Citizen Power or State Weakness? The Enduring History of Collective Action in a Hyderabadi Bazaar

Abstract

As I was leaving the town planner’s office in Hyderabad, a uniformed guard at the main door held out his palm and smiled. ‘Baksheesh’, he said. ‘For what?’ I asked. ‘Madam, you met the town planner’, he responded. I still did not understand why he was demanding money since he had little to do with the appointment. A few days later, I read the autobiography of a courtier who was the sixth Nizam’s [the ruler] tutor and later his advisor in the late 19th-century Hyderabad, which was the capital of the princely state of the Deccan. The behaviour of the guard in the town planner’s office was similar to that of a chobdar (doorman) and of a vaghera (headman) of the previous century. When Sarwar Jang first arrived in the city with a letter of introduction, he found it almost impossible to get an appointment with the Premier Minister of the Deccan. Every morning, he would come to the premier minister’s residence and wait. But each day, he returned home disappointed. He writes in his memoirs:

My friend the Cavalryman approached me, and said in a friendly manner that I had better retire, or the ‘Chobdars’ [doormen] would turn me out by ‘force’ or he added, promise them some Bakshish [a tip] to allow you to remain … For an interview, he added, the strongest possible influence [wielded by a Headman] was required.