Khojas of Hyderabad

Abstract The aim of this thesis is to explore the way in which a local Nizari Isma’ili community, the Khojas of Hyderabad, translate the articulated ideals of their spiritual leader the Aga Khan on topics of religious identity and interreligious interaction into their daily contexts. By understanding the local community not as a monolithic minority, but rather as a minority consisting of various social layers, data gathered from the Khoja community about topics of memory, normative values and practices, and geographical contextualization are shown to vary among the community members. These differences, in turn, influence the way these community members translate the Aga Khan’s ideals into the local context. Sascha Stans Religions in Contemporary Societies Khojas of Hyderabad An insight in contemporary Nizari Isma’ili interreligious realities. Contents Contents ...................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 2 Minority Identity Appropriation ............................................................................................. 4 A Layered Minority ................................................................................................................ 6 Fieldwork ................................................................................................................................ 9 Part 1, Leadership ..................................................................................................................... 14 Basics of the Imamate ........................................................................................................... 15 Traditional Means of Articulation, the gināns. ..................................................................... 18 Mobilization into Modernity ................................................................................................ 25 A Post-Modern Perspective, speeches .................................................................................. 38 Part 2, Active Members ............................................................................................................ 45 Historical Memory Articulations .......................................................................................... 46 ‘Secular’ values and Privatization of Religion. .................................................................... 57 Geography, facilitating proximity in locality ....................................................................... 69 Conclusions, Active Members and Interreligious Realities ................................................. 76 Part 3, Passive Members .......................................................................................................... 79 Articulations of Communicative and Cultural Memory ....................................................... 80 Practices ................................................................................................................................ 88 Locality and Segregation ...................................................................................................... 95 Conclusions, Passive Members and the Religious Other ................................................... 101 Part 4, Ashura and other Public Rituals ................................................................................. 104 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................ 112 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 114 Interviews ........................................................................................................................... 118 Appendix 1: Classification per Informant .............................................................................. 120 1 Introduction Fahmida recalls the communal riots of 1989 in Hyderabad, India. Thinking back about the situation the Khoja Nizari Isma’ili community to which she belongs, she recollects: “Those were scary times, scary times indeed when the riots started.” After a short pause she continues with a sense of cheeky pride. “However, even before we truly knew what was happening, already there were Khoja volunteers posted at the entrances towards the colony [(Khoja gated community)] as security personnel!” Her smile beams with pride. “Yes, we are well taken care off by our Imam, that is for sure.” As Nizari Isma’ilis, Fahmida and the other Khojas of Hyderabad are expected by their Imam to engage with other religious communities with active curiosity. The local context of the Hyderabadi Khojas, however, makes living up to this interreligious ideal difficult at times, or even problematic. In this study I will explore how the interreligious ideal of curiosity translates into local practice for the Khoja community of Hyderabad, India. Before going further into the details of this research, I will elaborate on the Nizari Isma’ili Khoja community. Nizari Isma’ilism is a transnationally organized Shi’a Islamic religious tradition centered around the spiritual leadership of the living Imam of the community, popularly known as the Aga Khan. There are different communities that adhere to Nizari Isma’ilism and recognize the spiritual authority of the Aga Khan, but the Khoja community originating from the Indian subcontinent makes up the majority of these.1 There are also Khoja communities that do not recognize the Imamate of the Aga Khan, one of such communities resides in Hyderabad as well. These communities are relatively small in number.2 Other religious communities in the city use the word Khoja predominantly to refer to the community that does recognize the Imamate of the Aga Khan. Because this research focuses on the interaction between Imami interreligious ideals and local practical translations of these ideals, Khoja communities that do not recognize the Imamate of the Aga Khan are left out of this research. In short: I will use the word Khoja to refer to the community of people sharing in the history and culture of the Khoja caste which originates from the Indian- subcontinent and was initially converted to Nizari Isma’ilism. Nizari Isma’ilism refers to the religion of the Imamate of the Aga Khan. 1 Jonah Steinberg, Isma’ili Modern, Globalization and Identity in a Muslim Community (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011) 194-5. 2 Most of these Khoja communities eventually gave up identifying themselves as Khojas after embracing Sunni or Ithna’ashariyya religious identities. Globally, an estimated number of 100.000 Khoja identify openly with the Ithna’ashariyya Shi’a tradition, according to their own estimates. ‘Khoja’s Histrory [sic]’ www.kaajhyd.com/khojas-histrory.htm. 2 For this research, I limit myself to the Nizari Isma’ili Khoja community of Hyderabad city, India. The Hyderabad Khoja community proved an interesting case study for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, Hyderabad is a city with both a significant Hindu, a significant Muslim population and a visible presence of other religious communities as well. This religious diversity puts the Khoja community in a position where interreligious interactions are inevitable. Secondly, Hyderabad is particularly renowned for its public manifestations of piety. Through festivals and public rituals, different religions in the pluralistic spectrum of Hyderabad make claims on public space to practice their faith. These markers of religious identity add to the visibility of interreligious encounters: Interreligious curiosity becomes tangible through participation in public rituals and festivals either as actor or as spectator. Thirdly, within the Nizari Isma’ili transnational religious framework, Hyderabad does not constitute a major hub in the way Mumbai or London do, adding to the likeliness of a local orientation for the Khoja community rather than a transnational focus. This connection with the local situation allows for more profound differences between local and transnational strategic rationale. Often in studies about the Khoja community and the Nizari Isma’ili religion, the interreligious ideals articulated by the Imam are taken at face value to describe the interreligious realities facing local Nizari Isma’ili communities supporting the Imam, like the Khojas of Hyderabad.3 My aim for this research is to explore how the interreligious interactions of the members of the Khoja community in Hyderabad reflect the ideal interactions articulated by the Aga Khan, and how they differ from these. The motivation for this research is not to frame the Khoja community in Hyderabad as a dissent group within the Nizari Isma’ili religion, or to challenge the popularity of the Aga Khan among his followers. Instead, by tracing these differences I aim to find additional factors – other than Imami authority – that influence the interreligious practices in local contexts. In order to properly assess the influence of additional factors on the interreligious realities of the Khoja community, I differentiate social layers within the Khoja community based on their position relative towards the Imam. Over the course of the 20th century, the successive spiritual leaders of the Nizari Isma’ili religion sought to centralize their authority over the geographically

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