Religion, Community, and Social Order in the Social History of Telangana (1800–1950)

In this paper the study will focus on the overlapping processes of religion, community formation and social order in Telangana between 1800 and 1950, which was bookended by the consolidation of the Nizam rule under Asaf Jahi dynasty and political incorporation of the State of Hyderabad into the Indian Union. Basing the argument on census data, administration reports and other secondary scholarly research, the work suggests that religious identity in the Telangana world was not a fixed and merely divisive entity and was dynamically formed by the order of Nizam rule, colonial modernity, caste relationships and the local movements of reform. The chiefly Hindu peasant population in the region of Telangana was under the rule of a Muslim sovereign, so a peculiar social structure was formed where religion, caste, land tenure, and political power were intertwined. With the advent of new reform groups like the Arya Samaj (formed in 1892 in Hyderabad) and the Andhra Mahasabha (1921), new planes of religious and social awareness were formed disturbing established hierarchies. The article also examines the tensions of 1940s community as mediated during the Razakar crisis and the Telangana peasant rebellion (194651) and shows that the boundaries of religion became solid under the pressure of politics but were not completely finalized. The paper has concluded that the social history of Telangana provides an example of how religion as both ideology and community bond and contestation site in a pre-modern polity becoming modernity should be understood.