telugu cinema, since, has pretty much surpassed Chennai/Tamil.

It has primarily swung around five or six family trees, related by blood/matrimony: the likes of Daggubati-Akkineni, Allu-Konidela. Rootedness is complete. Rebels, however, suitably prosper.

It's still the Andhra-ites, who established/ruled this movie industry.

As in, Telugu speaking people from Madras presidency, who merged with the Telugu speaking regions within Nizam's Hyderabad, i.e. Telangana, to form Andhra Pradesh. Indian states got reorganised, language-wise, in 1956.

Was there fiction between the OG Telangana and the more economically, demographically dominant Andhra lot, in Hyderabad?

Since the first such agitation on that issue, in 1969; yes. Or even before that, in the '50s, what with a ‘mulki'-‘non-mulki' (native-settler) divide.

As per Daneesh Majid's painstakingly researched book of oral history titled, Hyderabadis: From 1947 to Present Day (being 2024), this Andhra-led discrimination could be observed at the movies too.

Wherein Telangana characters, whose Telugu is inevitably laced with Urdu, were usually mocked as villains and comical sidekicks.

This possibly changed, once Telangana got separated from Andhra, in 2014, making the great ol' Hyderabad the capital of India's youngest state.

A popular example, Majid cites, is a movie called Mallesham (2019), where "the titular protagonist is shown speaking Telangana Telugu, while Abdul, a minor character, responds in Dakhani." This must be a big deal.

Dakhani was the official language of Nizam's Hyderabad. It got replaced with English, once the Indian government took over.

As Majid narrates, this led to Hyderabad's old elites, from aristocracy to bureaucracy, steering toward the Gulf, during the 1970s oil boom. Much like Hyderabad/Andhra's English-speaking engineering grads took up STEM jobs in the US, later, in the 1980s-'90s.

I suppose Hyderabad would've remained a rich remittance economy, best known for its ruins/forts/museums/bazaars, if wasn't for Y2K, a software hoax of the late '90s, when key characters emerged.

Local entrepreneur, Ramalinga Raju (Satyam Computers), vastly expanded his empire of software clients in the US. Thousands of offshore jobs landed in Hyderabad.

You'd have to go extra to service such new economy. You learn from the Netflix doc-series, Bad Boy Billionaires, Raju even offered Hyderabad Metro for free, in lieu of land around tracks. There was so much land!

The state's self-styled CEO-type CM, Chandrababu Naidu, from Telugu Desham Party (TDP), was the right kingmaker at the right time, with MPs that could topple governments in New Delhi, mid-'90s to 2004.

You can tell from Believer's Dilemma - Abhishek Choudhary's brilliant biography of Atal Behari Vajpayee - how Naidu, negotiating as BJP's regional/coalition partner, made Hyderabad the centre of
Delhi's attention.

Over decades, you can experience the effect, driving down, through shiny architecture, sparse high-rises, from India's top-end airport since 2008 - toward any direction; north to Kompally, east to Ramoji Film City - for scores and scores of kilometres, with zero traffic.

And roads wider than the Global South (let alone India's)! Rents, half of Mumbai, with homes thrice its size. You could move here in a heartbeat; provided, jobs exist, and nativity's not an issue.

In 2024, TDP's Naidu helped BJP form government in New Delhi as crucial regional ally. His top priority's to build Amaravati, new capital for Andhra Pradesh that he's now its CM.

If it's another Hyderabad - it would be the future that India desperately deserves.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture.
He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.