Who were the Khojas of the Sind, Cutch, Kathiawar and Gujarat areas who so enthusiastically received the Agha Khan Hasan Ali Shah as Imam when he came to the Bombay area? We are fortunate in having a pretty reliable document to help us. In November. 1866, Mr. Justice Arnould delivered judgment in the Bombay High Court on the case. -'Advocate General ex relatione Daya Muhammad, etc., plaintiffs, versus Muhammad Husen Huseni (otherwise called Aga Khan) and others. Defendants[7]. The learned Judge had some fairly poor European secondary sources to guide him but was critically aware of their weaknesses. At the same time, the plaintiffs and defendants put some first-rate historical and contemporary material in front of him. Arnould says the Khojas were originally Hindus of the trading class converted by Pir Sadruddin in Sind about four hundred years before. According to the information he had, the Pir was an Ismaili dai sent by Shah Islam Shah, the thirtieth Imam. Arnould considered that the word khoja means 'the honorable or worshipful person’ and ‘the disciple’. As applied to Pir Sadruddin’s community it amounts to ‘the honorable converts.' From Sind, according to the evidence before Arnould, the conversion spread into Cutch, thence into Kathiawar and through Gujarat to Bombay. As far as he know. the Khojas were all engaged either in retail trade or commerce, and doing well in both. As to numbers, there were 2,800 houses of families. in Sind, about 5,000 in Kathiawar. Arnould had no figures for Cutch and Gujarat but was sure the numbers there must be considerable. Most importantly for our purpose he adds 'in Zanzibar there are 450 Khoja families.' In Muscat there were four hundred and in Bombay he reckoned there were about l.400 families of which about four hundred were on the side of the plaintiffs, the rest with the Agha Khan. In his opinion, the struggle between the Agha Khan and the plaintiffs was confined to the Bombay area. 'to take an illustration ...from the evidence of witness XXIII it appears that 445 out of the 450 families who compose the Khoja community of Zanzibar have recently signed a paper of adhesion to the Aga and to the views he is understood to represent..

Already in 1866 the Ismaili Imami Khojas were well organized in the places where they existed. Arnould found that the basic Khoja community organization consisted of a jamaah (the adult males gathered in congregation) with a Mukhi (treasurer) and Kamaria (accountant) who held office for such time as they gave satisfaction. He found that besides local Mukhis and Kamarias. in Sind and Kaathiawar, at least, there were provincial officials who held office under the Imam. Their duty was to send contributions to the Imam: as far back as tradition took them, such contributions had been sent and pilgrimages to his seat had been made.

It is not easy to discover much from Arnould's judgement about the basic teachings of the Khoja Ismaili. Clearly the majority of them considered the Imam the descendant of the Prophet Muhammad and Hadrat Ali in whom special charisma rested. lts exact nature is not easy to ascertain. Arnould, basing himself on evidence put before him by the Agha Khan 's supporters, says that two points are of great importance with regard to the Khojas. First, there has been .the universal prevalence among the Ismailis of the practice of takia or concealment of religious opinion, secondly, their method of seeking to make converts by assuming to a great extent the religious standpoints of the person whom they desired to convert.' Of takia [taqiyyah] he says, it was mental reservation. Its Arabic root meaning is fear or caution, its full applied meaning concealment of a man's own religious opinions and adoption of alien religious forms. He says a Protestant in a Catholic country raising his hat or showing outward respect as the more solemn processions of the Romish Church pass by is takia, outward conformity, in order to avoid giving offence, or hurting the religious feelings of others.

In describing the teachings of Pir Sadruddin, Arnould mentions that the authorship or at least the introduction among the Khojas of the Dussautar (the Ten Incarnations) had been generally ascribed to this Pir. He speaks of it as the chief of the ancient religious books of the Khojas, read over them at the point of death and puhlicly read in their Jamatkhanas in India and the East. He asks what this book is, and answers that it has ten chapters containing the account of the ten avatars or incarnations. The first nine deal with the nine appearances of Vishnu and the tenth is concerned with the incarnation of the Most Holy Ali. It is this chapter which is alone nowadays seriously attended to. When that chapter is commenced, the congregation ...rises and remains standing till it is concluded, making profound reverences whenever the reader pronounces the name of the Most Holy Ali.'

At the same time Arnould had to deal with a fact that both sides were agreed on that in their funerals and marriages and in a number of other ways the Khojas followed the rites and practices of the Sunnis. He explains it as part of their 'takia’ in the face of Sunnï bigotry and compares the way in which dissenting couples often married in the established Church in England. He considered it would take all the Agha Khan's power as a leader to get these rites into Ismaïlï hands. It would not be unfair to describe Khoja Ismailism in its Sindi.

Gujarati, Cutchi and Kathiawari forms as originally a certain accommodation of Islam to Hindu culture and thought-forms. Young educated East African Ismailis look back and admit this but say that it was a temporary compromise which though it might last centuries, was bound to end in pure Islam. They consider the process would be easier against the East African background rather than in the Indian environment with its all-pervading Hinduism. It would be easier in a community forgetting its Gujarati, as the East African community is. But this is to anticipate, and we must return to the Khojas of the 1880s.