From the annexation of the princely state of Hyderabad in September 1948 to the formation of Andhra Pradesh in 1956 and the eventual creation of Telangana in 2014—these broad brushstrokes of Hyderabad's history are well-documented. What has long been missing, however, is the perspective of the people, the different communities who lived through these upheavals—the communal violence of Independence and Partition, the push for a linguistic re-imagination of the state and its bifurcation, the long-drawn-out struggle for statehood—and those who were forced to adapt to a rapidly changing India.

For the first time, Daneesh Majid brings their stories to light. Drawing from generational interviews, oral histories, literature in Urdu and English and his own personal experiences, he drafts a modern history of Hyderabad. A work of this scale and size has never been attempted before and The Hyderabadis promises to open new doors to the former kingdom's past and future.