Rags to Riches

Historical perspective, treatise of the Khoja Ismailies cum autobiography of Sadruddin bhai Hussain Hashwani, a story of Rags to Riches, published under the nomenclature "Truth always prevails" by Penguin Group of India, describes the narrative of Sadurddin bhai's confirmed Ismaili beliefs and the determined struggles, success story of the leading Hotelier of the sub-continent "Truth always prevails" chronicles the schism of the Isna'asheries and Ismailies.
PIR SADR-AL-DIN
There is a reference to the Pir Sadr-al-Din, by Sir Thomas Arnold in his Book "Preaching of Islam" Page 274. Pir Sadr-al-Din came from across the Arabian Sea and landed in Surat. Writes Sir Thomas: "Sind was the scene of the labors of Pir Sadr-al-Din an Ismaili missionary who was the head of Khojah sect about the year 1430. In accordance with the principles of accommodation, practised by the sect, he took a Hindu name and made certain concessions to the religious beliefs of the Hindus whose conversion he sought to achieve and introduced among them a Book entitled "Dasavatar." This Book "Dasavatar" (Ten Re-incarnations) has been from the beginning the accepted Scripture of the Ismaili sect and is read by the bedside of the dying and periodically at many festivals. The first of Pir Sadr-al-Din's converts were won in villages and towns of Upper Sind. He preached also in the Cutch and from these parts, the doctrine of the sect, spread southwards through Gujarat to Bombay. And at present day, Ismaili mercantile communities are to be found in almost all the large trading towns of Western India and on the sea boards of the Indian Ocean." Conforming to the procedures for the spread of Islam in India, during the fifteenth Century, the Pir was compelled to reconcile with the dogma of reincarnation. His endeavours among the Hindu's were bearing scant fruit. Pir had little success in his early missionary years in Kathiawar, where he propounded the pure creed of Islam as advocated by his Imam Islam Shah in Central Asia. In a break through with the rigid belief of Lohana, merchant class of Hindu's, he conceived the recitation of Dua (prayer) in Gujarati and allowed his new followers the Hindu form of Worship, of men and women grouped in a circle. Pir Sadr-al-Din compromised the basic tenets of Islam to win the Lohana's to the Ismaili faith.
GENERAL SIR ALEXANDER BURNS
The British scheme for Central Asia to install the 48th Ismaili Imam Hassan Ali Shah, Aga Khan the first in the region of Karakalpakstan, in Uzbekistan was brought to naught, frustrated, undone, with the cold blooded murder of General Sir Alexander Burns, British plenipotentiary in Kabul and the simultaneous public execution ordered by Uzbek warlord Emir Nasarullah of the British spies, legendary Colonel Stobbard and Captain Conolly in Bokhara. Hassan Ali Shah nursed ambitions to revive the Fathemide dynasty. In their attempted coup, Stobbard and Conolly, fluent in Persian and Turkish from the Sixth Bengal Light Brigade at Calcutta, with Ismaili supporters in Kabul failed to orchestrate an uprising. Arrested the two British Officers, were taken from Kabul to neighbouring Bokhara where Emir Nasarullah and his Russian advisors, witnessed their public decapitation. Rudyard Kipling immortalised Stobbard and Conolly in his intriguing and spellbinding Novel: "The Man who would be King."
Meanwhile, November 2, 1841, British plenipotentiary, General Sir Alexander Burns also known as Bokhara Burns, got involved, with a beautiful Afghan tribal nymph, lass. Sir Alexander was far too committed and refused to let go this teen aged damsel, lovely female. In the process, an aroused, incited mob, attacked the Residency and Sir Alexander was shot dead with this girl in the room of the British Embassy during the night of November 2, 1841, despite the intervention of the Pashto speaking British Prime Minister Lord Melbourne's special representative Hindu Munshi Mohan Lal. Orders were conveyed from London, via Peshawar to the commanding officer General Elphinstone to withdraw the Army from the cantonment of Kabul to Jalalabad until the sensitive issue would be resolved with the Emperor Shah Shuja. Army of 15,000 were allowed to proceed from Kabul to Jalalabad. The British forces were ambushed at Ghandamack (Jalalabad) in November 1842 and completely slaughtered to the last man in what is known as the battle of Ghandamack. The British and their allies that included the Ismaili cavalry of Imam Hassan Ali Shah were vanquished by the forces of Afghan Emperor Dost Mohammed, his General in command, the Uzbek warlord Akber Khan and Cossacks of the Russian Czar Nicholas the First at Ghandamack.
In November 1842, Imam Hassan Ali Shah fled with his Uzbek cavalry that included the ancestor of Sadruddin Hashwani, namely Mukhi Hashoo Tharuani from Ghankmack to Miani. Imam Hassan Ali Shah sought the benevolence of the British in Sindh, under Lord Admiral Sir Charles Napier. In February 15, 1843, on the steam boat Fateh Mubarik, command post of Sir Charles, over the river Phulelli at Miani, Hassan Ali Shah, Aga Khan, the First, with Mukhi Hashoo Tharuani in attendance, serving as advisor, adjutant, to Hassan Ali Shah's, signed, witnessed the protocol with Sir Charles Napier, for the conquest of Sindh and wresting the territory from the Talpur's, for the settlement of Ismailies from Karakalpakstan, in Uzbekistan. Two days later, February 17, 1843, was fought the battle of Miani. This time, Ismaili cavalry won the day for the British. They vanquished the Talpurs under the Balouchi General Hosh Mohammed Shidi at Miani. Hosh Mohammed Shidi was slain in the onslaught of the Ismaili cavalry. This defeat of the Talpur's at Miani was followed by the victories of the British and their Ismaili allies at his historic citadel of Khadum Gah and Hyderabad (Daboo). Sindh came under the
occupation of the Raj. Kurrachee (Karachi) was seeded to the domain of the British. Adjoining Baluchistan became a part of British tutelage. The first act of Sir Charles was to give the nomenclature of Sir Alexander Burns or Burns as it is abbreviated, to the main street of what was then Kurrachee, to perpetuate the memory of his famed colleague Sir Alexander Burns of Afghanistan. An adjoining five acre Park with an inbuilt Museum, to Burns Road was named Burns, Garden. So also the military Academy of the British rulers at Abbot-abad designated Burns College. Explains Sadruddin Hashwani, in "Truth always prevails" this is how his fore-bearers reached Gwadar from Central Asia, though he was born in 1939, in the Jan Bai Maternity Home of Kharadhar, Karachi the sixth among the seven children and grew up in what was known as Green Bungalow of Kharadhar in a middle class Ismaili household. Sadrubhai's father Hussain bhai and his elder brother Akber were commission agents of the multinational Ralli brothers when he was born in 1939 in Karachi, eight years before the birth of Pakistan on August 14, 1947.
While his mother wanted him to become a Doctor he confesses he did not have the aptitude for focusing his attention on Medical Journals and erudite studies. Instead he was more given to playing cricket and roaming around the city on his Rs.142 bicycle in his salad days. Hashwani in his Memoirs recalls in his Cricket team at the Aga Khan Gymkhana of Karachi, were Doctor Rafiq Patel and my brother-in-law Arif Vali Hassan Mooraj. Presently, Dr. Rafiq Patel is the leading surgeon in Washington D. C. Maryland. Unfortunately, my brother-in-law Arif expired in the St. Thomas Hospital of London on August 22, 1996. Space in Hussain Hashwani's, Cotton Brokerage Firm of Ralli Brothers, was limited, taken by the more enterprising brother Akbar who was married in the Ghulam Ali Allana family. He therefore had to fend for himself when he failed to make the grade in S.M. Science College, to enter the Medical field, much to the consternation of his mother. In 1958, reconciled and arranged by his mother Zaver bai, he entered the Stevedoring business, catering for vessels reaching Karachi Port Trust with his Ismaili family connection Shamshuddin. But that did not click, partnership dissolved with Sadru confessing that he was short changed by Shamshuddin. With no money to start his own business, next we read how he reached out to the legendary Amir Ali Fancy, then the leader of Ismaili Jamaat in Pakistan. Amir Ali Fancy carried the title of Vazir, for his philanthropic services to the Ismaili community. In 1961, knowing that he was bereft of a job, Amir Ali Fancy who always gave a helping hand to young Ismaili's, appointed Sadru, the agency to sell Bailing Hoofs to Ginning Factories for Steel Corporation of Pakistan.
HASSAN ALI HUSSAIN HASHWANI
Affection, love and reverence for Imam Hassan Ali Shah, for having brought the Hashwani's to the sub-continent, prompted Sadruddin's father Hussain bhai to name his second son Hassan Ali who was to be Sadru's most endeared sibling. In Chapter Four "Cotton King" we read how Sadru with his brother Hassan Ali secured an Office, under the style of Hassan Ali and Brother in the Karachi Cotton Exchange.
Sadruddin was set to compete with formidable rivals, architects, representatives of the Twenty Two families in the Cotton and Rice Trade, such as Mohammed Amin Mohammed Bashir, Habib & Sons, Hakimuddin Hormuzji, HAJI DOSSA LIMITED, Peerbhoy Cotton, etc. The book goes on to detail how on March 21, 1981, Sadru had his mother Zaver bai, inaugurated the Holiday Inn in Karachi and his interaction with the scribe Ardeshir Cowasjee and General Zia ul Haq at the residence of General Habibullah, Minister of Production where Cowasjee demanded Champagne from his hosts.
"There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads onto fortune, Omitted all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and miseries." In 1985, Sadru made the master stoke by acquiring from the Government of Pakistan and the P.I.A. the run down Inter Continental Hotels of Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar. He added to his group of then Holiday Inn Hotels in Karachi and Islamabad. Sadru invested Capital to revive, re-structure the Inter Continental Hotels and got the edifices in running concerns.
There is an incorrect account of the history of the Forty Sixth Ismaili Imam Hassan Ali Shah, the first in line of the Aga Khan's. While the Imam died in Bombay, he was buried in the room of the Aga Khan's in the precinct of the mausoleum of Nejaf. My grandfather Seth Esmail bhai Dossa was one of the pall bearers who carried Imam Hassan Ali's coffin from the Victoria Docks to the British India vessel that sailed with the bier and the entourage of Imam Ali Shah from Bombay to Basra, en route to Nejaf.