After the 1857 rebellion against British rule in India, British imperialists altered their mode of engagement with the princely states of India—from overt aggression exercised under the policy of “indirect rule” to restrained paternalism preached through a policy of “non-interference”. This paper seeks to illustrate how and why the goals of British imperialism evolved in the latter half of the 19th century. I undertake a case study of the largest princely state of India—Hyderabad—to illustrate that the Raj’s principle imperial agenda after 1857 was to domesticate and assimilate princely states within the colonial body politic. This was realized by rearticulating the tenets of ‘proper education’ for princely minors and selectively appropriating indigenous ritual idioms. In Hyderabad, I center the figure of the ‘princely minor’ Mehboob Ali Khan, the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad, whose minority from 1869-1884 became an opportune time for the British to reform and discipline him to mold him into an amenable ally. Leaving the policy of territorial conquest behind, after 1857, I argue that British imperialism had begun to envision novel ideological sites of colonialism.