The article first appeared in The BBC on February 12, 2024
One warm summer evening in 2008, when Mohamed Sultan Baqavi was a 26-year-old student at Arabic College in the South Indian town of Vellore, he made a remarkable discovery. After offering prayers in the city’s Labaabeen Qabrusthan mosque, where generations of his spiritual gurus were laid to rest, he caught sight of a man sweeping the courtyard.