Postcards from Hyderabad—stories Europeans told about the city

The Print

a day ago

This article, however, is less about the politics of representation—though those debates are in your face and inevitably seep into the conversation. The ghost of the Edwardian nazar (postcolonial gaze) lingers in the corners, impossible to ignore. My intention here is somewhat different: above all else, this is an essay about Hyderabad , a city that has joined the places I now carry with me. What forms the basis of imperial fascination with Hyderabad? Which 'lives' of the city are deemed worthy of remembrance ? (As a brief aside, it is worth noting that the word souvenir derives from the Latin subvenire , meaning 'to occur to the mind,' or more simply, 'to remember.')
The postcards often featured the lifeworlds of the imperial subjects, reflecting the empire's unsurprising desire to 'see' its subjects and their worlds. Postcards became an apparatus of imperial representation. These images participated in the construction of what Palestinian-American academic and literary critic Edward Said might call an 'Orientalist mise-en-scène'—picturesque, passive, and eminently collectible. Although ostensibly epistolary, postcards were also ethnographic.
At its core, the idea of a postcard is deceptively simple: a portable visual object, often functioning as a souvenir of place, memory, or moment. Between the 1890s and the 1920s was a period now called the 'postcard boom'. Enabled by improvements in lithographic printing, postal reforms, and the growing mobility of bodies and images across empires, the postcard emerged as the perfect distillation of modernity: portable, pictorial, and public.
A postcard is often a declaration of 'I have been here'. The idea of coupling an image with proof of presence is hardly unfamiliar to a generation fluent in Instagram stories. Curiously, a postcard from the early 20th century (reproduced below) contains this very declaration as its caption. Issued by A. Abid & Company of Hyderabad, it features a panoramic view of the Nizam's Charminar Palace, surrounded by a reservoir, garden, palm tree, and a fountain. This palace was also the residence of Albert Abid, an Armenian-origin Chamberlain to the Nizam and owner of the postcard firm, along with his wife Annie. Hyderabadis will know 'Abids' as a commercial complex that continues to stand on over 150 years of local history. Albert and Annie enjoyed being in close quarters to the Nizam, but their curious life and story is one for another telling.
Abid & Co. was a major local player in Hyderabad's postcard trade, curating an impressive collection that showcased the city's iconic landmarks: Charminar, Golconda Fort, Mecca Masjid, among others. Globally, however, the dominant player was Raphael Tuck & Sons, a London-based publisher renowned for its lavish, hand-tinted postcards and its close ties to the British royal family, distributing imperial imagery across continents. Hyderabad was not as much a darling of the Raphael Tuck &Sons catalogue as Calcutta, Bombay, or Madras. Even so, the postcard's memorialisation of Hyderabad forms the ground for thoughtful scholarship.
One postcard that I find particularly fascinating is titled 'Hyderabad. Arms Sellers'. It was released in 1908 by Raphael Tuck & Sons, as part of their 'Native Life in India Series II'.
The richly coloured postcard paints the princely state of Hyderabad through a lens of exoticism and martial nobility. Three dark-skinned men, wearing richly hued turbans and flowing garments, seated amid a gleaming display of curved swords and weaponry. The postcard perfectly confirmed Orientalist fantasies, a place where swords gleamed and men wore colourful turbans. Hyderabad was historically notable for its tradition of arms manufacturing and trading, particularly during the Nizam's rule in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The city had a substantial presence of arms dealers, such as the Rafiq Armoury, which was established in 1872 and remains one of the oldest arms and ammunition dealerships in India for over 150 years. By 1908, when this postcard was produced, the world had already entered an era of mechanised warfare dominated by sophisticated European weapons. Yet here, in this carefully curated image of Hyderabad, the weapons of choice are still curved swords. In contrast, the British Empire's power by this time rested on far more 'sophisticated' terms: technological superiority, standardised artillery, and an industrialised army.
Equally fascinating is the caption that accompanies the postcard. The caption reads 'Arms Sellers, Hyderabad. Hyderabad, the capital of the state of the same name, is celebrated for its swords and other arms. The population, which is about 500,000, consists of mixed elements, and is full of warlike spirit and nearly everyone carries a weapon. Hyderabad is one of the greatest centers of Mohammedanism in India.' The caption appears to be saying a lot about the city in general. It is presented as a repository of martial tradition and religious identity. The mention of 'warlike spirit' and a population where 'nearly everyone carries a weapon' lends the image of curious fascination about civilised primitivism. The reference to Hyderabad as 'one of the greatest centers of Mohammedanism in India' also flattens the city for an European viewership who would have read 'Mohammedan' as a marker of both exotic difference and imperial anxiety.
It is also fairly evident that these arms sellers are framed not as individuals, but as representatives of a type: the exotic native warrior, purveyor of arms, vestige of a fading martial culture. This discussion on typification grants up a good point of entry into the next postcard, perhaps one of the most popular recipient of the Edwardian postcolonial nazar— The Nautch Girls of India. This one from Hyderabad stands apart for one primary reason—it attributes a name to the nautch girl. Miss Chanda of Hyderabad. On the surface, it might appear as if the nomenclature resists genrefication of Miss Chanda. The story is a little more complicated than that.
Miss Chanda is dressed in a richly detailed outfit: a lavender skirt with gold ornamentation, a white dupatta, and a tightly-fitted bodice, all pointing toward a culture of princely luxury and Islamic court traditions. There is a hint of feminine grace and affluence in the image. But of course, she is not just Miss Chanda—she is Miss Chanda of Hyderabad. Her identity is inseparable from the exotic geography she is meant to evoke. The title alone transforms her from an individual into a representative type, a kind of visual ethnography meant to educate or titillate a foreign audience. Much like the portraits of arm sellers and street scenes, this image offers a version of Hyderabad through its people—yet what it frames is not Miss Chanda's life, but her legibility as an object of curiosity.
If Miss Chanda was granted partial visibility through the privilege of a name—only to be reabsorbed into the grammar of exotic femininity—then the next figure's visibility was never in question. Possibly the earliest known postcard of a named Indian ruler (with several to follow) features Mahboob Ali Khan, Asif Jah VI, the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad, and one of the richest men in the world at the time.
This postcard marks a shift from anonymous 'types' discussed so far, to named power. But it does so on very specific colonial terms. The Nizam is dressed in full court regalia, the embroidery on his coat ornate, his belt tight across his waist, a heavily jewelled cap crowning his head. The postcard is highly stylised, composed like a studio portrait. The paradox that we must not forget is that despite his opulence and sovereign authority, he is a part of a collection titled 'Souvenir of East Indies', built for exotic European consumption.
Also read: What makes someone a Hyderabadi—Irani chai, biryani, Nizam nostalgia, or Dakhni?
Bazaars, Boats & Buildings
The human figure was not the only object of fascination. The city's monuments, too, featured prominently in this visual archive. A series of postcards from the early 20th century turns its gaze toward Hyderabad's architectural grandeur, most notably the Charminar, the Golconda Fort, and the Mecca Masjid.
Each of these postcards, whether of streets, mosques, palaces, or tombs, offers a distinct image of the city. Hyderabad, The Char Minar by Johnston & Hoffmann (Kolkata, c. 1903), for instance, is less about the iconic monument itself and more about the bustling bazaars and the sea of curious onlookers that fill the frame. The bustling bazaars of Hyderabad form the subject of Street at Hyderabad by Unknown Publisher, c. 1905, and the famous Sarojini Naidu poem that reads:
'What do you sell, O ye merchants?
Richly your wares are displayed.
Turbans of crimson and silver,
Tunics of purple brocade,
Mirrors with panels of amber,
Daggers with handles of jade.'
– Sarojini Naidu, In the Bazaars of Hyderabad
In The Mosque of Machii-Kaman by Austrian artist Josef Hoffmann, the stock elephant and the lively figures in the courtyard animate the centre of the frame. Possibly the earliest known postcard of Hyderabad, it was created by Hoffmann during his visit to India in 1893–94, when he was in his sixties. In contrast, the postcard titled Tombs at Golconda, Hyderabad adopts a more pastoral tone: a boat gently approaching the rocky shore, softening the memory of empire into picturesque leisure—into a scenic tourist fantasy.
These postcards draw a picturesque theatre of the exotic. Hyderabad becomes a living museum, ready for the European gaze and imagination. What then remains of these images, more than a century later? For all their colonial underpinnings, they also inadvertently preserve a trace of local memory: a glimpse of a street, a face, a forgotten name. To read these postcards today is to inhabit a complicated temporality—one in which the empire looks, but we, too, look back. This essay, then, is not an attempt to salvage truth from image, nor to dismantle colonial visuality in totality. These postcards may have once said, 'I have been here,' but today they ask instead, 'What was here—and for whom?'
(Note: All postcards have been sourced from online blogs and archives. The following set is drawn from Paper Jewels, a free-access postcard collection: Miss Chanda of Hyderabad; Arms Sellers, Nizam von Hyderabad; The Char Minar; In the Mosque of Machii-Kaman; Tombs at Golconda, Hyderabad; James Bazaar Street, Secunderabad; and Street at Hyderabad.)
Souvik Nath recently completed a Master's degree in English Literature from the University of Hyderabad. His research interests centre on colonial modernity and its textual manifestations. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)