Panel Organizers:

Benjamin Cohen, Department of History, The University of Utah, U.S.A.
Gijs Kruijtzer, Department of South and Central Asian Studies, Leiden University, The Netherlands
Carla Petievich, History Department/Women's Studies, Montclair State University, U.S.A.

Abstract

In a way the Deccan has always been the little brother of the North and can be said to have suffered from North-Indian hegemonies. Resistance to Mughal incursions was one of the few things that could periodically unite the different powers in the Deccan in the seventeenth century and still in the later days of the Nizam there was some opposition to the role of North-Indians in his administration. Today the Deccan remains understudied in comparison to the North, which has repercussions for our perception of many things Indian. The very act of studying things Deccani puts into question notions derived from the North-Indian context that are hegemonic in modern scholarly and non-scholarly writings, such as ideas about what Urdu is, ideas about literary genres, ideas about Sufism and Bhakti etc. The organisers therefore invite all to share their recent research on anything in the Deccan between the fall of Devagiri to ‘Ala al-Din Khalji (1296) and the fall of Hyderabad State to the Union (1948). Those dates are chosen to evoke the idea of the Deccan as an Islamicate/Urdu cultural space, a bit of the North in the South so to say (in which light the eighteenth-century Maratha dominance may also be seen), yet the organisers emphatically leave the floor open to putting the South back into the Deccan through perspectives from Telugu and Kannada.

The panel will be interdisciplinary and ‘interperiodical'. The panel aims to bring together scholars from the fields of history, literary criticism and religious studies. The panel will be interperiodical from a North-Indian perspective as it covers the colonial and pre-colonial periods but at the same time questions whether those very labels apply to a large part of the Deccan, remaining as it did outside of British India.

Carla Petievich, Montclair State University, Montclair, United States
Ideal Kings in the 17th Century Deccan: Masnavis from Bijapur and Golkunda

Modern understanding of the Urdu literary tradition reflects two hegemonies, one generic and the other geographic. Dominant interpretations of 'classical' genres suggest that each has a fixed purpose, with masnavis taken to be 'romances,' qasidas to be 'chronicled royal histories' and lyric genres 'reflective expressions of universalized Human Experience'. Further, Urdu scholarship largely confines its discussion of classical poetry to the ghazal of 18th and 19th century Delhi and Lucknow.

Reading beyond this mainstream, however, 16th and 17th century Muslim rulers in the Deccan were much concerned with history and their place in it. They were also aware of literatures outside the classical Islamicate tradition. Two masnavis from 17th,century courts, the 'Ali Nama by Bijapur's Poet Laureate, Muhammad Nusrat ‘Nusrati (d. 1684/5);  and the Qutb Mushtari by Golkunda's Mulla Vajhi (d. 1660),  reveal (1) looser boundaries between genres and (2) free borrowing of Indic poetry's lexicon and landscape. The ‘Ali Nama in particular sets out to serve as an official, legitimizing chronicle, recounting a triumphal history of battles and conquest, after which the poet's patron, Sultan ‘Ali ‘Adil Shah II (r.1656,72) purportedly settled down to become an ideal courtier, patronizing the arts and producing poetry himself.  Nusrati writes this narrative in masnavi form (not qasida) and paints the king in terms of an idealized Indian ruler, who lives richly and sensuously, exhibiting the qualities of romantic hero and "shauqin."

Gijs Kruijtzer, Leiden University, Kern Institute Leiden, The Netherlands
Seventeenth-Century Deccani Patriotism: Slogan or Practice (or Both)?

Politicians and statesmen are forever accused of saying one thing and doing the other, or as the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb put it, "one cannot rule without practicing deception". And in fact, in the secondary literature much is made of the disjuncture between discourses and practices in the precolonial period. The paper aims to investigate the conjunction or disjunction between the discourses and practices of those statesmen who are sometimes seen as heroes of the Deccani cause against the invading Mughals, especially the Abyssinian Malik Ambar and the Maratha Shivaji.

Both Malik Ambar and Shivaji succeeded in allying the states of the Deccan by employing slogans like ‘Deccan for the Deccanis'. And the Mughal Emperor Jahangir and Malik Ambar on the one hand and Shivaji and Aurangzeb on the other will forever be known as pairs of best enemies. Yet the various rulers of the Deccan also fell on each other on occasion and employed alliances with the Mughals to that purpose, which seems to suggest a radical disjunction between slogans and acts. 

On close inspection, however, the distinction between discourses and practices turns out to be as untenable in the analysis of seventeenth,century conflicts as it is in theory. Though Aurangzeb was called a ‘cunning old fox' and Shivaji a ‘trickster', deception depends on trust. Allies can become enemies and vice versa only so often. In the end even statesmen have to remain true to something, or as Aurangzeb is also supposed to have written: "in the so many days of my past life there has been no difference in my words. God willing up to the day of my removal to the eternal home, there will be no difference between my words and acts.

Nile Green, Oxford University, Oxford, United Kingdom
Sufi Literature in Princely Hyderabad, c.1860-1910

Responding to the scholarly neglect of the religious history of the Nizam's State, this paper examines trends within Sufi literature and thought in Hyderabad during the second half of the nineteenth century. With the fall of such older Indo,Muslim centres as Lucknow and Delhi, by the second half of the nineteenth century Hyderabad came to play an increasingly important role in the patronage and maintenance of the traditional forms of literary and cultural expression in which Sufism played so central a part. But at the same time, the wider tremors of religious reform felt across South Asia also found expression in the writings of Hyderabad's Sufis, for whom it became increasingly important to protect the authoritative status of the Sufi master.

Much of the wealth in Sufi activity during this period may be attributed to the conjunction of two important trends in Hyderabad. The first was a growing sense among Deccani as well as North Indian Muslims of Hyderabad's role as the protector of Islam in colonial India. As a result, Hyderabadi Sufis established new connections with Sufi circles in not only North India but also across the new imperial geography comprising such centres as Bombay and Durban. The second trend was a corresponding sense of Hyderabad's duty as the last great sponsor of Urdu literature. Thus, while the use of Persian was upheld by certain Sufi writers, Hyderabad's sense of its sense of rightful custodianship of Urdu letters found expression in the wealth of Sufi writings in Urdu during this period. These writings ranged from commemorative encyclopedias of the Deccan's saints to pilgrimage diaries, manuals of Sufi practice and of course mystical poetry.  These developments are examined through a discussion of two major Hyderabadi Sufis of the period, Iftikhar ‘Ali Shah Watan (d.1906) and Habib ‘Ali Shah (d.1905).

Shailendra Bhandare, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdome
The Peshwa's Mint at Dharwad 1755 -1765

The paper deals with an attempt to launch a government,controlled currency in the Dharwad district under Peshwa rule in 1755,65. It will describe monetary conditions in the region prior to and during the Peshwa's rule, the attempt to achieve monetary unification and its eventual failure. Tracing the political, economic and circulatory dynamics involved in the process, the paper will analyse the launch and failure of this significant economic attempt on part of the Peshwa's administration and provide interesting insights into the workings of governmet,owned and privately run mints in the region.

Benjamin Cohen, Univeristy of Utah, Department of History Utah, United States
The Little Kings of Hyderabad State

The nineteenth and twentieth century Deccan was anchored by Hyderabad State, India's largest princely state. Scholarship on Hyderabad has largely focused on the relationship between its rulers (the Nizams) and their relationship with the British Resident. A few works have examined other notable individuals or communities within the Nizam's Dominions. Yet, the focus has remained largely on the Nizams, the British, or Hyderabad city itself. This paper seeks to reorient attention away from a Nizam,Resident binary, and instead examine the contribution of the 14 Hindu kingdoms ("little kings") embedded within Hyderabad's polity. These kingdoms (samasthans) were the remnants of the Kakatiya and Vijayanagar Empires, and found themselves woven into the subsequent fabric of the Bahmani, Qutb Shahi, and Asaf Jahi regimes. They survived by participating in military, ceremonial, and finally legal venues afforded to them in an ever,changing Deccan landscape. They formed a key component of Hyderabad's composite political milieu; an atmosphere inhabited by these medieval Hindu polities as well as Deccani Muslims, Arabs, Africans, and a vast multicultural array of participants, in addition to the Nizams and Residents. By reorienting our attention away from Hyderabad's urban glare, a more nuanced understanding of Hyderabad State's composition and history can

Shreeyash Palshikar, The University of Chicago, London, UK
Linguistic States, Maharashtra, and the Deccan 1938-48

This paper considers the creation of the idea of modern Maharashtra in light of the space of the Deccan.  It begins with the early modern ideas about a space called Maharashtra as articulated by Marathi intellectuals such as B. G. Tilak and M. G. Ranade.  These are put in the context of all,India thoughts about the relationships between regional and national identity as articulated by national Congress leaders such as M. K. Gandhi and the Nehrus Sr. and Jr.  The focus of this paper is on understanding the notion of Maharashtra created and promoted in the annual meetings of the Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelans, or All India Marathi Literary Conventions.  This will be done by examining the speeches given by the presidents of these Sammelans with a focus on the speeches from the 1940s, when the Sammelans began to call for the formation of ‘Samyukta Maharashtra,' a united Maharashtra state.  Notable among these speeches are V. D. Savarkar's 1938 speech from the Mumbai Sammelan, P. K. Atre's 1942 Nashik speech and N. T. Madkholkar's 1946 speech from the Belgaon Sammelan in which he claims Belgaon as a part of Maharashtra.  The idea of Maharashtra articulated in these literary conventions is compared with very different ideas of new political spaces for the Deccan as articulated in the reports of the Linguistic Provinces Commission and Linguistic Provinces Committee appointed by the Congress in 1948.  The goal is to understand the political background of the linguistic states movements that violently swept across the Deccan after independence and the fall of Hyderabad state resulting in the creation of Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra states.