Should the alliance struck by Karsan Kaka with the Sangh Parivar and his active membership in the VHP be seriously considered as a modem form of taqiyya? One bas to remember only the legendary Ismaili PifS of Hindustan concealing themselves under the guise of Yogis (some of them may have even become members of the Nath sect) or Sufis, in the latter case even taking formal initiation into some “orthodox” tarïqa to see that this may not be so absurd as it seems.54

Whatever the truth, one cannot deny that the “Saffron Brigade”, on its side, has set for itself very clear goals. Having produced another version of the earlier Aryasamaji suddhï,55 the dharm parivatran, it continues to function as a “factory for conversions of various communities to (their form of) Hinduism” .56 According to the protesting Sayyid Party, the events which look place at Ayodhya on 6 December 1992 were like a starting signal for the Hindu hardliners: they would not (or could not after the destruction of the Babri Masjid) demolish the mosque at Pirana; instead, they began a slower process of undermining. They prompted the Kaka to cul ils electricity and water supply, and to forbid the Sayyids to have access to the common kitchen, forcing them to start their own separate langar. The Sayyids also started to perform the ghat-pat ritual separately. Since the BJP had formed the government in Gujarat the Sangh Parivar could act much more freely. If one believes the representatives of the Sadaat Committee, it was also in 1992 that the Akhil Bharatya Sant Parishad, an organisation within the VHP, met at Sarsa Gurugadi, district Kheda.

Karsan Kaka had become the president of the Parishad (henceforth ABSP) for the Western zone. It is said that the committee decided at that time to expurgate Islamic symbols and traditions from the Satpanth. The next meeting of the ABSP which was the ninth one, look place in Jaipur and for the venue of the tenth one Pirana was selected. In 1995 another extraordinary event occurred, the Bharatiya Vedic Dharm Samelan which met near Mumbai. There the ambitious Kaka, who decidedly emerged as a powerful exponent of the Rindutva ideology, was seen, on a photograph, nearly band in band with none other than the working president of the VRP himself Ashok Singhal. There the triumph of the Acharya of Pirana was total when “a number of doubts concerning the sect were cleared up” and the Satpanth tradition was declared to be one of the many “Vedic sampradayas” (religious traditions) of India. To celebrate the victory of Hinduism there was a magnificent procession where the Guru of the Satpanthis was seen majestically seated on an elephant. Eventually in May 1997 in the Gujarati province of Kutch the thirteenth session of the ABSP commemorated as a grand event the tenth anniversary of the election of Karsan Das. This event as well as the Vedic Samelan are the subject of a special issue of the magazine Satpanth Joyti and of a commemorative volume issued at Pirana. Both the volume and the magazine are abundantly illustrated and among the religious leaders and political personalities one can identify prominent members of the Saffron Brigade.57 ln the light of these events it is easier to understand the project of the temple cum gurukul, the transformation of the dholia of Imam Shah into a puja khand, the release of expurgated and revised versions of the Satpanthi literature etc.

Actually, it is possible to view the whole issue in more than one light: the VHP and its supporters may think that they have drawn back those “syncretic Hindus” into the fold of Hinduism by forcing them to eliminate the Islamic elements or persuading them that their tradition had always been Hindu but had been distorted and misconstrued by the Muslims.58 A leader of the Swami Narayan sect linked to the VHP,59 for example, goes as far as to declare that, every doubt should be dispelled. Imam Shah was never a Muslim, he was barn in a Hindu Brahmin family60 but had to conceal his identity under an Islamic guise for fear of persecution. Here it will not be out of place to mention a similar phenomenon: the re-Hinduised followers of the Nizar panth in Rajasthan, faced with the difficult problem of revering a Muslim Pir named Shams reconstructed his story explaining that he was in reality a Brahmin saint who dressed as a fakir to avoid being killed by the Muslims!61 One cannot help thinking that this “inverted” case of taqiyya has been inspired by the original tradition of Ismaili taqiyya.

Ultimately it is difficult to decide who among the “Hindu” Satpanthi followers who have joined the ranks of the VHP sincerely performs the Ismaili taqiyya as a faithful defender of the Imamshahi sect ...Some “Hindu” members of the sect claim to have on the contrary always concealed their identity to save Hinduism from the maltreatment of earlier Muslim rulers. Actually, the younger generations may not be aware of their islamic roots and of the meaning of taqiyya.