Letters: Personal histories

Apropos M S Sriram’s review of October Coup: A Memoir of the Struggle for Hyderabad (“Bureaucrat on the burning deck,” June 15), I’d like to comment on two issues raised by the reviewer. He expresses mild disappointment that the book is not a review of high policy issues then in play: whether integration or independence was the appropriate policy for Hyderabad to pursue; whether police action was necessary; and whether, subsequently, the state should have been fragmented on linguistic lines. As he rightly points out, such issues have formed the basis of earlier works like the late Omar Khalidi’s Hyderabad After the Fall. But the author of these memoirs was collector of Osmanabad district in 1948. He was writing about his legitimate preoccupations, at his level, in a sensitive border district. The negotiations at the centre are not the main focus of the book. Rather, it is the repercussions of that process on the periphery, i e, at the district level and on the borders that is the main subject of the first part of the book. This different perspective illuminates some of the weaknesses of the Hyderabad government’s position. There is no reason why all accounts should deal with high policy. I would submit that the middle-management, district-level perspective adds to its value, and to our understanding of Hyderabad politics.

 

Moreover, the collector’s preoccupation with maintaining law and order in his district is not sufficiently appreciated by the reviewer. In troubled times, what is more important than that? Good government, justice... everything depends on order. In this context, the book provides a detailed first-person account of what it was like to be assailed simultaneously by the Islamist Razakars and the state Congress Party’s volunteers, both groups hell-bent on organised violence.

On my second point: it seems almost churlish to take up the reviewer for stating that he could see the book’s dramatic potential and that it could have been a “great piece of literature”. I think the author was anxious to provide a factual, not a dramatised account. He had enough difficulty getting the authorities to believe the facts without elaborating on them. He must be appreciated for providing a clear explanation of the aftermath of police action. How was it that obtaining justice suddenly became so difficult? He was not alone in experiencing this difficulty. Almost everyone associated with the fallen regime came under suspicion; they had all become the demonised “Other”.

There is, in short, much to appreciate and ponder about in the book. The reviewer is very kind but sometimes his desire for another kind of book prevents him from more fully appreciating what is in front of him.

Masood Hyder Scarsdale, NY (Editor of October Coup)

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