In 1816 in the town of Bareilly in north India, the imposition of a municipal police tax resulted in large-scale social protests. Hindu and Muslim townsmen appealed to Maulvi Mohamed Ewaz, a locally revered Sufi of the Naqshbandi Mujaddidi order. The Maulvi orchestrated a general protest involving coordinated shop closings, the dissemination of placards, public assemblies, and petitions to the magistrate’s office, which has been described in one British source as “one of these movements not altogether unknown in Western countries but little expected in the East.” Eventually, intimidation and military action resulted armed confrontations with townsmen rallying behind the Maulvi, who vowed to protect both the Muslim and Hindu faiths. Protesters took refuge in a Sufi shrine while the Maulvi summoned support from neighboring principalities. Eventually, the movement was crushed by a sipahi regiment. I will focus on two features of this short-lived protest: the role of the Maulvi and the mode of collective action. This incident reveals that Muslims and Hindus of Bareilly across social classes recognized both the political and spiritual authority of Maulvi Ewaz, whom the colonial administrators also acknowledged as the critical interlocutor. The popular role and authority of Maulvi Ewaz challenges prevailing notions of the orthodox Naqshbandiyya as advocates of communalism, a notion posited by S.A.A. Rizvi and subsequent historians on the basis of selective readings of theological works. My examination of the contemporary English and Persian narratives, court proceedings, and histories documenting the events of 1816 sheds light on the pivotal role played by Sufi shaykhs as social mobilizers and intermediaries between classes, religious groups, and colonial authorities. These sources have been supplemented by contemporary texts on the social milieu of Bareilly and its environs (Naqshbandi hagiographies, EIC gazeeteers, and local histories) to provide a comprehensive picture of social dynamics and explain the symbolic significance of the Muslim shrine as a sight for shared Muslim-Hindu resistance. While this incident has been interpreted by colonial sources as a reflection of Muslim intractability, a reappraisal of the contemporary accounts reveals that Maulvi Ewaz’s collective action worked within and appealed to the authority of established colonial institutions. I have considered the Maulvi’s protest in light of contemporary assessments of colonial rule written by his Naqshbandi pir Shah ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Dehlawi and contemporaries, to conclude that armed resistance even amongst the orthodox leadership was not perceived as either obligatory or as a preferred mode of action.