kseeker wrote: ↑Tue Jul 02, 2019 2:20 am
Did the establishment act on information received from the students or was it just mere coincidence that these 4 gents were targetted.
It's a bit of both. I will share what I have learnt about the 4 Ustaads and the movement itself...
To answer your question, The 4 Ustaads (any many others in the Jamea at that time and very few even now) believed that there was no Nass after the 46th Dai and Syedna Yousuf Najmuddin was ELECTED as a Nazim...the agreement was that it will not be publicly announced that he is a Nazim.. if someone approaches to ask him if he is a Nazim or by Nass, he would tell honestly that he was a Nazim but they could not claim to be Dai Al Mutlaq....
STS was the first after the 47th to claim to be Dai Al Mutlaq... many people (who knew the truth) did not like this and were silenced by STS.. Even though shrewd and overtly ambitious, STS was a very learned person who respected Shk Sajjad Hussain Sarangpurwala (the first and most senior of these Ustaads) for his knowledge and especially for the fact that he did not rebel or cause one even though knowing the truth...
Now, on the other hand, Yousuf Najmuddin (son of STS) had a personal vendetta against the 4 ustaads. He really wanted the position of the Da'i and was lobbying as strong as he could.. STS did not want that and Sheikh Sajjad Hussain also recommended to STS to make SMB the Dai... SSH(Sheikh Sajjad Hussain) is one of the 7 witnesses of the Nass of STS to SMB... anyone in the 'royal' family who has access to such documents can verify that SSH and Sheikh Hasan Ali are both witnesses of the Nass... this is how close they were to STS...
Yousuf Najmuddin found out about this and there the animosity started...
to stop YN from whining, STS made him the rector of the Jamea... In his first year's tenure as a rector, he created the final examination for the most senior class, SSH pointed out some grammatical and syntax errors in his questions and sent them to STS... this really pissed of YN and was the turning point for him...in my opinion SSH should not have done that, maybe his actions might have been out of jealousy of not getting that post himself... whatever the reason, that move turned the tide in his direction... (side note: if you notice today, whenever the aamils abuse the 4 ustaads, they say that " these people were very arrogant and had a lot of ghamand about their mahaarat in arabic and now see what happened to them" ... this is what they are referring to)
Once STS died, there was no stopping YN.. he wanted complete control of the establishment and the people.. the only way to do so is to get rid of the learned...or at least subdue them to the extent where one is confident that they will not speak and use their knowledge to their benefit... YN did not act at first.. he waited to strengthen his base and allies in the jamea...
When Sheikh Hasan Ali went for Umrah, the aamil of Makkah at that time was accompanying him to the Kaaba.. at that location he asked him his true belief.. the sheikh found it difficult to lie at that place and moment and in weakness told openly what he believed... the Aamil conveyed this to YN and then the rest is history....not only did he get rid of the 4 ustaads, he used this as an excuse to get every book which would 'weaken' their claim or control out of the system and the jamea... they have raided houses of many aalims and jamea students and taken away all their books for them and told them to get raza from SMB and he will decide which books one should have...
There are many out there who believe that the 46th Dai was the last one.. but unlike others, they did not want to create a separate sect or establishment as they believed that history made it evident that whenever this happened, more people lost track than gained it... and as long as no Bida'a was being performed by SMB or any binding law in the Shari'a being changed or broken which could throw mumineen out of the circle of imaan, it was better to stay amongst them and silently educate people as to what is wrong and right... there are some very wealthy and influential people who are deep in the jamaat but still believe till 46 only...even in the Jameas, they are present but Biradar is right, there is no way an uprising will happen again from there... their view is to keep silent until the promised Hujjat comes calling towards the Imaam....
this is a website run by them:
Many broken links and unorganized but some very useful info on there regarding our history and some good tidbits as well..It also has some audio lectures by Sheikh Ahmed Ali (the youngest of the Ustaads who passed away in Udaipur) ..some very interesting claims/info in there:
Aga Khani historian Farhad Daftry and Bohra Aalim Sheikh al Fazil Chand Khan Ji Rampura wala in their books have wrote that Imam-uz-zaman wrote letters to Sardar Najmuddin sahib (after the martyrdom of last 46th dai Syyedna Mohammad Badruddin a.q.) to hand the leadership of Dawat to Mazoon sahib Syyedi Jamaluddin sahib r.z. (who was mazoon of Shaheed Dai Mohammad Badruddin a.q.) .
Till this day, the 4 Ustaads are mentioned in bayaans and are cursed upon while many others who were bigger oppositions have been forgotten.. the reason, to my understanding, is that the believers till 46 chose not to break off and stay integrated and silently educate people... they have no option but the feed poison even 50 years after the incident to prevent people from converting.. they keep cursing but they never really say WHY were they removed and what they did... all they say is that the "napaak" would stop people from doing imaam hussain maatam... which well is true to the extent that they did not see the point of orchestrated chest thumping as a way to mourn the Ahle Bayt....
I found out quite more than a decade ago that YN had given an interview to DAWN news in the early 70s and unknowingly admitted that his father was a Dai Naazim and there was no Nass... when he realized this, he put in a lot of resources to get rid of them... I contacted Insaf Sahab (may he rest in peace) as to who he might know have it... he pointed me in a couple of directions but the people in question had passed away and their children.. lets say.. were not very friendly to my approach.. understandably so.. no one wants the wrath of the Kothar... I have also tried DAWN directly and certain resourced journalists but apparently the master copies of many papers of that period were destroyed in the early 2000s due to rain damage..
A lot of this info was gained from people in the Surat Jamea at that time, the Ustaads' peers and some of their family members