The British allowed local holders of power in Sind a high degree of independence in return for collaboration. This collaboration, however, presumed the acceptance of British rule on the part of these local élites. During the late 1930s and the early 1940s, the British were faced with another serious challenge to the working of their system of control in the form of a second Hur ‘uprising’ instigated this time by the Pir Pagaro, Pir Sibghatullah Shah, himself. Unlike his predecessors, the pir was not prepared to adhere to the rules which controlled the administrative machinery in the Sindhi countryside. Both during and after the crisis, which erupted out of a gradual campaign on the part of the pir to assert his authority over and above that of other local holders of power and culminated in his execution and the imposition of martial law, the British sought to explain his defiance in terms of his personal character. Described as a ‘monster’ with the ‘warped mentality’ and ‘vacant stare’ of a ‘madman’, they argued that no sane man would ever have dreamed of mounting such a challenge. In reality, the question of the pir's sanity was far less relevant than the fact that his ability to defy the authorities was based on the enduring relationship between the gadi and the Hur Union, which had grown stronger rather than weaker as a result of British efforts to reform the brotherhood in the aftermath of the earlier crisis of the 1890s.