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The Passing of Patrimonialism: Politics and Political Culture in Hyderabad, 1911-- 1948. By MARGRIT PERNAU. Delhi: Manohar, 2000. x, 395 pp. Rs. 700.
For all the revolutions and reassessments that have taken place recently in South Asian history, there remains but little work dedicated to exploring the two-fifths of the subcontinent that comprised the so-called princely states of India. Margrit Pernau's The Passing of Patrimonialism, a translation of her 1992 German Verfassung and politische Kultur im Wandel, represents in its focus upon political culture in Hyderabad a welcome addition to the literature.
The central intervention of the work is the challenge it presents to the predominant view of princely states as static fossils, as, in Pernau's words, "flies-in-- amber" that rigidly held in place "traditional" political culture. To make this point, Pernau examines Hyderabad under the rule of Mir Osman Ali Khan, the last Nizam, contrasting this period with that of the previous, the rule of "the Beloved" Mahbub Ali Pasha, and that of the following, the time of the Telengana communist uprising, the rise of the "radical" Muslim party Ittehad ul Muslimin, and the military takeover by the Indian state. Tradition, she argues, is partially an invention of the present, that is, a reflection of the way the present interacts with the past. In this sense, tradition is very much linked with change, especially as it is employed to meet dynamic political circumstances. But the concept of tradition also connotes continuity, the maintenance...