Abode of Peace: Islam, empire, and the Khoja diaspora (1866 - 1972)
This dissertation traces the modern intellectual history of the Khoja diaspora. It follows the Khojas, as well as the various ideas couched within and beyond their texts, during the formative periods of colonialism, nationalism, and decolonisation around the Indian Ocean, ca. 1866 – 1972. A trading community originally from western India, the Khojas were defined in the colonial imaginary as a permanent “minority” regardless of the vantage point: they were Muslim subjects in India, Indian subjects in Africa, and Shia subjects in the world of Islam. This dissertation primarily argues, however, that they consistently escaped or rejected this minority status, and with it the grasp of colonial power itself, through a shifting subjectivity rooted in the practice of taqiyya (concealment). It further argues that, seeking stability as well as escape, the Khojas sought to craft in East Africa an “abode of peace” for their community; a conceptual and literal space of dominion existing in relation to but nonetheless distinct from colonial modernity. Crafting a site such as this often saw the Khojas seize power and so claim sovereignty for themselves, relying as much on their inherited forms and ideas as well as newly forged ones. I take as a point of departure the arrival of the Aga Khan in India as well as his subsequent claim to authority over the Khojas and his unveiling as the Ismaili imam in the nineteenth century. I claim throughout that the Aga and his heirs mapped their contested and unstable authority out of rather than onto dynamic Khoja ideas about subjectivity, gender, space, and history. Because the Khojas often grounded their thought and their community in material forms such as architecture and institutional structures, this dissertation makes novel connections between the history of ideas and that of the built environment. This dissertation also contributes significantly to histories of the Indian Ocean world, especially its intellectual history. Moreover, it provides empirical as well as theoretical insights into the formation and consolidation of “global Islam” in the twentieth century and engages directly with contemporary debates in Indian political thought and world history more broadly.
Khoja, Islam, Indian Ocean, Intellectual history, Aga Khan
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