The Aga Khan Case: Religion and Identity in Colonial India

by Teena Purohit

An overwhelmingly Arab-centric perspective dominates the West’s understanding of Islam and leads to a view of this religion as exclusively Middle Eastern and monolithic. Teena Purohit presses for a reorientation that would conceptualize Islam instead as a heterogeneous religion that has found a variety of expressions in local contexts throughout history. The story she tells of an Ismaili community in colonial India illustrates how much more complex Muslim identity is, and always has been, than the media would have us believe.

The Aga Khan Case focuses on a nineteenth-century court case in Bombay that influenced how religious identity was defined in India and subsequently the British Empire. The case arose when a group of Indians known as the Khojas refused to pay tithes to the Aga Khan, a Persian nobleman and hereditary spiritual leader of the Ismailis. The Khojas abided by both Hindu and Muslim customs and did not identify with a single religion prior to the court’s ruling in 1866, when the judge declared them to be converts to Ismaili Islam beholden to the Aga Khan.

In her analysis of the ginans, the religious texts of the Khojas that formed the basis of the judge’s decision, Purohit reveals that the religious practices they describe are not derivations of a Middle Eastern Islam but manifestations of a local vernacular one. Purohit suggests that only when we understand Islam as inseparable from the specific cultural milieus in which it flourishes do we fully grasp the meaning of this global religion.

Genres: Nonfiction

198 pages, Hardcover

First published October 31, 2012

Reviews

[Asma · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author’s bias is evident pretty early on. She does a poor job of describing certain Ismaili beliefs and seems to leave out historical details that would make this a much better book. However, the translations and explanations of certain Ginans in the book made it worth reading for me since a lot of the concepts had been explained to me by my parents in another language.

[Azam Ch. · Rating 5 out of 5]

lovely, its different concepts made me think,
kecia ali's book on modern islam becoming protestant lite is also good for general sunni islam.

[Rickey McKown · Rating 3 out of 5]

The various bits and pieces of the picture that Professor Purohit presents of the Satpanth religiosity of the Khoja community and how, during the 19th century, for a sizable portion of the community, this religiosity crystallised into an Isma'ili religious identity are individually interesting, but her overall argument does not seem to cohere. Although her overall narrative acknowledges the existence of an established connection of devotion and tithes between the Khojas and the Isma'ili Imamate in Persia, based on Purohit's word choice, tone, and selection of anecdotes, quotations and references, I came away with a strong impression that she has some kind of "axe to grind" with regard to the Aga Khans, although the nature and source of her animus remain unspoken; sadly, this impression of bias was enough to undermine confidence in the objectivity of her account. On a positive note, I fully concur with her observation that we need to move away from an "orthodox"/Sunni/MENA-focussed view of Islam and acknowledge the full scope of Islam's heterogeneity.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well-researched and written. My only quibble is that the chapter on identity wasn't fully developed.