In the end, when the clouds of ignorance were dispersed we saw clearly that, as in many other cases, the Pirana dispute was not exactly a Hindu versus Muslim conflict. According to the Hindu nationalist reconstruction of Indian History (curiously initiated by the British author James Tod), Maharana Pratap, the Hindu ruler of Mewar (present Rajasthan), was fighting a battle against the Mughal emperor Akbar for the liberation of the Hindu Nation from the tyranny of Muslim rule.5l Although this version is still unfortunately the most popular, the facts, as recorded by non-sectarian historians, are somewhat different: on one side we have the rebellious Pratap helped by an army of equally rebellious Muslim Pathans (Afghans), on the other the ambitious Hindu Raja of Amber sent by the none less ambitious Akbar. Instead of the supposedly eternal Hindu-Muslim enmity, we have thus a battle for territory and power between two coalitions whose religious identity is of little concern. Somewhat similarly, the following facts were gradually revealed to us after a few meetings with the above-mentioned “third power”: there were Muslim Sayyids siding with the Hindu Patels and their elected Kaka, and Hindu Patels supporting the protesting Sayyids. So it was not a game opposing the “white” Patels to the “black” Sayyids.

If we had not known earlier of the existence of the “invisible Guru” we would probably never had met him, as neither the Patels, nor the Kaka and not even the Sayyids had made the slightest allusions to him. His photograph did not appear anywhere, contrary to the ubiquitous picture of the Hindu Acharya and there was no trace of his existence either in the new “official” literature. The Sayyids had finally acknowledged his existence when answering, rather reluctantly, our question: “and what about Pirzada Shamsuddin (the heir of Imamshah who claims to be the sajjada-nishďn)? They preferred not to talk about him as he had treacherously “passed over to the enemy”.

This was not at all surprising if one knew, as we later discovered, that the ignored Pirzada had supported Karsan Das, the present Kaka, during the 1987 election to the gaddď while the opposing Sayyids, who had proposed another man, Pachan Kaka as their candidate, had been defeated. So after aIl, if Karsan Das had behind him an invisible Sayyid the rebellious Sayyyids had their hidden Kaka.

The Pirzada’s address and phone numbers had been supplied to one of us by one Ismaili informant. We called, started to talk in Hindi and were answered in flawless English: you can come tomorrow at one o’clock ...His office (the seat of the Pirana Gurukul Education Trust) was located in a lane near one of the main streets of Ahmedabad, crowded with smaller and bigger shops, bustling with incessant traffic. We were ushered into a tiny room where we were welcomed by a neat late middle-aged man wearing a coat and a shirt in the Western fashion, sitting behind a desk like a businessman or the manager of a modern company. We were to meet him three more times and these sessions would extend over long hours. He was like the director of a theatre who would reveal to us the secret mechanisms behind the stage.

His father, Sayyid Ahmad Ali Kakhi, has been a prominent writer of the Satpanth and most of the copies of his works which had not been sold or given to the Satpanthi disciples were piled up in the famous locked chamber of Pirana, waiting for better times. Luckily for us, we were able to acquire a few of them which the Pirzada kept in his own store, at Ahmedabad. Shamsuddin said:

However, our informant admitted that the greatest danger was coming from the various fundamentalist bodies which attempted to draw the members of the sect into the orbit of Hindutva. Some villagers had already, under their influence, started to abandon the “True Path”, taken over a portion of the land attached to the original shrine and started their own temples with idol worship. The dividing line between the cult of the specifically Satpanthi Niskalanki Narayan (the tenth incarnation of Vishnu) performed in the nirgun way without the presence of an image 52 and the worship of Lakshmi- Narayan, who was a pan-Hindu modern form of the Brahmanical Vishnu, represented by an idol, could be wafer thin. But a greater peril was looming ahead. Karsan Das was ambitious. There was no denying that he had made a hazardous rapprochement with the VHP and its allies, although it had been allegedly done for taqiyya purposes; that is to protect his followers and prevent the eventual dissolution of the Satpanth. Being thus recognised and approved, in its new revised version, by the exponents of Hindutva, the sect founded by Imamshah could survive and its “humble servant” (kaka in Persian) would be promoted to the rank of a real Acharya Maharaj, in other words one of the leading Sants of the VHP. But now the enemy was within. “I had told him not to go so far ...” declared the Pirzada. But he himself never intervened directly, for fear of communal riots. He thought it wise to sit here, silently pulling the strings through letters, phone calls and meetings with the various personalities of the political world who were his friends. He went to Pirana only three times a year. In other words he was himself obliged to practice taqiyya ...

Shamsuddin was perfectly aware of the historical link of his sect with the Nizari branch of Ismailism which developed in the subcontinent. The PirS who are also revered by the Khojas, such as Shams or Sadruddin, he explained, were all Satpanthis. After Kabiruddin there had been a split: according to him those who were to be known as Aghakhani Khojas drifted away from the “True Path” while Imam Shah’s line remained faithful to the original religious message. What was amazing, though, was that the Pirzada insisted on the fact that he, also, was a Sunni, that the tradition was a Sunni (Sufi) one, and that the influence of Shiism came much later ...

Karsan Das, he explained, was a Guru only in the sense of religious teacher, he was not like a real Pir, 53 which only a physical and spiritual heir of Imam Shah could be. However, he knew aIl the secrets of the Satpanth, including its Muslim elements, perfectly weIl. ln the Satpanth and its very conception of metahistory (as, we thought in the Nizari Khoja tradition) Islam and Hinduism were closely interwoven. For instance, among the descendants of Krishna (the Imam of the time in the Dwapar Yuga in Hindustan) who went to Arabia were Muhammad, Ali and aIl their sons and grandsons.

SO there were various stages of initiation: from the basic ritual through which each Satpanthi child was integrated into his community to these more esoteric phases which enabled him to obtain the “ultimate” knowledge. But even the murid who had gone successfully through these stages kept bis earlier appearance, his customs, his Hindu name etc.

These words, as we almost immediately realized, were of exceptional importance: in fact it amounted to acknowledging the fact that these Hindu murids were Guptis (a term which had been used by the Sayyids as well). However, it must be stressed that Shamsuddin denied that the process could be called “conversion”: embracing the Satpanth and acceding to its ultimate revelation did not amount to being “converted”. One remained Hindu, Sunni or Shia nonetheless.

Shamsuddin, the “invisible Pir”, had decided to let the players go on without interfering directly: