When one thinks of India's great princely states, the first name that comes to mind is of course Hyderabad - the largest, strongest, and most fantastically rich of those realms that swore their allegiance to the British Raj. And yet, though the former Nizam may have been possibly the richest man in the world, his subjects languished under a feudal system that was downright mediaeval - a state of affairs that lasted unchanged till the sudden, ignoble end of the Raj herself. Suddenly free from obligation to an imperial overlord, the Nizam attempted to seize his independence and march Hyderabad onto the world stage as a nation of its own - until the Indian National Army marched to his borders, and he realised that obligations were not all he had lost - there was no longer any British Army to protect him from his own subjects.

Now, Hyderabad exists as the grand capital of a nonexistent kingdom, the administrative centre of a state melding several linguistic minorities that seek to join states of their own majority or separate entirely, and a major centre of both Communist and (underground) HSS support within the Republic of India. With a reorganisation of West Indian states imminent, only time will tell what the future will bring for the city.