Descended from the Kakatiya and Vijayanagar kingdoms, a discreet group of Hindu kings flourished in what is now modern-day Telangana. Surviving into the colonial era, these samasthan kingdoms found new and creative ways to survive in the Nizam’s Dominions, while simultan-eously negotiating with the British powers situated at Hyderabad, Madras, and beyond. Rejecting simplified notions of ‘civilizational clashes’, this book argues for a new perspective on power relations in nineteenth and twentieth-century Hyderabad State.