As Hardy put it, "In thinking about Muslims after 1857, the socalled Wahhabis were for the British the great unthinkable that was always thought." British belief in Indian-based Wahhabis originated in the 1820s, as Saiyid Ahmad Barelwi and his followers moved to the northwest territories to launch a jihad against the Sikhs who ruled there. Their Tariqah-i Muhammadi may have shared a notion of jihad with Arabia's Wahhabis, but its efforts at reform drew much more from Sufi traditions.

Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Common Heritage, Uncommon F…, loc. 76