“The City Improvement Board and theMaking of Twentieth Century Hyderabad City”

The talk will examine the role onecritical urban institution played in the shaping of the city ofHyderabad in the twentieth century. The Hyderabad City ImprovementBoard (CIB) was created in 1912 by the Nizam's Government in the wakeof two catastrophic events that struck residents and spaces of theold walled city – 1908 Musa flood, and 1911 plague epidemic. TheBoard's administrators and engineers drew ideas and strategies forurban development from similar bodies in British India, the UK, andelsewhere. From the 1920s into the 1940s, the CIB intensivelyreshaped housing, roads, industry, public spaces, and the overallspatial layout and population distribution of the city. Theinstitution was converted into the AP Housing Board after 1956. Intoday's Hyderabad, it is a distant memory, but the CIB in its heydaypioneered many important urban initiatives. The talk will be ofinterest to people who wish to explore and reflect upon Hyderabad'surban history.

Bio: Eric Beverley is Associate Professor of History at State University of New York, Stony Brook, USA, where he teaches courses on South Asia, the Muslim world, colonial and postcolonial studies, and other topics. His research on modern and early modern South Asia and the Indian Ocean world examines topics ranging from sovereignty and the making of the global state system, to colonial urban studies and the history of law and crime, to transnational connections and urban diversity. His book, Hyderabad, British India, and the World: Muslim Networks and Minor Sovereignty, c. 1850-1950, was published by Cambridge University Press in the UK in 2015, with a South Asia edition from CUP-India in 2016.