No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Going to the cinema: princely urbanism in Hyderabad and Secunderabad
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 October 2022
Abstract
The experience of the urban in nineteenth-century Hyderabad was interwoven with the experience of modern technologies like film. Cinema participated in constituting a modern public; practices of film viewing were practices of enacting the modern. Through a study of conflicts in the space of cinema, this article examines the politics of constituting and controlling the urban in the princely city of Hyderabad and the cantonment town of Secunderabad. It suggests that the princely modern adapted new technologies but was rooted in patrimonial traditions. The article also argues that the cantonment had a dependency relationship with the princely city, and urban space as constituted through cinema was the site of power negotiations between the princely ruler and the British.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press
References
1 Kaviraj, S., ‘An outline of a revisionist theory of modernity’, European Journal of Sociology/Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 46 (2005), 497–526Google Scholar.
2 J. Nair, Mysore Modern: Rethinking the Region under Princely Rule (Minneapolis, 2011).
3 Lanzillo, A., ‘Printing princely modernity: lithographic design in Muslim-ruled princely states’, South Asian Popular Culture, 16 (2018), 245–52Google Scholar.
4 Bhukya, B., ‘Between tradition and modernity: Nizams, colonialism and modernity in Hyderabad state’, Economic and Political Weekly, 48 (2013), 120–5Google Scholar.
5 Stephen Hughes writes that the introduction of new forms of transport coincided with the beginning of cinema in Chennai. He notes that cinema houses were the destinations within urban geography, and terms transport and cinemas as ‘conspicuous signs of colonial modernity’. S. Hughes, ‘Urban mobility and early cinema in Chennai’, in A.R. Venkatachalapathy (ed.), Chennai, Not Madras: Perspectives on the City (Mumbai, 2006), 39–48.
6 Manishita Dass writes that cinema played an important role in not just constituting a public sphere but extending it beyond the urban. She points out that spectatorship was a site of imagining community as well as asserting social hierarchies. M. Dass, Outside the Lettered City: Cinema, Modernity, and the Public Sphere in Late Colonial India (New York, 2016), 79.
7 William Mazarella, for instance, writes that cinema created a moral panic among the British authorities and the indigenous elites in India. Cinema was thought to be a lowly engagement that would corrupt the young, the unlettered and the women. W. Mazarella, ‘Making sense of cinema in late colonial India’, in R. Kaur and W. Mazarella (eds.), Censorship in South Asia. Cultural Regulation from Sedition to Seduction (Bloomington, 2009), 63–86.
8 Ibid., 64.
9 Ibid., 65.
10 K. Bhaumik, ‘The emergence of the Bombay film industry, 1913–1936’, University of Oxford Ph.D thesis, 2001.
11 R. Chatterjee, ‘Journeys in and beyond the city: cinema in Calcutta, 1897–1939’, University of Westminister Ph.D. thesis, 2011.
12 S.P. Hughes, ‘Is there anyone out there? Exhibition and the formation of silent film audiences in South India’, University of Chicago Ph.D. thesis, 1996.
13 Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willeman's Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema does not have many entries on film in the princely states. A. Rajadhyaksha and P. Willeman, Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema (New York, 2014).
14 Kaushik Bhaumik has pointed out that the frame of the nation dominates the historiography of film. He calls out to study film as a part of the urban. Bhaumik, ‘Emergence of the Bombay film industry’.
15 I have illustrated elsewhere that all histories of film in Hyderabad have been written in the mode of writing a pre-history of linguistic state, i.e. all histories only refer to the Telugu cinema. C.Y. Krishna, ‘Film in the princely state: the Lotus Film Company of Hyderabad’, Wide Screen, 8 (2019).
16 Stephen Hughes also questions the association of a particular language with film. He argues that most people working in early cinema came from different geographical locations and early cinema cannot be given a linguistic association. S.P. Hughes, ‘What is Tamil about Tamil cinema’, South Asian Popular Culture, 8 (2010), 213–29. Lisa Mitchell traces the making of the Telugu linguistic identity and argues that the linguistic identity was a result of the political process. L. Mitchell, Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue (Bloomington, 2009).
17 I.V. Rao, ‘Aravai ella Telugu Talkie’, in R. Muddali (ed.), Aravai ella Telugu Cinema (Hyderabad, 1994), 1–37.
18 It was also the capital of the Qutb Shahi dynasty from 1591 to 1687. See Shah Mansoor Alam's classification of different phases of the city: S.M. Alam, Hyderabad–Secunderabad (Twin Cities). A Study in Urban Geography (Bombay, 1965).
19 Telangana State Archives (TSA)/SR/F 276 943/40, letter from the Resident at Hyderabad, 27 Jul. 1938.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 ‘Vaudeville conditions in faraway places’, The Billboard, 1 Nov. 1924.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Barbara Ramusack has argued that the princes were often caricatured as Oriental despots and this served to create legitimacy for British rule. I extend her argument to the sphere of urban; the princely city was often thought to be ‘backward’ compared to the colonial city. B.N. Ramusack, The Indian Princes and Their States (Cambridge, 2004).
28 TSA, Garrison Directory, Sep. 1936.
29 British Library, Private Papers, MSS Eur F226/5, memoirs of former members of the Indian Political Service or their wives. Major T.E. Brownsdon worked in Quetta Valley-Indian Army, 1932.
30 India Office Records (IOR), PSD/P. 4543/1926.
31 Deane Heath writes about the cult of gentlemen. She argues that the idea of gentlemanly behaviour originated in the rise of industrial capitalism in the late eighteenth century where aesthetic judgment and taste were markers of social distinction. High culture was ‘predicated on rational disinterested pleasure’ and low culture was ‘predicated on pleasures of the appetite’. D. Heath, Purifying Empire. Obscenity and the Politics of Moral Regulation in Britain, India and Australia (Cambridge, 2010), 41.
32 Ibid.
33 Margrit Pernau writes that there was a lot of emphasis on the cultivation of a cultured individual through the specific refinement of manners and patronage of art as a noble. A noble was also valued if he participated in artistic pursuits. She notes that encouragement of artists was more important than financial assistance, thus qualifying the nature of patronage. M. Pernau, The Passing of Patrimonialism: Politics and Political Culture in Hyderabad 1911–1948 (New Delhi, 2000).
34 Ibid.
35 IOR/PSD/P. 4543/1926, letter from W.P. Barton to Sir John Thompson, 9 Nov. 1926.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid.
38 IOR/PSD/P. 4543/1926, note by Mr Garrett (Political Department), 13 Dec. 1926.
39 TSA/SR/F 276 943/40.
40 TSA, Simla Records (SR), Political Department (PD), F. No. 65-I.B. (Secret) of 1939.
41 See R. Peckham and D.M. Pomfret (eds.), Imperial Contagions: Medicine, Hygiene, and Cultures of Planning in Asia (Hong Kong, 2013).
42 See R. Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity (Berkeley and London, 2004).
43 Ibid.
44 W.J. Glover, Making Lahore modern: Constructing and Imagining a Colonial City (Minneapolis, 2008).
45 TSA/AB/RO/F. No. 367/1945.
46 TSA/SR/PD/F. No. 65-I.B.
47 Ibid.
48 The British referred to the rule of princely states as Mughlai. Ramusack writes that this was used as a derogatory term to present the princely states as backward states. Ramusack, The Indian Princes.
49 As seen in the case of the British Cinema, restricting access of the Hyderabadis made the cinema financially unviable.
50 W. Ernst and B. Pati (eds.), India's Princely States. People, Princes and Colonialism (London, 2007).