When the Musi Remembers: From 1908 to Today’s Flooded Hyderabad

Hyderabadis have always dreaded the month of September for many reasons—some too sensitive to be spelled out here—but none rival the torment of the merciless southwest monsoon. On the night of September 28, 1908, the city endured one of the most catastrophic floods in its history. The Musi River, swollen after days of torrential rain, tore through Hyderabad’s heart. Thousands perished, entire neighbourhoods vanished, and the city’s imagination of itself was changed forever. This was not the first time there were such horrific floods in the Musi, records date back to the 1620s when the Musi flooded the city of Hyderabad on its southern bank during the rule of Abdullah Qutb Shah. Since then, there are records of ‘great’ floods each century, and with climate change these once-in-a-century events have increased significantly. 

Each year, this memory is kept alive beneath the shade of the historic tamarind tree inside Osmania General Hospital, which once sheltered 150 people from the deluge. Activists and history enthusiasts gather here, while newspaper columns recall the reforms that followed—Sir M. Visvesvaraya’s vision for flood control, the building of Osman Sagar and Himayat Sagar, the flood banks, and the clearing of settlements from the river’s path. These are remembered as milestones in Hyderabad’s journey toward modern urban planning. It is important to note that even before Visvesvaraya’s plan, there were other infrastructure projects to prevent the flooding of Hyderabad, some from the Qutb Shahi period as well! Yet, more than a century later, much of that vision has been undone.

But what’s striking is that despite the construction of Osman Sagar and Himayat Sagar to tame the river, the city today still faces urban flooding—though of a very different nature. The 1908 floods were riverine, caused by the Musi’s natural overflow, while today’s floods are largely urban, caused by blocked drainage systems, loss of tanks, encroachments on natural waterways, and excessive concretisation. In a sense, Hyderabad has traded one kind of vulnerability for another: from a natural river system overflowing its banks to a man-made drainage crisis that overwhelms the city almost every monsoon.

The reservoirs still provide drinking water and some measure of flood control, but the Musi itself no longer commands the respect it once did. At its confluence with the Esi, where devotees once bathed on the festival of Dupki Punnam, the tradition has faded—the waters are now too foul to stand beside, let alone enter. From untreated sewage and effluents to municipal waste, the Musi carries the city’s refuse, not its reverence. Between the Sangam and Puranapul, where Visvesvaraya’s planned riverfront began, abattoirs, cremation grounds, and entire colonies dump waste unchecked.

In the historic stretch from Puranapul to Chaderghat, little remains of the carefully imagined riverfront. The parkways have disappeared, civic buildings are hidden behind walls, and access to the river is nearly impossible. Ironically, the old bridges still stand firm, while newer ones crumble. At Chaderghat, the Imlibun—once a vast tamarind grove—was first erased for a bus station in the 1980s, then further carved up in the 2010s by a concrete metro hub planted right in the middle of the river, strangling its channels into narrow, stagnant flows.

Today, the Musi is often dismissed as nothing more than a nala by journalists and Hyderabadis alike. But come September, when the monsoon swells its waters, the river asserts itself, rising with fury and reclaiming its floodplains. Modern colonies and informal settlements alike find themselves submerged. And in those brief, waterlogged days, Hyderabad is forced to remember that this “nala” is not merely a conduit for sewage—it is a living river, the city’s artery to the Krishna, and it will not be forgotten.

It is time, however, that Hyderabad thinks about the Musi every day—not only when its waters rise to drown colonies and bridges or for creating new mega-riverfronts designed by foreign architects. To treat the river as a seasonal threat is to ignore its place at the city’s heart. Respecting the Musi, restoring its dignity, and learning once more to live with it is the only way forward.

More about Musi, its floods and its intertwined history with the city in our upcoming book (which should release soon)