In the endless tirade of hate speech and religious hatred of those days, the very utterance of any Urdu word became a political statement. On one hand, it had the seal of the power as the Nizam’s administrative language of the Hyderabad state. Yet, it also became the language of progressivism and resistance. We used the same weapon to fight against the Nizam and the gruesome violence of Police Action. - Jaini Mallayya Gupta
While the boundaries between Hindi and Urdu have a particularly north Indian history, Urdu’s trajectory in Hyderabad State suggests a different story. Despite a history of being associated with a Muslim ruler nearly seventy years ago, it was not generally considered a “language of Muslims.”
The paroxysms of Partition and the violent integration of Hyderabad by the Indian military’s Police Action redefined the cultures of the Deccan at large. But Gupta’s reminiscences above reveal that it was an entirely different world in the 1940s. Urdu was not tied to any one religious or political community in Hyderabad. Instead, it represented a broadranging composite culture popularly known as the Hyderabadi tehzeeb.
Many writers, readers, and activists spoke of Urdu with a certain intimacy. Hindus and Muslims who resisted the Hyderabad Nizam’s autocratic regime frequently invested Urdu with the utopian vision of an egalitarian and progressive future.
In this article, I consider the biographies of three Non-Muslim cultural figures in Hyderabad who made Urdu a weapon of protest and resistance throughout their lives. The first is Jaini Mallaya Gupta (d. 2022), an avid reader and cultural activist during the Telangana Armed Struggle (1946-1950) and Police Action. The Second is Dasarathi Krishnamacharya (1925-1987), a celebrated Telugu poet, film song lyricist, and Urdu translator hailing from a middle-class Brahmin family. The third is Samala Sadasiva (1928-2012), a Telugu poet and acclaimed writer on Hindustani music who was born in a lower-caste Hindu family.
One morning in 2019, I met Gupta in his Hyderabad apartment. He had just finished his morning ritual of reading the Urdu daily newspaper, Siyasat – something he had done for almost the last 70 years. Not surprisingly, our conversation began with his reading experiences of Siyasat. The Urdu daily, one of the leading newspapers in Hyderabad, was launched in the aftermath of the Police Action.
Jaini Mallaya Gupta during his morning ritual of reading the Urdu daily, Siasat Source: Author
For Gupta, reading Siyasat was not only a space to reflect on Urdu literature. It was also an important space for Muslim advocacy during the violence of Hyderabad’s bloody absorption into the Indian Union. Gupta noted:
Despite all the violence of that time, we had two great sources of inspiration. First, contemporary Urdu writings - including short fiction in Urdu and their translations in Telugu. And secondly, Siyasat, the daily Urdu newspaper. Both have taught me religious tolerance and love for humanity. They both played a great role during times of extreme violence... no doubt, my entire understanding of secularism and progressivism comes from reading those Urdu writings and the Siyasat.
Gupta’s association of terms like “progressivism” and “secularism” with Urdu may seem at odds with contemporary perspectives. Islamophobia, the vexed history of Partition, and Police Action have all made such connotations with Urdu a distant and contested claim.
For young activists in the Hyderabad and Telangana of the 1930s and ’40s, Progressive literature (or in Gupta’s words, Taraqqi Pasand), particularly in Urdu, was a major source of inspiration and political engagement. Gupta was barely eighteen when he started a readers club in his hometown of Nalgonda in the late ’40s. It was a humble beginning. But the club grew to attract many new writers and young readers who were just beginning to engage the vibrant cultural and political spheres of Hyderabad state.
Major trends and writing modes in the contemporary Urdu literature provided an influential paradigm for most Hyderabad writers and readers of this time. They played crucial roles in the early phase of several important publications and inspiring reading groups across Telangana. As Gupta’s readers club became more noteworthy, he became a target for the vigilante Razakars as well as the state police. He fled to the capital city of Hyderabad to hide in the anonymity offered by the great metropolis.
Remembering his underground activities in the late 40s, he said:
Like me, many leftist writers and activists had migrated to the city at that point. They became popular under pseudonyms. Hyderabad was like a sanctuary because it could hide us in its remote neighborhoods. We were supported by the local Muslim community too. We all became really close to each other and even more connected to Urdu literary culture, which indeed provided a model for our activities.
Even now, Gupta’s love and passion for Urdu language and literature has no boundaries and he continues to read Urdu writings on a daily basis along with the Siyasat. According to him:
Siyasat and local Urdu newspapers were not just any newspapers. Urdu was not just any language. During Police Action, it was like a movement that focused on rebuilding the Muslim community using education, creative writing, and engaging with the newly available print sources along with other welfare activities. More than anything, these newspapers used Urdu as a weapon of Progressivism and as a language of secularism.
Gupta told me in detail how his peers used Urdu literature as a tool to rebuild shared Hindu-Muslim community during and after Police Action in late ’40s Hyderabad.
Like many of his contemporaries, including Dasarathi Krishnamacharya, Nelluri Kesava Swamy, Kavi Raja Murthy, and Samala Sadasiva, Gupta identified himself as a “aadhaa Muslim, aadhaa Hindu” (half-Muslim, half-Hindu). He insisted that “Urdu is not turakala bhasha (Muslim language) as rightwing people call it.”
Gupta’s attachments to Urdu are echoed in the Dasarathi’s autobiography, Yatra Smriti (2006) as well as Sadasiva’s autobiography, Yaadi (2005). Gupta remembers both of these writers fondly. Dasarthi’s literary career in Telugu shows how influential Urdu was in his everyday life and works. Sadasiva’s life shows how aspects of Urdu literary culture such as mushairas, literary gatherings, seeped deep into the interior regions of the Telangana.
Dasarathi’s literary career and the history of Urdu language and literature in Hyderabad State run parallel at key moments. One such moment is the establishment of Osmania University, the first institution of modern higher education to make Urdu – or any regional language – the primary medium of learning in South Asia. Dasarathi traces this phase of Urdu’s growth in his autobiography before turning his attention to Urdu’s significance as a link language in the Hyderabad public sphere. He emphasizes that Urdu became the vehicle and model for new journalism and supported an explosion of new writing and print culture in Telangana.
Dasarathi Krishnamacharya Source: Wikimedia
Dasarathi notes that Urdu also profoundly shaped his imagination. He comments on his childhood interest in the poet Ghalib (1798-1869) and how this inspired his own political consciousness:
It was my childhood practice of reading and reciting Ghalib that led to my ultimate desire of translating him into Telugu. As my life was completely tense and restless, I never thought that that desire would be fulfilled. My experiences with Ghalib’s poetry reading and translating made me realize that his expressions of love were just a mask for his endless search for freedom - a freedom that was suppressed by colonial rule, both personally and politically.
During the peak of his literary career, Dasarathi translated many of Ghalib’s verses into Telugu as Ghalib Geetaalu. This anthology was tremendously popular and ran into several editions. In later years, Dasarathi turned to adapting Urdu and Persian genres, such as the ghazal and rubaiyat, into Telugu.
Another writer, Sadasiva, has written extensively about the importance of the Urdu-Telugu relationship to the uniqueness of Telangana’s cultural ethos. He has often claimed, in interviews and writings, that “November 1, 1956 will remain a black day in the history of Telangana.”
This date refers to the formation of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh on the basis of the Telugu language. The new state combined Telangana, which covered the Telugu districts of the former Hyderabad State, with the Telugu districts of British India. On that day, Urdu and Telugu were partitioned as two separate domains. Urdu’s cultural significance diminished in the cultural and political contexts of Andhra Pradesh.
I had the opportunity to ask Sadasiva about this provocative statement in person. He remarked:
We lost the real essence of Hyderabadi culture and Telangana’s sense of belonging when the linguistic state of Andhra Pradesh was formed. Most aspects related to language, literature, and culture were solidified in the name of "Andhra" and the culture of the two coastal districts of Krishna and Guntur became standardized as Telugu. This erased all the nuances of what we can say about Telugu. Specifically, Telangana Telugu lost its place and it took has taken lots of struggle to retrieve it.
Sadasiva believed that the standardization of Telugu on the model of coastal Telugu and its declaration as an “official language” was an act of dominance. As he said explicitly:
The linguistic purification of Telugu after the formation of Andhra Pradesh as a linguistic state was one of the worst things that happened to Telangana. Many Urdu words from the local Telangana language were considered to be "impure" and we were all forced to use the standard language of coastal Telugu — that resulted in ignoring the idiom of Telangana.
Sadasiva made it his mission to return to the vibrancy of pre-Police Action days, when Telugu and Urdu cultures shared a history and linguistic boundaries were not as thick. His autobiography, Yaadi (from the Urdu Yaad – Memory), fondly reminisced and documented the Urdu-Telugu engagements of this time.
It was first serialized through Vartha, one of the largest circulated Telugu daily newspapers, between 2002 and 2003, as an autobiographical column. Lasting for 55 weeks, it was well received for its retrieval of Hyderabad State’s cultural history by discussing Urdu literary figures between 1930s and 1950s.
Sadasiva Samala Source: lokabhiramam.blogspot
In my conversation with Sadasiva, I also asked him about the usage of categories such as “Hindu” and “Muslim” to describe language. He said:
We were not that comfortable using those labels at all. But, the politics of those days [Police Action] forced us to see segregation. Within our circles, we never identified each other with similar religious markers. However, the outside world was something else by that time. Even at my institute, there was a fear. As I wrote in my memoir, we were in separate “Hindu” and “Muslim” groups, which I hate even now. Literally, even my friends were using different linguistic styles that mark these labels. Earlier we had never experienced such segregation.
Sadasiva elaborates on many such experiences of religious segregation that developed in the context of Police Action and its aftermath. As for Gupta and Dasarathi, so too for Sadasiva, those were intense moments in his life that shaped his worldview.
In fact, Gupta, Dasarathi, and Sadasiva reflect multiple dimensions of the same story: Urdu’s utopian promise of an egalitarian and progressive future. For these three figures, Urdu was not a marker of religious difference or alienation. It was the symbol and medium of a composite society with pluralist values. This was the beauty of Hyderabadi tehzeeb.
Throughout their lives, these men drew inspiration from Urdu to articulate hopes of political liberty and freedom. Despite the fact that their life stories and careers were deeply grounded in the specific history of the 1930s and 1940s, their experiences remain relevant more than ever in the face of rising linguistic and religious nationalisms and growing anti-Muslim sentiment.
By Afsar Mohammad. Afsar Mohammad is a historian and literary scholar who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. His most recent publication is Remaking History: 1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad (Cambridge, 2023).
While the boundaries between Hindi and Urdu have a particularly north Indian history, Urdu’s trajectory in Hyderabad State suggests a different story. Despite a history of being associated with a Muslim ruler nearly seventy years ago, it was not generally considered a “language of Muslims.”
The paroxysms of Partition and the violent integration of Hyderabad by the Indian military’s Police Action redefined the cultures of the Deccan at large. But Gupta’s reminiscences above reveal that it was an entirely different world in the 1940s. Urdu was not tied to any one religious or political community in Hyderabad. Instead, it represented a broadranging composite culture popularly known as the Hyderabadi tehzeeb.
Many writers, readers, and activists spoke of Urdu with a certain intimacy. Hindus and Muslims who resisted the Hyderabad Nizam’s autocratic regime frequently invested Urdu with the utopian vision of an egalitarian and progressive future.
In this article, I consider the biographies of three Non-Muslim cultural figures in Hyderabad who made Urdu a weapon of protest and resistance throughout their lives. The first is Jaini Mallaya Gupta (d. 2022), an avid reader and cultural activist during the Telangana Armed Struggle (1946-1950) and Police Action. The Second is Dasarathi Krishnamacharya (1925-1987), a celebrated Telugu poet, film song lyricist, and Urdu translator hailing from a middle-class Brahmin family. The third is Samala Sadasiva (1928-2012), a Telugu poet and acclaimed writer on Hindustani music who was born in a lower-caste Hindu family.
One morning in 2019, I met Gupta in his Hyderabad apartment. He had just finished his morning ritual of reading the Urdu daily newspaper, Siyasat – something he had done for almost the last 70 years. Not surprisingly, our conversation began with his reading experiences of Siyasat. The Urdu daily, one of the leading newspapers in Hyderabad, was launched in the aftermath of the Police Action.
Source: Author
For Gupta, reading Siyasat was not only a space to reflect on Urdu literature. It was also an important space for Muslim advocacy during the violence of Hyderabad’s bloody absorption into the Indian Union. Gupta noted:
Gupta’s association of terms like “progressivism” and “secularism” with Urdu may seem at odds with contemporary perspectives. Islamophobia, the vexed history of Partition, and Police Action have all made such connotations with Urdu a distant and contested claim.
For young activists in the Hyderabad and Telangana of the 1930s and ’40s, Progressive literature (or in Gupta’s words, Taraqqi Pasand), particularly in Urdu, was a major source of inspiration and political engagement. Gupta was barely eighteen when he started a readers club in his hometown of Nalgonda in the late ’40s. It was a humble beginning. But the club grew to attract many new writers and young readers who were just beginning to engage the vibrant cultural and political spheres of Hyderabad state.
Major trends and writing modes in the contemporary Urdu literature provided an influential paradigm for most Hyderabad writers and readers of this time. They played crucial roles in the early phase of several important publications and inspiring reading groups across Telangana. As Gupta’s readers club became more noteworthy, he became a target for the vigilante Razakars as well as the state police. He fled to the capital city of Hyderabad to hide in the anonymity offered by the great metropolis.
Remembering his underground activities in the late 40s, he said:
Even now, Gupta’s love and passion for Urdu language and literature has no boundaries and he continues to read Urdu writings on a daily basis along with the Siyasat. According to him:
Gupta told me in detail how his peers used Urdu literature as a tool to rebuild shared Hindu-Muslim community during and after Police Action in late ’40s Hyderabad.
Like many of his contemporaries, including Dasarathi Krishnamacharya, Nelluri Kesava Swamy, Kavi Raja Murthy, and Samala Sadasiva, Gupta identified himself as a “aadhaa Muslim, aadhaa Hindu” (half-Muslim, half-Hindu). He insisted that “Urdu is not turakala bhasha (Muslim language) as rightwing people call it.”
Gupta’s attachments to Urdu are echoed in the Dasarathi’s autobiography, Yatra Smriti (2006) as well as Sadasiva’s autobiography, Yaadi (2005). Gupta remembers both of these writers fondly. Dasarthi’s literary career in Telugu shows how influential Urdu was in his everyday life and works. Sadasiva’s life shows how aspects of Urdu literary culture such as mushairas, literary gatherings, seeped deep into the interior regions of the Telangana.
Dasarathi’s literary career and the history of Urdu language and literature in Hyderabad State run parallel at key moments. One such moment is the establishment of Osmania University, the first institution of modern higher education to make Urdu – or any regional language – the primary medium of learning in South Asia. Dasarathi traces this phase of Urdu’s growth in his autobiography before turning his attention to Urdu’s significance as a link language in the Hyderabad public sphere. He emphasizes that Urdu became the vehicle and model for new journalism and supported an explosion of new writing and print culture in Telangana.
Source: Wikimedia
Dasarathi notes that Urdu also profoundly shaped his imagination. He comments on his childhood interest in the poet Ghalib (1798-1869) and how this inspired his own political consciousness:
During the peak of his literary career, Dasarathi translated many of Ghalib’s verses into Telugu as Ghalib Geetaalu. This anthology was tremendously popular and ran into several editions. In later years, Dasarathi turned to adapting Urdu and Persian genres, such as the ghazal and rubaiyat, into Telugu.
Another writer, Sadasiva, has written extensively about the importance of the Urdu-Telugu relationship to the uniqueness of Telangana’s cultural ethos. He has often claimed, in interviews and writings, that “November 1, 1956 will remain a black day in the history of Telangana.”
This date refers to the formation of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh on the basis of the Telugu language. The new state combined Telangana, which covered the Telugu districts of the former Hyderabad State, with the Telugu districts of British India. On that day, Urdu and Telugu were partitioned as two separate domains. Urdu’s cultural significance diminished in the cultural and political contexts of Andhra Pradesh.
I had the opportunity to ask Sadasiva about this provocative statement in person. He remarked:
Sadasiva believed that the standardization of Telugu on the model of coastal Telugu and its declaration as an “official language” was an act of dominance. As he said explicitly:
Sadasiva made it his mission to return to the vibrancy of pre-Police Action days, when Telugu and Urdu cultures shared a history and linguistic boundaries were not as thick. His autobiography, Yaadi (from the Urdu Yaad – Memory), fondly reminisced and documented the Urdu-Telugu engagements of this time.
It was first serialized through Vartha, one of the largest circulated Telugu daily newspapers, between 2002 and 2003, as an autobiographical column. Lasting for 55 weeks, it was well received for its retrieval of Hyderabad State’s cultural history by discussing Urdu literary figures between 1930s and 1950s.
Source: lokabhiramam.blogspot
In my conversation with Sadasiva, I also asked him about the usage of categories such as “Hindu” and “Muslim” to describe language. He said:
Sadasiva elaborates on many such experiences of religious segregation that developed in the context of Police Action and its aftermath. As for Gupta and Dasarathi, so too for Sadasiva, those were intense moments in his life that shaped his worldview.
In fact, Gupta, Dasarathi, and Sadasiva reflect multiple dimensions of the same story: Urdu’s utopian promise of an egalitarian and progressive future. For these three figures, Urdu was not a marker of religious difference or alienation. It was the symbol and medium of a composite society with pluralist values. This was the beauty of Hyderabadi tehzeeb.
Throughout their lives, these men drew inspiration from Urdu to articulate hopes of political liberty and freedom. Despite the fact that their life stories and careers were deeply grounded in the specific history of the 1930s and 1940s, their experiences remain relevant more than ever in the face of rising linguistic and religious nationalisms and growing anti-Muslim sentiment.
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