Provincial democracy

The chapter tracks how anti-colonial nationalism inspired the democratic project of self-government in colonial India. By delving into the archives of provincial politics, it examines how anti-colonial calls for self-determination and proposals for federations shaped democratic culture in this region. The Telugu-speaking region, which crossed political boundaries between the princely state of Hyderabad and British India, has often been linked to the rise of linguistic nationalism in the early twentieth century and the linguistic reorganization of states in post-independence India. However, the chapter contends that there was a more complex history at the origins of Telugu nationalism. Calls for provincial autonomy and the language-based redrawing of boundaries led to the breakdown of large princely states such as Hyderabad. The idea of federation emerging from the British Indian provinces (in the guise of linguistic nationalism) came into direct conflict with the princely states’ version of federation into a multilingual cosmopolitan union. The chapter examines how, for British Indian provinces, the discourse of self-determination spoke directly to an idea of federation combining ideals of anti-colonial nationalism with the goals of self-government, while the princely state of Hyderabad maintained an ambivalent position with regard to federating with an independent India.