The last Nizam of Hyderabad (r. 1911-1948), Mir Osman Ali Khan was called the architect of modern Hyderabad. Indeed, many buildings were constructed during his reign, but he, personally, was neither the patron nor the designer of any significant site. What specifically, then, is gained by the claim of being an "architect" of a "modern" city?

How did the Nizam's government play with colonial values embedded in the professional practice of architects and planners to negotiate a new kind of political identity?

I analyze key issues claimed by the three building programs that defined Hyderabad's new urban landscape. In grand new forms and in showy locations, Hyderabad housed those institutions such as courts, hospitals, libraries, and schools that were already functioning in non-monumental settings. The Riverfront scheme (1915-1925) displayed a "progressive" government, inseparable from the land itself. The two long-term projects of a lengthy Mainstreet facade, Pathergatti (1915-1940) and a new suburban settlement at Osmania University (1915-1938) attempted to represent a synthesis between an Indian region and a polity of an Islamic world. In all three examples, urban location, traditional political rituals and architecture's capacity to represent new identities came together to display a new political vision. As coalitions in the capital struggled to position the state for the future, the professional discourse of patronage and design became instrumental as the government attempted to claim status as an independent state amidst the empire's end.