The Khojahs of South Asia

Abstract

This study explores the manner in which the Khojah (Ismaili) Muslim community of South Asia and Africa has defined, negotiated and compromised its identities in the face of changing political and theological contexts of the past two centuries. The community's story is narrated through examples of the ways in which the Khojah Ismaili tradition acculturated itself to the Indic milieu as well as through reflections on a more exclusively singular Islamic discourse that became necessary with the growing religious/communal polarization in colonial and postcolonial South Asia and Africa.