‘A time of chaos and delusion’: Zeenath Khan on her new novel set during the annexation of Hyderabad

Police Action in Hyderabad (1948), officially known as Operation Polo, was a swift Indian military operation launched by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s government to annex the princely state of Hyderabad. Lasting just five days, it ended the Nizam’s rule and formally integrated the state into the Indian Union.

Though largely forgotten for decades, the episode has recently drawn renewed attention from historians, writers, and political commentators. Among these efforts, Zeenath Khan’s debut novel, The Sirens of September, stands out as one of the first major works of fiction set in this turbulent period, offering readers a poignant, deeply researched portrayal of modern Hyderabad’s most defining moment.

Khan spent nearly eight years on the book, combining meticulous historical research with an intimate understanding of the city’s culture and traditions. Through the tragic love story of two youngsters from prominent families: Farishteh Ali Khan and Saleem El Edroos, she captures the political, emotional, and social upheavals of the late 1940s. Her fast-paced narrative, layered with authentic detail, revives a long-neglected chapter of Indian history for a new generation of readers.

Set between 1946 and 1948, the novel intertwines real and fictional characters, vividly reimagining one of modern India’s most dramatic transitions. From arms smuggler Sydney Cotton to the commander of Hyderabad’s army, General El Edroos (whom former viceroy Lord Wavell believed was competent enough to command all of independent India’s armed forces), the book uses real figures (and situations) to paint a rich portrait of a city on the brink of transformation.

Rediscovering an overlooked past

A freelance writer who divides her time between India and the US, Khan was inspired when her daughter brought home a book on Deccan history. “I grew up in this city and realised how little I knew about what truly happened,” she recalls. “I couldn’t have written a book like this about any other city, but I am familiar with Hyderabad’s customs, language and rhythms.”

Her research journey was exhaustive, including studying works like AG Noorani’s The Destruction of Hyderabad, Mir Laik Ali’s Tragedy of Hyderabad, General El Edroos’s memoir, and Anuradha Reddy’s Aviation in The Hyderabad Dominions, among others. She unearthed letters between Lord Mountbatten and Sir Walter Monckton at the British Museum in London, explored BBC archives, and combed through state records and crumbling newspaper copies from The Times of India, The Statesman and The Free Press Journal. Fortunately, Hyderabad’s oldest English newspaper, Deccan Chronicle, digitised its archives (from 1939), making referring to it much easier.

The novel’s strength lies in its rootedness in facts. From Sydney Cotton’s weapons smuggling to the atrocities committed by Kazim Rizvi’s razakars, and even minor details – cars running on ethyl alcohol because of petrol shortages and having to be manually pushed on slopes – many elements stem from historical accounts. Khan’s portrayal of the Nizam and his exchanges with his cabinet are equally grounded in archival truth.

Her nuanced depiction bridges memory and history, capturing both the political collapse and the fading grandeur of Hyderabad’s aristocracy. Incidents like Rizvi’s brutal attack on a pro-India newspaper editor, Shoebullah Khan, which reportedly enraged Nehru, or the Nizam’s tragic misjudgement under British influence, lend the narrative moral gravity and historical depth.

“It was a period of chaos and delusion,” Khan says. “Hyderabad’s integration with India was inevitable. The Nizam had been misled. The British had inflated his ego into believing there could actually be three nations: India, Pakistan, and Hyderabad.”

Operation Polo signalled the twilight of Hyderabad’s nobility. Once powerful nobles found themselves jailed, distrusted, and dispossessed after the city’s integration into the Indian Union. Stripped of privilege and purpose, many faced financial ruin – General El Edroos himself, once so intimate with the Nizam’s family that he gave his grandsons riding lessons, ended his days in modest quarters at the Bangalore Club.

Evoking a vanished world

Much of the book’s charm lies in its evocation of mid-20th-century Hyderabad: the jam sessions, ballroom dances, grand homes, and quiet romances that defined its aristocratic life. Drawing on family anecdotes and local folklore, Khan summons a lot of her own family’s memories and childhood stories she heard growing up into the narrative. Her grandmother hoarded jewellery in trunks under the bed, and her father was fanatical about table settings. Quirks like these make their way into the book, adding an anecdotal element to the story.

She also resurrects Hyderabad of the old: The Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb (increasingly under threat), summer trips to Ooty, and landmarks like St George’s Grammar School and the erstwhile Jagirdar’s College (now The Hyderabad Public School), both still standing as echoes of the past. Even the character of Saleem draws from a real-life figure: General El Edroos’s son, a dashing pilot.

History buffs will be glad to know that most of the places described still exist in the city, General Edroos’s art déco mansion or the King Kothi palace mentioned in the book still stands as a sentinel of the past Khan’s.

Why revisit Hyderabad’s story after seven decades? “To understand the present, we must confront the past,” Khan explains. “The city has transformed from being the capital of undivided Andhra Pradesh to now Telangana, and history helps us see how these shifts began.”

A significant addition to the growing corpus of Deccan literature, The Sirens of September masterfully balances fact and fiction, weaving a gripping chronicle of a fraught era with human tenderness. By interjecting a human element into a political movement, the reader is invested in the story while receiving a crash course in history.

For Khan, who nurtured this project for nearly a decade, its publication marks both closure and renewal. The walls of her study are covered with charts of character arcs, evidence of years spent living inside the world she was recreating

As for the haunting title, she smiles: “During my research, an older gentleman who was a child at the time told me he woke up in the pre-dawn hours of September 13, 1948, to the sound of sirens, and realised India had invaded.”

The Sirens of September, Zeenath Khan, Penguin India.