Reading global Islam through messianic renewal in Dasavatār

Abstract

In the Aga Khan Case of 1866, the Bombay High Court's redefinition of a caste group of khojas as ‘Ismaili’ resulted in the institution of a uniform religious identity that undermined the pluralistic character of Islamic practices in South Asia. The colonial court's monolithic understanding of khoja identity as ‘Ismaili’ has continued to influence the community's self-understanding to the present day. In this paper, I question this dominant narrative in which khojas were identified as ‘Ismaili’. I argue that the early modern Gujarati poem of the ginān genre, Dasavatār, became essential to the making of Ismaili Muslim identity in the nineteenth century. I read the Dasavatār ginān as a conduit of khojas' religious beliefs to produce an alternative history of Ismaili community formation. This discussion of Dasavatār explores the workings of global Islam in microcosm. It shows that the ‘borrowings’ which transpire within the Indo-Islamic ecumene cannot be conceptualized through notions of ‘sect’ or as an adden...