– Riasath Ali Asrar

Sometimes history doesn’t come wrapped in grand manuscripts or carefully preserved archives. Sometimes, it slips between the pages, quite literally. While cataloguing a completely unrelated book, we stumbled upon a surprising find – a fragment of a 1945 Hyderabad newspaper, casually repurposed as book-binding material. What was once junk paper now holds an entirely different weight – an archival value.

At first glance, it looked unremarkable, a browned, brittle scrap, torn and patched. But as we read through its faded lines, it began to speak of another time. There were announcements about “Hyderabad’s War Week” – grand military exhibitions at Fath-e-Maidan, railway notices from His Exalted Highness the Nizam’s State Railways, a quiet memorial to one Pandit Kishan Bashi – “beloved of the community and servant of the nation” – whose death year is mentioned as 1932, and a small public notice offered trading licenses to farmers on the borders of the erstwhile state of Hyderabad.

More intriguing was the structure of the page itself. It appears to be a collage, perhaps pasted together from more than one newspaper. The masthead belongs to one publication, the body to another. The visible words – Dakan, Hyderabad, Mashaheer – suggest a Deccan-centric paper. The date is presented in three calendar systems: 25 February 1945 (Gregorian), 24 Farwardi 1335 (Fasli), and 11 Rabi’ al-Awwal 1364 (Hijri) – a Sunday. In that calendrical layering, we glimpse the plural temporalities of princely Hyderabad state.

The year 1945 was particularly momentous. Globally, it marked the end of the World War II; and locally, it was the beginning of the Telangana Rebellion – a peasant uprising led by communists against the Nizam’s feudal order. Hyderabad State was not merely a spectator to world events – it was very much entangled in them. Its armed forces, under the command of Major General Syed Ahmed El Edroos, contributed troops to the British war effort; and Hyderabad’s extensive railway network, in that colonial period, playing a strategic role in moving men and materiel across regions and continents.

That military legacy goes much further back. In 1798, Richard Wellesley, then Governor-General of India, moved swiftly to dismantle the French-commanded corps under Monsieur Raymond in Hyderabad and formed the Nizam’s Contingent – a British-officered force loyal to both the British Crown and the Nizam. This new contingent fought Tippu Sultan at the decisive Battle of Seringapatam in 1799. By 1813, Sir Henry Russell raised the Russell Brigade – composed of Hindus from Oudh (Awadh) and nearby regions. Soon, additional battalions were formed – the Berar Infantry and the Elichpur Brigade, the latter raised by Nawab Salabat Khan.
By the mid-19th century, as Hyderabad drew closer into the orbit of British colonial power, the Nizam’s army – now eight battalions strong – was restructured into the Hyderabad Contingent, officially part of the British Indian Army. Its class composition shifted over time to include Kumaonis and Ahirs. Following the First World War, and the broader re-organisation of Indian forces, the 19th Hyderabad Regiment was born in 1923, absorbing earlier units like the 50th Kumaon Rifles. This regiment served with distinction in World War II. Then, in a quiet administrative renaming on 27 October 1945, just as the world was recalibrating itself post-war, it became the 19th Kumaon Regiment. After India’s independence from the British, and the annexation of Hyderabad through Operation Polo / Police Action – it was fully integrated into the Indian Army as the Kumaon Regiment – a name it carries to this day.

This entanglement with global conflict also highlighted Hyderabad’s strategic importance—especially its railways. Though the Great Indian Peninsula Railway (GIPR) – incorporated by the British Parliament in 1849 – had originally bypassed the Nizam’s dominions, British interests soon turned towards extending the line to Hyderabad. In 1870, an agreement was struck between Governor-General Lord Mayo and the VI Nizam Mir Mahboob Ali Khan – establishing what would become the Nizam’s State Railway. Though the capital came from Hyderabad’s coffers, the construction and management were firmly under British control, with oversight routed through the British Resident. By 1883, a new entity—the Nizam’s Guaranteed State Railway (NGSR)—was formed when Morton, Rose & Co. took over operations. While technically owned by the Nizam’s government, this company operated under heavily skewed terms – the Nizam had to provide infrastructure and annuities, while control remained largely with British board members based in London (Sardar Diler Jung Bahadur, the only exception, sat on the board).
Despite this imbalance, the railway system expanded rapidly. By the turn of the century, broad gauge connections linked Hyderabad with Bezwada and Madras, opening southern markets and strengthening commercial flows. The Hyderabad–Godavari line, launched in 1900, dramatically transformed the cotton economy of the Deccan plateau—ushering in industrial-scale ginning and shifting land use away from food grains towards cash crops. This infrastructural development came at a social cost, with rising grain prices and changing agrarian patterns affecting livelihoods in regions like Marathwada. By 1930, in the VII Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan’s period, the NGSR was nationalised under Hyderabad State’s direct control, with Sir Akbar Hydari as its president. But even then, British officers dominated the administration, and its headquarters remained in London, until the exigencies of World War II forced a relocation to Hyderabad in 1941. Following Hyderabad’s annexation by the newly independent India in 1948, NGSR was merged with the GIPR and other lines in 1951 to form the Central Railway.

(More on the third part of this fragment – the farmers – later…)

And so, from a fragment of newsprint, meant to be forgotten, stuffed between covers, we rediscover this arc of history. A princely state balancing sovereignty and subordination. A military force caught between empires. A community writing, remembering, and repurposing its everyday material culture — your morning paper, your grocery list, your ticket stub, ephemera now, archives later.