Muslim modern: Hyderabad State, 1883--1948

This dissertation examines South Asia during the colonial period from the vantage-point of a polity that was never formally colonized---the Muslim-ruled Princely State of Hyderabad. The chapters highlight the complexity of the relationship between Muslim sovereignty and the colonial project, and reexamine statecraft and social practice in late nineteenth and early twentieth century South Asia through the lens of Hyderabad's ideological, institutional and urban histories. Overall, the dissertation describes a scenario of layered sovereignty persisting throughout the colonial period in which transnational connections between Muslim intellectuals informed modernist projects that were underway in a state situated on the internal frontier of colonial empire.