BETWEEN COMMUNITY AND SECULARISM:

THE DAWOODI BOHRAS AND AGENDAS OF ‘REFORM’

IN INDIA, C. 1915-1985

SHABBIR HUSSAIN MUSTAFA

(B.A. (Hons.), NUS)

A THESIS SUBMITTED

FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES PROGRAMME

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

2011
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements.............................................................................................ii
Summary............................................................................................................iii
Glossary...........................................................................................................vii
List of Illustrations...........................................................................................xii

CHAPTER

1. Introduction………………………………………..………………………………..1

‘Who are these Dawoodi Bohras?’

The Dawoodi Bohras: A Historiographical Survey
‘Apolitical Quietism’ in the Dawoodi Bohra Tradition
Methodology and Sources
Structure of the Thesis

2. ‘In The Colonial Public Sphere’:

Syedna Taher Saifuddin And The Early Reformists…………...………........……35

Fatimid Solidarity and Modern Belonging

Sir Adamji Peerbhai: ‘The Difficult Philanthropist’
An Initial ‘Intrusion’: The Chandabhai Gulla Case
‘Angry Men’: Anjuman-i-Dawoodi and the Young Men’s Bohra Association
The ‘Politics’ of the Mussalman Wakf Act, 1923
Summing up

3. ‘In Defence Of The Community’:

Syedna Taher Saifuddin And The Reassertion Of Authority……………………..60

The ‘Archetypal’ Prodigy

Communion with the Bohras in Yemen
The Treasured Academy: Al-Jamea-tus-Safiyah
Spiritual Assembly of Zikra: Fatimid Blueprints, Indian Contexts
Summing up

4. ‘At The Heart Of Secularism’:

Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin And The Print Reformists…………………….84

A Resolution for ‘Change’: al-Multaqa al-Fatimi al-Ilmi, 1979

The Udaipur ‘Revolt’ and Measures of ‘Progress’
‘Clandestine Femininity’: The Yasmin Contractor Case
The Challenge of the Nathwani Commission
Summing up

ii
5. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………..……115

Between Community and Secularism

Writing the Dawoodi Bohra Past
Transnational Convergence, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 1428H
‘A Token of Remembrance’: Ashura, 1428/2007
Electronic ‘Pastiche’: www.malumaat.com

Bibliography...............................................................................................................133

iii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis could not have been written without the support and suggestions of many
teachers, friends and colleagues. I must single out those who made valuable
suggestions at various stages, helped me understand specific issues in a different light,
and helped me in the research and editing.

Let me begin with teachers. First and foremost, I remain indebted to my Supervisor
A/P Gyanesh Kudaisya. He not only read many different versions of this work and
offered critical advice that guided me towards clarity, but also taught me that
optimism is the faith that leads to achievement, and nothing can be done without hope
and confidence. His continued encouragement and immense patience has been more
than just inspiring.

I must also record my deep gratitude to A/P Medha Kudaisya from whose kindness
and guidance I have greatly benefited from. My pursuit of this topic and interest in the
history of mercantile communities goes back to interactions with her as a teacher and
as her research assistant.

A special thank you to Prof. Sandria Freitag and Dr. Renu Gupta, who read drafts and
provided timely comments that guided me through various debates in modern history.

At the South Asian Studies Programme (SASP), A/P Rahul Mukherjee and Dr Rajesh
Rai always kept their doors open for random questions I would have on the study of
Political Economy and Diaspora. I owe special gratitude to Ms. Nur Jannah Mohamed
from the SASP who has been an indispensable source of help and guidance. Thank
you, Jannah. At the NUS Central Library, thank you to Kannagi Rajamanickam for
facilitating all my requests for Inter-Library Loans.

Amongst graduate student friends, Taberez Ahmed Neyazi, Sujoy Dutta, Priya
Maholay Jaradi and Deen Mohammad for all those engaging discussions on this topic
and all the laughs we shared as each one of us moved on to different stages of our
lives. It is because of them that I shall remember my life as a postgraduate student
with great fondness.

As always, my close friends have been unfailingly supportive. Teren Sevea has been
an ever-ready source of support. Falak Sufi encouraged me to embark on this topic
and although she is not with us any longer, she left fond memories I will cherish for
the rest of my life. Kizher Buhary Shahjahan, Shamindri Perera, Mizran Faizal, Vinay
Pathak, Mohammad Fakhrudeen, Wang Zineng, Lim Qinyi and Liudmila Volkova
have been a constant source of encouragement.

I would like to thank my parents whose love and support have sustained me through
this period. My father Esmailjee Shabbir Hussain and mother Duraiya, whose
unconditional encouragement and syncretic outlook on life is the primary source of
my inspiration and being. My baby sister, Sakina has helped me tremendously, always
making me laugh and keeping an eye out for materials that may prove useful. And
finally I owe my thanks to Leila Shirazi who has been an immense source of support.

iv
Each of them have devised their own ways to cope with the disruption caused by my
writing, and in their own way, have kept me going. It is to them I dedicate this thesis.

I take sole responsibility for the many imperfections in this work. None of the
individuals whose assistance I have acknowledged is in any way liable.

v
 SUMMARY

The Dawoodi Bohras are a small Islamic community concentrated in the Indian
subcontinent, with an increasing diaspora over the past three decades. An Ismaili
group, the community traces its creed back to the 10th century Fatimids of Cairo and
remains relatively undocumented. Located as a critical enquiry into the historical
contingencies which have shaped Bohra self-identity in late-colonial and post-colonial
India, this thesis focuses on internal debates within the community about agendas of
‘reform’ during the tenure of two High Priests of the community, namely, Syedna
Taher Saifuddin (1915–1965) and his successor Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin
(1965–present). It looks at the ideas and works of those individuals and groups who
attempted to critique the authority of the High Priests over spiritual and temporal
matters of the community by raising these agendas of ‘reform’. In doing so, the thesis
problematises issues of theological authority embodied in the institution of the High
Priest and engages with questions of jurisdiction over family and civil law matters and
control over community resources and institutions. It focuses on the period c. 1915–
1985, during which the Reformists initially used lawsuits under newly introduced
legislation by the colonial state to put pressure on Syedna Taher Saifuddin to
recognise the need to ‘modernise’ the community. The High Priest responded with
selective re-adaptation of Fatimid beliefs to legitimise his position. He also
increasingly used modern technologies such as print, rail and air travel, as well as
modern organisational systems to expound his ideas.

In the context of Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin’s tenure as High Priest (post-

1965), taking advantage of the post-colonial ‘secular’ state, the Reformists harnessed
print media and civil society institutions in an attempt to undermine the authority of
the High Priest. Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin responded by embracing
secularism, eschewing Islamic extremism and reasserting the ideals of self-reliance.
The landmark 1979 Conference of Fatimi Knowledge (al-Multaqa al-Fatimi al-Ilmi)
symbolised these measures, which were aimed at achieving greater cohesion within
the community. In overall terms, the High Priest succeeded in re-invoking bonds of
culture, traditions and the past embodied in community institutions. He also addressed
many of the issues raised by the Reformists, while never acknowledging their locus
standi. In a wider sense, the thesis ends with a discussion about the community’s
contemporary identity mix and how ideas of devotion to the High Priest operate trans-
nationally, reinforced by the annual Ashura commemorations, which take place at
different locations around the world.

vi
 GLOSSARY

Aga Khan The leader of Nizari Ismailis. While Dawoodi Bohras believe that the Imam
is in concealment and represented by the Dai-al-mutlaq, the Khojas believe
that the Aga khan is the hazir (‘present’) Imam.

Ahl al-bayt People of the household. Refers to the family of Prophet Muhammad,
especially his descendents through his daughter Fathema and son-in-law
Ali.
Aisaheba Title given to the wife of Dai-al-mutlaq

Ajlaf/Ashraf Two broad categories of Indian Muslims. Ajlaf communities (the

overwhelming majority, a group that includes the Bohras) are descendents
of indigenous converts. Whereas Ashraf communities are descendents of
Afghans, Persians, Arabs, or other Muslim ruling elites from outside the
subcontinent.

Amilsaheb Assistant cleric in the Bohra hierarchy who serves as the Dai’s personal
representative in a given locality. The title is often translated as ‘priest’, a
term that would be out of place in almost any Islamic context other than an
Ismaili one.

Ashura The tenth day of the Islamic month of Muharram, which commemorates the
martyrdom of the grandson of Prophet Mohammad, Imam Husain and his
72 faithful followers in Karbala in 61H/680AD.

Ayatollah The highest rank of Ithna-Ashari clerics.

Badri Mahal Located in downtown Mumbai, is the office from where matters of the
Bohra Dawat are administered.

Bania Member of a Gujarati mercantile caste or community. Bania communities

include Bohras, Khojahs, Memons, Parsis and various subgroup of Jains and
Hindus.

Baraat Social ostracism imposed by the Bohra Dawat. Since outright

excommunication is legally precarious in India since the Prevention of
Excommunication Act was introduced in 1949, the Dawat has relied on
baraat to achieve somewhat similar purposes. (Not to be confused with
similar words meaning ‘wedding party’ or ‘India’)

Batin Secret theological doctrines and esoteric meanings of Islamic orthodoxy.

Bhaisaheb Bhai referring to ‘brother’, the appellation given to every Bohra man.
Bhaisaheb is the title reserved for men of the Qasr-e Ali.

Brahmin/Brahman The highest of four varnas (‘classes’) in the Hindu caste system. Several
Bohra families claim descent from priestly Brahmins rather than mercantile
Vaishyas.

Burqa Modest dress worn by traditional Muslim woman. For Bohras, the wearing
of a burqa is a central part of the post-1980s Islamization program.

Caliph ‘Successor’, i.e., successor to the Prophet Mohammad. The eleventh

through the twentieth Ismaili Imam (as reckoned by the Bohras) ruled the
Fatimid Empire with the title of caliph.

Crore An Indian mathematical unit equalling 10 million.

vii
Dai ‘Missionary’. In Fatimid usage, a cleric involved in propagation of the faith.
In contemporary Bohra usage, shorthand for the Dai-al-mutlaq.

Dai-al-mutlaq The apex cleric of the Bohra community. The Dai-al-mutlaq is believed to
be in contact with hidden Imam. This title was of only intermediate rank in
the Fatimid hierarchy. All orthodox Bohras pledge to obey the dictates of
the Dai al-mutlaq in both spiritual and temporal matters.

Dawat ‘The Rightly Guiding Mission’, in Bohra terms.

Dawr-al-satr Period of concealment, during which the Imam lives in the world but is
hidden away even from his own followers. Ismailis of both the Nizari and
Mustali branches believe a Dawr-al-satr encompassed the reigns of the
seventh to the tenth imams (148-268H/765-881AD). Bohras believe a
second Dawr-al-satr began when the twenty-first imam entered
concealment in 526H/1132AD.

Deen Matters of spiritual (as opposed to strictly temporal) concern.

Dua Blessing, prayer.

Dunya Matters of worldly (as opposed to strictly spiritual) concern.

Durgah Mausoleum. In Bohra usage, typically the Mausoleum of a Dai or Sayyedi.

Fatimi/Fatimid Spiritual descendent of Fathema, the Prophet Mohammad’s daughter.

Fatimid Empire Based in Cairo, and at its height including most of North Africa and the
Near East was the most powerful and historically significant example of an
Ismaili state. Bohras regard themselves as the spiritual and cultural
inheritors of the Fatimid caliphate, and guardians of the Fatimid tradition.

Feta A pre-wound turban of gold silk worn by Bohra men instead of a topi on
special occasions.

Fiqh Islamic jurisprudence, the science of law.

Firman ‘Royal directive’. For Bohras, a directive from the Dai.

Fitra ‘Islamic tax’. Among Bohras, paid together with Sila during Ramadan.

Hadith A saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad.

Hafiz One who knows the Quran by heart.

Haj Pilgrimage to Mecca undertaken during the month of zyl-hajj.

Haqiqat ‘Truth’, ‘reality’. The higher reaches of Ismaili gnostic learning.

Hukm ‘Official command’. In Bohra usage, a directive from the Dai.

Imam ‘Spiritual leader’. In Sunni usage, the term is generally applied to the prayer
leader at the local mosque. In Shia usage it can have this meaning, but is
more significantly applied to one of the infallible intermediaries between
God and man. Ithna Ashari recognize twelve imams before the period of
occultation, while Bohras recognize twenty-one before satr.

Iman ‘Faith’.

viii
Ismaili One of the two major surviving branches of Shia Islam. Bohras, like other
Ismailis, get their name from their acceptance of Ismail ibn Jafar as the
appointed spiritual successor (‘Imam’) to Jafar as-Sadiq, wherein they differ
from the Twelvers, who accept Musa al-Kazim, younger brother of Ismaill,
as the true Imam.

Ithna Ashari The predominant Shia denomination. Also called Twelver.

Jamaat Assembly. In Bohra usage, a local Bohra community.

Jamaatkhana The building that serves as the social and cultural (as opposed to spiritual)
center for a local Bohra community.

Kal masum The spiritual state of the Bohra Dai-al-mutlaq. The difference between kal
masum and masum (immaculate and infallible, the spiritual state of an
Imam) is subtle, but important.

Khidmat ‘Service’. For Bohras, serving as part of the clerical hierarchy, or

volunteering at community events and occasions. Khidmat can also mean
financial service in the form of generous contributions to the Dawat.

Khojah Indian Nazari Ismaili who recognize the Aga Khan as the living Imam. The
Khojahs, like the Bohras, are a community of Gujarati banias concentrated
in Mumbai and metropolitan centers around the world.

Kurta A white cotton shirt, reaching down to the knees. For Bohras, an essential
part of the male Quam-e-Libas (‘community dress’) instituted by Syedna
Mohammad Buhanuddin in the early 1980s.

Lakh An Indian mathematical unit equaling 100,000.

Madrasa Islamic school providing higher education. The transnational Bohra network
of Burhani Madrasas combines Islamic and Western subjects in the same
curriculum.

Majlis ‘Council’. In Bohra terminology, a religion ceremony less formal than a

waaz.

Maktab A rudimentary Islamic school.

Masjid Mosque

Masum ‘Infallible’ and ‘immaculate’. In Bohra doctrine the Imam is masum, while
the Dai is kal masum (‘like’ masum).

Maulana/Moula An honorific title given to Muslim clerics. In the Bohra community, the title
is reserved for the Dai-al-mutlaq.
Mazoon The second-highest cleric in the Bohra hierarchy.

Milad Birth date of Prophet Mohammad, an Imam, or (for the Bohras) a Dai.

Misaq Oath of allegiance to God and the Dai-al-mutlaq. Under taken by all
observant Bohras upon reaching puberty as a prime rite of passage. The oath
is repeated annually during the month of zyl-Haj.

Miyasaheb Honor given to a Bohra Sheikh who has earned his title through devotion
rather than financial contributions.

ix
Mohalla In Bohra usage, a neighborhood or administrative unit for Dawat
organization.

Muharram The first month of the Islamic year.

Mukasir The third-ranking cleric in the Bohra Dawat.

Mullah In Bohra usage, the title is given to any man authorized to lead prayers. The
title of Mullah is lower than that of Shaikh or Amil, and is awarded to
graduates of the Al-Jamea-tus-Saifiyah.

Mumineen ‘Faithful’. In General Islamic usage, a Muslim. In Bohra usage, the term is
reserved for members of the community.

Musafirkhana ‘Pilgrims lodge’ maintained near a Bohra shrine.

Mustali One of the two surviving branches of the Ismailis. Bohras represent the only
significant group of Mustali Ismailis in the modern world.

Nas ‘Transfer of Traditions’. For Bohras, the designation of a Dai-al-mutlaq by

his predecessor.

Nizari One of the two major branches of Ismailis. The Nizaris are today
represented by Khojahs and other followers of the Aga Khan.

Pagri ‘Turban’.

Purdah For Bohra women, purdah (‘seclusion’) is considerably less restrictive than
for the woman of many other communities. It primarily consists of avoiding
physical contact with or revealing hair and body contours to men other than
one’s husband or blood relatives.

Qarzan Hasanah Trust established for granting of zero-interest loans. Syedna Muhammad
Burhanuddin has made this system of Islamic finance important component
of the Bohra identity mix.

Qasr-e-Ali The ‘Royal Family’ of the Bohra community.

Qaum ‘Community’.

Qiblah Direction of Muslim prayer.

Quran The revealed scripture of Islam.

Raza ‘Permission’. In the Bohra community, mumineen often ask the raza of the
Dai for any major decisions or actions to be undertaken.

Rida ‘Veil’. Bohra woman wear a rida that covers the hair, neck and chest, but
not the face.

Rupee Indian unit of currency.

Salat Prayer, offered five times daily (Arabic equivalent of the

Urdu/Persian/Turkish word ‘namaz’)

Shadi For Hindus, marriage. For Bohras the social (as opposed to religious) aspect
of a wedding celebration.

Shahzada/Shahzedi Prince/Princess. Title given to the sons and daughter of a Bohra Dai.

x
Shaikh ‘Elder’. A title given by the Dai-al-mutlaq to individuals who have provided
loyal Khidmat.

Sufi The mystical strain of Islam. A Sufi master is known as a Shaikh in Arabic
or Pir in Persian, and leads an established order (‘tariqa’).

Surti Resident of Gujarati city of Surat, or descendent of a Surat native. Among

the Bohras, a de facto aristocratic class.

Syedna Honorific title by which the Bohra Dai-al-mutlaq is commonly known.

Tahara ‘Cleanliness’, ‘purity’. For Ismailis, one of the seven pillars of the faith.
Like all pillars of the faith, it can be understood in zahir (‘apparent’) or
batin (‘esoteric’) terms.

Taqqiya ‘Dissimulation’. A right (even an obligation) for Shias when faced with
religious oppression. Practiced by the Bohras throughout much of their
history.

Tayyibi The sole surviving school of Mustali Ismailis. Named on the 21st Imam
Tayyib. In theological terms, Bohras are Tayyibi Mustali Ismaili Shia
Muslims.

Ulema Religious scholars, men learned in ilm (‘spiritual knowledge’).

Ummah Community, especially the community of all mumineen.

Urs ‘Death anniversary’. For Bohras, particularly the death anniversary of a Dai.

Waaz Formal gathering in which the Dai delivers a sermon from a ceremonial
throne.

Wallaya Devotion to the family of the Prophet. One of the seven pillars of Shia
Islam.

Wali Legatee or stand-in.

Zahir Exoteric aspects of faith, as laid in the apparent meaning of the Quran and
Sharia.

xi
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER

2. ‘IN THE COLONIAL PUBLIC SPHERE’:

SYEDNA TAHER SAIFUDDIN AND THE EARLY REFORMISTS

2.1 Bohras protesting in Bombay against the imposition of the Wakf Act. 56
Source: ‘Procession of Dawoodi Bohras in Bombay’, Times of India,
August 8, 1931.

3. ‘IN DEFENSE OF COMMUNITY’:

SYEDNA TAHER SAIFUDDIN AND THE REASSERTION OF AUTHORITY

3.1 Accompanied by Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin, Governor of 63

Bombay Roger Lumley viewing the Zari, 1940.
Source: ‘Canopy of Silver and Gold: Sir R. Lumley Sees Fine Work
of Art’, Times of India, 15/11/1940.

4. ‘AT THE HEART OF SECULARISM’:

SYEDNA MOHAMMAD BURHANUDDIN AND THE PRINT REFORMISTS, 1965–1985

4.1 Posters put up by Bohras around Bombay in response to 102

Shashi Bhushan’s comments.
Source: ‘The Bohra Civil War’, Onlooker, May 1–14, 1974.

4.2 Caricature that appeared in the print media after the publication of the 109
Nathwani Commission Report in 1979.
Source: ‘Bohra Boss: India's Khomeni’, Onlooker, May 1–15, 1979.

4.3 Caricature that appeared in the print media after the publication of the 110
Nathwani Commission Report in 1979.
Source: ‘Dawoodi Bohras: Unrest in the Community’, Onlooker,
March 7–21, 1981.

xii
 Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

‘Who are these Dawoodi Bohras?’

He then talked of Heaven and said the surest way to go thither was by conciliating the
friendship of the Mullaji or the Bora’s high priest. But in one thing Adamji bin Didamji
differs very materially from every other Gujarati – he has really no taste for politics. He is
callous as to the political management of the country. He has infinite faith in the
Government, next only in intensity to his faith in the Mullaji. The strongest political
agitation in Adamji bin Didamji’s country would fail to strike a responsive chord in his
heart. He is a lover of peace. He will put himself to any amount of inconvenience; he will
sacrifice anything to secure peace. Peace to Adamji is a priceless blessing; and knowing
that a discussion of political questions has a disturbing tendency, he will always refrain
from politics. He neither hates nor loves politics; it is a question of stolid imperturbable
indifference. 1

Citing an attitude of ‘indifference’ to politics, the writer and intellectual, B. M.

Malabari, sketched a picture of his ‘Bohra’ friend Adamji bin Didamji in 1884.

Malabari, also a social reformer, could not have been more correct. Although it would

take another century for scholars of Shia Islam to coin the term ‘apolitical quietism’ as

a means of describing the Dawoodi Bohra community’s attitude towards political

participation, as this thesis highlights, Malabari was also witness to a crucial historical

moment as the community was about to enter the throes of change and

‘modernisation’ at a pace never seen before. Presenting numerous hurdles, the 20th

century would test the community and its leadership, to not just transform, but also re-

organise and establish a unique identity mix that is at once ‘Islamic’ and unique to the

denomination.

1
B.M. Malabari, Gujarat and the Gujaratis: Pictures of Men and Manners taken from Life (Bombay:
Education Society Press, 1884), p. 193.
1
Although figures vary, today, the majority of Bohras reside within the Indian

subcontinent, where it may be noted that the Shia Muslim community is broadly

divided into two major groups: the Ithna Asharis or Twelver Shias and the smaller

Ismaili sects. According to Jonah Blank, writing in the late 1990s, “the Daudi Bohras

have about 470 major communities spread out over forty nations across the world”

with both Dawat and dissident sources, placing the worldwide population at one

million. 2 In terms of greater global aggregates, a report in the Khaleej Times, a Dubai

newspaper, notes that there are about 30,000 Bohras residing across the Gulf. 3 And

about 50,000 Bohras spread across North America and Europe. 4 The largest

concentration is in Western India, followed by Pakistan.

As was the case for the majority of mercantile communities in India, the coming of

colonial rule presented a number of complications for the Dawoodi Bohras. From the

2
Jonah Blank, Mullahs on the Mainframe: Islam and Modernity among the Daudi Bohras (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 13.
3
In Bombay, a city that helped make the Bohras and gave them their present-day dynamics, there are
large mohallas like Bhindi Bazaar and its adjoining vicinity along Mohemadali Road where many
Bohras have their homes, shops, schools, mosques and community halls. There is also a significant
concentration of about 5,000 Bohras in Sri Lanka, a case we return to in a later chapter. In Southeast
Asia, there is a jamaat of about 1,000 in Singapore and Malaysia respectively, with numbers in
Indonesia sketchy but one official put it at about 500, with large concentrations in Bali and Jakarta. The
next largest concentrations outside of South Asia and North America are in East Africa, especially in
Kenya, Tanzania and Madagascar. However, since the 1950s and especially after the 1970s, an
increasing number of Bohras have left East Africa for North America and Europe. Much of the
movement has also involved younger members of the community completing their studies in Britain,
Canada and USA and then staying on. See Desh Gupta, ‘South Asians in East Africa: Achievement and
discrimination’, South Asia, 21, 1 (1998), pp. 103–136.
4
In an interview conducted by Aminah Mohammed Arif in the mid-1990s with Shehzada Moin
Mohiuddin Bhaisaheb, who was himself a resident of Pennsylvania, cited the figure of 4,000 Bohras
living in the United States. As with the Nizaris, many of the Bohra families living in the US today
migrated from East Africa after the 1970s, with a steady stream of Bohras choosing to migrate from
South Asia for economic and professional reasons after the 1990s. However, according to an informal
interview conducted with the local Amil (‘cleric’) of Los Angeles in 2006, he cited as many as 3,000
Bohras living in California alone, with Houston boasting a jamaat of about 1,000. In the transnational
context, it is important to note that religious ceremonies are usually conducted in the markaz or a
community centre, which is converted into a space for worship given the lack of a formal Bohra
masjid. In the USA, there are multiple sites where temporary markazs are established during
Muharram, for instance. In terms of masjids in North America, Detroit was the city that saw the
establishment of the first Bohra masjid, with Chicago, Houston, Dallas and San Francisco following
suit after 2000. See Aminah Mohammad-Arif, ‘A Masala Identity: Young South Asian Muslims in the
US’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 20, 2 (2000), pp. 67–87.
2
mid-19th century onward, the introduction of ‘civil society’ institutions by the British

meant that communities such as the Bohras were in a state of limbo; they were

assured that the British would uphold their cardinal rule of non-interference with

‘native matters’, but at the same time the colonial state also wished to exercise a form

of colonial hegemony and oversight. Commenting on the relation between the

colonial state and the category of community, Gyan Prakash observes how “colonial

modernity came into existence as a form of belated enlightenment, separated from the

time of Europe and addressed to those who lived in ‘other times’.” As such,

“community”, as an epistemological category, “represents the time and space of this

other [read: colonized] modernity”. 5 Similar to governmental structures that

independent India would inherit in 1947, the ‘community’ as a social grouping would

be required to negotiate this in-between position between the successive colonial and

post-colonial regimes’ as each government set about administering a civil-social

arena.

The aim of this thesis is to identify how the site of ‘community’ served as the

intersection for the development of lesser documented social spaces in late colonial

and early independent India. By problematising the concept of ‘civil society’ with the

narration of a ‘community-driven’ experience, this study hopes to identify how other

modes and meanings of modernity arose from the experiences of the colonial and

post-colonial nation-state. Broadly, the aim is not to pit the colonial and post-colonial

as two distinct epochs, but to explore the demands of civil society and the nature of

the institutional structures the ‘Bohra community’ negotiated from the period 1915 to

1985. However, before we proceed with the narrative, it may be pertinent to unravel

5
Gyan Prakash, ‘Civil Society, Community, and the Nation in Colonial India’, Etnográfica, 4, 1
(2002), p. 38.
3
the category of the ‘Dawoodi Bohra’ itself, how it constantly shifted and took on

newer forms in the existing literature, its earliest traces and the complexities involved

in writing a contemporary history of the community.

The Dawoodi Bohras: A Historiographical Survey

Apart from one significant anthropological study in the 1990s, the Dawoodi Bohras

seem to have largely escaped historical enquiry. As such, the impetus for this thesis

emerges from the seminal work done by scholars who have studied mercantile

communities operating within the Indian Ocean from the 15th century onwards. 6

Emphasising internal community networks as a primary site for promoting

entrepreneurial creativity, mercantile histories have formed the bedrock of much of

the modern literature that is available on the Bohras. 7 Having said that, this thesis also

associates with recent works in Islamic and post-colonial studies, which extend the

above understanding further by emphasising the heavily underestimated role

6
In terms of broad survey works see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Merchant Networks in the Early Modern
World, 1450–1800 (Hampshire: Variorum, 1996); Lakshmi Subramanyam, Indigenous Capital and
Imperial Expansion: Bombay, Surat and the West Coast (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996). Also
see K.N. Chaudari, Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of
Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); P. Cadene, and D. Vidal (eds.), Webs
of Trade: Dynamics of Business Communities in Western India (New Delhi: Manohar, 1997). The most
crucial sources are M.N. Pearson, Merchants and Rulers in Gujarat (London: University of California
Press, 1976); S. A. Bose, Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006); Claude Markowitz, The Global World of Indian
Merchants, 1750–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) and Sanjay Subramaniam
(ed.), Society and Circulation: Mobile People and Itinerant Cultures in South Asia, 1750–1950 (Delhi:
Permanent Black, 2003).
7
Historians have discussed the Bohras in terms of locating their interactions with other Gujarati
merchants and communities in Western India. See Dwijendra Tripathi, Business Communities of India
(Delhi: Manohar, 1984) and Makrand Mehta, Business Houses in Western India: a study in
Entrepreneurial Response, 1850–1956 (Delhi: Manohar, 1990). Also see Dhananjaya Ramchandra
Gadgil, Origins of the Modern Indian Business Class (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1959);
Jean Aubin and Denys Lombard (eds.) Asian Merchants and Businessmen in the Indian Ocean and the
China Sea (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000); Christopher Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen, and
Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983). Most recently, there is also a brief extract from Asghar Ali Engineer’s original
book The Bohras, in Medha Kudaisya (ed.) The Oxford India Anthology of Business History (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011).
4
‘religious networks’ have played in enabling smaller groups such as the Bohras to

negotiate the challenges of the colonial and post-colonial state.

In The Short History of the Ismailis, Farhad Daftary notes that as a Shia group, the

Ismailis arose from deep obscurity in the latter half of the 9th century to found the

Fatimid dynasty in North Africa in 909. 8 From there, they conquered Egypt in 969

and established the city of Cairo. By 1094 the Ismaili movement had split and the

Nizari faction 9 survived mainly thereafter in what is modern day Iran. The Nizaris

subsequently came to be labelled by their enemies as the ‘Assassins’. 10 Egypt

8
Starting with Wladimir Ivanow (d. 1970) in the early 20th century, a Russian émigré who spent most
of his life unearthing, translating and publishing long-secret Ismaili texts and manuscripts in Central
Asia, Yemen, Mumbai and St. Petersburg, Ismaili Studies reached a new level of scholarship in the
mid-20th century under Bernard Lewis and Samuel Stern. See Wladimir Ivanow ‘An Ismaili
Interpretation of the Gulshai Raz’, Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 8
(1932); A Guide to Ismaili Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1933); A Creed of the Fatimid
[Summary of Taj al-‘aqa’id by Ali al-Walid] (Mumbai: Qayyimah Press, 1936); ‘Early Shiite
Movements’, Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 17, 1 (1941); Brief Survey of
the Evolution of Ismailism (Leiden: Brill, 1952). Stern’s writings on the Bohras include: Samuel Stern,
‘The Authorship of the Epistles of the Ikhwan-as-safa’, Islamic Culture, 20 (1946), pp. 367–372; ‘The
Succession of the Fatimid Imam al-Amir, the Claims of the later Fatimids of the Imamate and the Rise
of Tayyibi Ismailism, Oriens 4 (1951), pp. 193–255; and Studies in Early Ismailism (Leiden: Brill,
1983). Bernard Lewis’ writings, although contested by later scholars: The Origins of Ismailism: A
Study of the Historical Background of the Fatimid Caliphate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1940); ‘The Sources for the History of the Syrian Assassins’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and
African Studies, 27 (1952), pp. 475–489; ‘Saladin and the Assassins’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental
and African Studies, 15 (1953), pp. 239–245 and The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (London:
Basic Books, 1986). Later, Asaf A. Fayzee and Husain Hamdani were the first Ismaili scholars to study
their community from a historical rather than purely devotional point of view. See Asaf A. Fyzee,
‘Bohoras’ in Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1960), pp. 1254–1255; Compendium of Fatimid
Law (Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1969); ‘A Chronological List of the Imams and Dais
of the Mustalian Ismailis’ Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 10 (1934), pp.
8–16; and The Book of Faith (partial translation of al-Numan’s Daim al-Islam) (Mumbai: Nachiketa
Publications, 1974). Hamdani’s works include: ‘The Fatimid-Abbasid Conflict in India,’ Islamic
Culture, 41 (1967) and ‘The Tayyibi-Fatimid Community of the Yaman at the Time of the Ayyubid
Conquest of Southern Arabia’, Arabian Studies, 7 (1985), pp. 151–160. There have also been some
Dawoodi Bohras, who have studied the Fatimid texts. S.T. Lokhandwala edited one of Qadi-al
Numan’s literary works. See Lokhandwalla: ‘The Bohras: A Muslim Community of Gujarat,’ Studia
Islamica, 3 (1955), pp. 117–135; ‘Islamic Law and Ismaili Communities (Khojas and Bohras)’, Indian
Economic Social History Review 4 (1967), pp. 155–176; and Kitab ikhtil afusul al-madhahib lil-Qadi
al-Numan (Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1972). Contemporarily, it is Farhad Daftary’s
useful survey of Fatimid Ismailism, which remains the most seminal: A Short History of the Ismailis:
Traditions of a Muslim Community (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998).
9
Their modern and contemporary counterparts are commonly referred to as the Khojas or Aga-Khanis.
10
The debate between Bernard Lewis and Farhad Daftary has raged on, especially with regard to the
former’s portrayal of the Ismailis as ‘assassins’ and more fundamentally over the heavily problematic
assertion that the Ismaili Shias ‘may well be the first terrorists’. See Bernard Lewis, The Assassins: A
5
remained under another branch, the Mustali Ismailis (the medieval counterpart of the

Dawoodi Bohras), until it eventually fell to the non-Shia Ayyubids in the 12th century,

and what was then left of the community came to be confined to Yemen.

In terms of linkages with India, Ismaili Dais (‘emissaries’) had been active in Gujarat

since 1067. However, it was upon the death of the 23rd Dai-al-mutlaq (‘apex cleric of

the community’), Muhammad al-Hasan al-Walid, in 1539 that the leadership of the

community passed on to Syedna Yusuf bin Sulayman, an Indian from Sidhpur,

Gujarat. 11 As the subsequent Dai-al-mutlaqs were appointed from the Indian

subcontinent, the headquarters of the community eventually shifted to Ahmedabad in

1567. Thereafter, as the Mustali numbers continued to decline in Yemen, they came

to find increasing importance in India. By the 19th century under the patronage of the

East India Company, the community began to spread into East Africa, Ceylon and

Malaya. 12 As recently as the 1960s, the political actions of some East African leaders

and the resulting racial and political turmoil, which they engendered, led to the

Radical Sect in Islam (New York: Octagon Books, 1980), pp. 129–130. Daftary countered many of
these claims by arguing that the Ismailis practised not so much terrorism but a kind of highly efficient
guerrilla warfare against their first and most powerful enemies, the Abbasids and the Saljuks, both on
the battlefield and, in a more clandestine manner, through espionage, infiltration, and finally,
assassination. “It was in connection with the self-sacrificing behaviour of the Nizari fida’is”, writes
Daftary, “who killed prominent opponents of their community in particular localities, that the main
myths of the Nizaris, the Assassin Legends, were developed during the Middle Ages. The Nizaris were
not the inventors of the policy of assassinating religio-political adversaries in Muslim society; nor were
they the last group to resort to such a policy; but they did assign a major political role to the policy of
assassination.” See Farhad Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismailis (London: The Institute
of Ismaili Studies, 1994), pp. 34–6.
11
According to surviving and publicly available sources, Jonah Blank constructs the beginning of the
Ismaili movement in Gujarat by noting that missionary activity was initiated by Imam al-Mustansir
around 450H/1067AD. According to legend, a Dai named Ahmad was responsible for the first Dawat
contact, but struggled to make much progress owing to difficulties in language. As a result, Ahmad
brought back two Gujarati orphans (Adbullah and Nuruddin) with him to Cairo and returned them to
Gujarat after extensive training in Ismaili doctrines. Blank, whose study has been ‘verified’ by the
Bohra community, then goes on to note that “Bohra myth credits Abdullah with planting the lasting
roots of the faith in Indian soil”. Abdullah’s earliest converts were an elderly couple name Kaka Akela
and Kaki Akeli to whom he showed the power of god by miraculously filling a well with water in the
midst of a drought. The term ‘Kaka’ in Bohra kinship terminology refers to the paternal uncle and
‘Kaki’ is the wife of the uncle. ‘Akela’ and ‘Akeli’ may refer to ‘alone, only, sole’. Water, of course, is
a common Islamic metaphor for spiritual knowledge. See Blank, op. cit., pp. 36 – 40.
12
Daftary, The Assassin Legends, pp. 20–22.
6
uprooting of a large segment of the Bohra community. These East African Bohras

migrated mostly to Canada, the United States and England, with the support of the

British Foreign and Colonial Office.

In terms of the descriptive label ‘Bohra’, while a number of competing explanations

exist about the exact etymology of the term, it generally refers to those Mustali

Ismailis who descended ethnically from converted Indian Hindus. 13 As highlighted

above, the predecessors of the contemporary global Dawoodi Bohra jamaat

(‘community’) emerged in Yemen and then spread to the Indian subcontinent from

the second Dai-al-mutlaq, Syedna Ibrahim al-Hamidi (d. 1162), to the 52nd and

current Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin. 14 As a result, the composite category of

‘Mustali Ismaili Dawoodi Bohra’ may be the most appropriate in terms of capturing

13
The lesser acknowledged but possible etymology of the term ‘Bohra’ may be based on the
travelogues of Sulaiman Basri and Abu Zaid Sirani who visited India in the middle of the 3rd century.
Shibani Roy, a scholar who studied the Bohras in the 1970s, notes that the term may have been derived
from the Arabic word ‘Bharrah’, referring to the name of a trade in Arabia and in support of which one
still finds families amongst Surti Muslims who trace their lineage back to Southern Arabia. Still later
the word split into two—‘Boh-rah’—signifying a person who is ‘determined’. Bharrah may have also
signified ‘far-sighted’. ‘Bhurreh’, asserts Roy, may also mean caravans of camels and with the Bohras
associated with trade they may have derived their name from these words. Citing the Arab traveller Al-
Masudi in the 9th century, Roy notes that Al-Masudi did note that in parts of ‘Chembur’ (near Broach
in western India) there were Muslim settlers from Baghdad besides the 10,000 or so Basira Muslims,
further adding that Basira Muslims were those who identified themselves as those born in India. On the
other hand, 'Be-sara' literally meaning ‘two-heads’ may have signified persons born out of two
different stocks, i.e., Arab and Hind, whereas Quamus writes that 'Biasara' as a community of Sindh
were mainly hired for war by non-Muslim communities and their chief was referred to as ‘Besari’. It is
plausible that the term ‘Bohra’ is basically used to refer to traders who had been frequenting Sindh
from the 6th century. Travellers like Sulaiman, Basri and Abu Zaid Sirani do note the presence of such
large number of traders from Arabia residing in Sindh. Another historian Sharar suggests that all the
Bohras were initially residents of Sindh but after the entry of Mahmud Gaznavi, they may have begun
shifting to Gujarat. No matter what the precise etymology of the term may be, the term ‘Bohra’ itself
throws light upon the origins and, more importantly, the migratory character of the community. See
Shibani Roy, The Dawoodi Bohras (Delhi: B.R. Publishing, 1984) pp. 15–17.
14
Shaikh Mustafa Abdulhussein, ‘Sayyidna Mohammed Burhanuddin’ in Oxford Encyclopaedia of the
Modern Islamic World, John Esposito (ed.) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 237–238.
Also see Shaikh Mustafa Abdulhussein, al-Dai al-Fatimi, Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin: A
Biographical Sketch in Pictures (London: al-Jamiya tus-Safiya, 2000) and Shaikh Mustafa
Abdulhussein, ‘Sayyidna Mohammed Burhanuddin’ in Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Modern Islamic
World, John Esposito (ed.) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 237–238 and ‘al-Jami’ah
al-Sayfiyah’ in Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Modern Islamic World, John Esposito (ed.) (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 360–361.
7
the creed of the community. However, in order to maintain coherence, the shorter

term ‘Dawoodi Bohra’ or ‘Bohra’ is used throughout this thesis.

It needs to be noted that the term ‘Bohra’ is not exclusive to the ‘Dawoodi Bohras’,

although the latter do remain larger in terms of numbers and presence within the

existing secondary and primary archives. The community experienced various

schisms, mainly over succession, which resulted in it being split at various points.15

The biggest schism took place in the early 17th century over succession rights between

Sulayman bin Hasan and Dawood Burhan al-Din. 16 Concentrated predominantly in

Yemen, the former came to be known as ‘Sulaimanis’, with the latter concentrated

mainly in Gujarat identifying themselves as ‘Dawoodis’. 17 Furthermore, in their long

history in India, the Dawoodi Bohras often faced situations of persecution, the most

prominent being of the 32nd Dai, Syedna Kutbuddin al-Shaheed; the title of ‘Shaheed’

or ‘martyr’ was bestowed on him after he was executed in a Sunni court under

Aurangzeb’s rule for ‘heresy’ in 1646. 18

While the thesis seeks to contextualise the experience of the community during the

late colonial and post-colonial eras, what perhaps needs mention at this stage is that,

as a Muslim minority scattered in many countries and having experienced repression

almost uninterruptedly from the 13th century, the Bohras have learnt to adapt to their

environment, at times resorting to extensive and extended ‘dissimulating’ practices or

taqqiya, disguising themselves as Sufis, Twelver Shias, Sunnis and even Hindus.

15
Blank, Mullahs on the Mainframe, pp. 42–46.
16
Lokhandwalla, The Bohras: a Muslim Community of Gujarat, p. 120
17
See Daftary, A Short History of the Ismailis, op. cit., pp.187–8 and Lokhandwalla, ‘The Bohras: a
Muslim Community of Gujarat’, p. 121.
18
See Ali S. Asani, ‘The Isma'ili Ginans: Reflections on Authority and Authorship’ in Farhad Daftary
(ed.) Medieval Isma‘ili History and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 281–
285.
8
In terms of the community’s medieval and early modern history, as Farhad Daftary

notes, that the Bohras survived at all and emerged in the past two centuries as a

‘progressive’ community with a distinct identity “attests to the resiliency of their

traditions and their adaptability as a community under their spiritual leadership”. 19

Many scholars relate the ‘experience’ of adaptability to the community’s creative

application of taqqiya (‘the concealment of true identity or superficial adoption of an

exterior guise’) whenever it faced repression. 20 Whilst the Khojas have attracted more

attention from scholars in comparison to the Bohras in this regard, the creative

adoption of taqqiya is a theme that remains central in unpacking how the Bohras

successfully responded to the various agendas of ‘reform’ during the 20th century as

well. 21 Since the 13th century, taqqiya has represented a complex form of

dissimulation and acculturation, 22 allowing adaptations to occur within the religious,

social, cultural and political realities after the fall of the Fatimid Caliphate and

subsequently on the Indian sub-continent. 23 An awareness of the concept of taqqiya

remains crucial in understanding how the Bohras evolved and continue to reproduce a

19
Daftary, A Short History of the Ismailis, p.185.
20
Daftary, The Assassin Legends, p.184.
21
Blank, Mullahs on the Mainframe, p. 22. Some writings on the Khojas include: Ali S Asani, ‘The
Khojahs of Indo-Pakistan: the quest for an Islamic identity’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 8, 1
(1987), pp. 31–41; P.B. Clarke, ‘The Ismailis: A Study of Community’, The British Journal of
Sociology, 32, 4 (1997), pp. 23–47; Dominique Sila Khan, Crossing the Threshold: Understanding
Religious Identities in South Asia (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2004); Akbarally Maherally, A History of
the Agakhani Ismailis (Burnaby: Aga Khan Trust, 1991). For a wonderful study in terms of locating the
Aga Khan II (d. 1956) and the role of the Aga Khan III in developing a unique identity in the colonial
setting, see Marc Van Grondelle, The Ismailis in the Colonial Era: Modernity, Empire and Islam
(London: Hurst, 2009).
22
My understanding of syncreticism is very much influenced by Eduard Glissant’s theories of relation.
For Glissant, cultures are not nomadic entities or bounded spaces tracing national borders. According
to his definition of ‘creolization’, within contact zones the creolization of culture occurs not because
pure cultural entities have come into contact with each other, but because cultures are always already
syncretic. See Edouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, Trans. by Betsy Wing (Ann Arbor: Michigan
University Press, 1997). Also see Homi K. Bhabha, Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994)
and Marie Louis Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge,
1992), pp. 6–7.
23
For a concise introduction to the Fatimid Caliphate, see Paula Sanders, Ritual, Politics, and the City
in Fatimid Cairo (New York: State University of New York Press, 1994).
9
sense of ‘Bohra-ness’, which is in a general sense ‘Islamic’ but also ‘modern’ and

deeply embedded within the Indian context. 24

In terms of the modern Bohra community, narrating the experience of the Dawoodi

Bohras during the 19th century is complicated by a lack of reliable sources. The best

available sources, albeit scattered, are studies by historians who have plotted trade

networks operating across the Indian Ocean especially after the arrival of European

colonial interests. Christine Dobbin, for instance, locates the Khojas in the colonial

enterprise of ‘opening’ up East Africa to economic development. She argues that the

Khojas succeeded in East Africa as traders and merchants primarily because they had

learnt to adapt to ‘extreme’ conditions (alluding to centuries of ‘persecution’), which

the region of Kutch had presented since their arrival on the Indian subcontinent

around the 15th century. Noting the Khojas as the most ‘complex’ 25, Dobbin goes on

to note that the community, under their spiritual leader or Imam, with layers of

various institutional mechanisms such as jamaatkhanas (‘community centres’)

developed a “unique administrative solidarity”. 26 Dobbin also notes that, before the

arrival of European powers, the Khojas had already been involved in trade with the

Sultan of Oman and had begun to migrate (although in smaller numbers) to Zanzibar.

With the expansion of British trading interests, however, migration increased and the
24
The analytical categories of ‘Islam’ and ‘modern’ are not antithetical opposites as much of
Orientalist literatures and recently ‘Terrorism Studies’ choose to construct it. See Imtiaz Ahmad and
Helmut Reifeld (eds.) Lived Islam in South Asia: Adaptation, Accommodation and Conflict (New
Delhi: Social Science Press, 2004) and Peter G. Mandaville, Transnational Muslim Politics:
Reimagining the Umma (New York: Routledge, 2001). For general readings see Richard Eaton, Essays
on Islam and Indian History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000); Richard Eaton, India’s
Islamic Traditions (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003) and Francis Robinson, Islam and
Muslim History in South Asia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000).
25
Christine Dobbin, ‘From Gujarat to Zanzibar: The Ismaili Partnership in East Africa, 1841–1939’ in
Asian Entrepreneurial Minorities: Conjoint Communities in the Making of the World Economy, 1570–
1940 (London: Curzon, 1996), p. 110. For some reason Dobbin remains silent on the existing literature
on the Bohras at the time of writing. For instance, see Hatim Amiji, ‘The Bohras of East Africa’,
Journal of Religion in Africa, 7, 1 (1975), pp. 27–61 and Ayubi, Shaheen and Sakina Mohyuddin,
‘Muslims in Kenya: An Overview’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 15, 1 (1994), pp. 144–156.
26
See Dobbin, ‘From Gujarat to Zanzibar’, p. 111.
10
success of the Khojas and “other Gujarati merchants” (a category left undefined by

Dobbin, probably referring to the Bohras) were looked upon indulgently by the East

India Company because their success validated the British policy in civilising and

developing the East African interiors.

Notwithstanding Dobbin’s inability to locate the Bohras in her historical account of

the spread of Ismailis to East Africa, Hatim Amiji, a scholar at the University of

Massachusetts, writing in 1975, presents interesting insights into the workings of the

Bohra community in East Africa. Using community and colonial records,

supplemented by oral interviews, as the basis for reconstructing the movement of

about 15,000 Bohras from the regions of Kutch and Katiawar, Amiji locates the first

wave of migration to Zanzibar around the mid-18th century. Acknowledging the lack

of sources and the inability to verify the ‘authenticity’ of existing ones, Amiji also

cautiously traces the first Dawoodi Bohra settlement in Madagascar around 1750. By

the mid-19th century, as the British and Germans entered Zanzibar, the Bohras came

to be treated as British subjects. This enhanced security enabled them to become

‘permanent settlers’, as they began to bring their wives and children and continued to

live for extended periods in the urban centres of East Africa. 27 Among the so-called

‘pioneer settlers’ were Nurbahi Budhai-bhai, Ebrahimji Walijee and Pirbhai Jivanjee,

who were notably very successful Bohras, trading heavily with American and

27
See Amiji, ‘The Bohras of East Africa’, p. 36. For a more detailed description about the community
dynamics of the Khojas in East Africa see J. N. D. Anderson, ‘The Ismaili Khojas of East Africa: A
new constitution and personal law for the community’, Middle Eastern Studies, 1, 1 (1964), pp. 21–39;
J. N. D. Anderson, ‘Muslim Marriages and the Courts in East Africa’, Journal of African Law, 1, 1
(1957), pp. 14–22. There is also some mention of the Bohras and Khojas in Edward Steere, ‘On East
African Tribes and Languages’, The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and
Ireland, 1 (1872), pp. cxliii–cliv and Ephraim Mandivenga, ‘Islam in Tanzania: A General Survey’,
Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 11, 2 (1990), pp. 311–320.
11
European merchants. 28 By the end of the 19th century, Amiji notes, the Bohras

numbered more than 400 in the city of Mombasa alone.

Working mostly with colonial sources, a recurring predicament that scholars have

cited in tracing the Bohras during the 18th and 19th centuries is that early colonial

records only make passing references to the community, which is further made more

complex by the community being referenced under differing categories. The 1832

document Qanun-I-Islam barely mentions the Bohras, only to confuse them later with

the Khojas. At one point they are refered to as ‘Momna’ and moments later as

‘Mumin’ who are declared to be ‘orthodox Shia Musalmans’, who were “originally

Hindus of Gujarat, converted by the Ismailiya missionaries, but those resident in

Ahmadabad sometime use Hindu names, call in a Brahman as well as a Qazi to

perform the marriage rites, and their women, after a death in the family, wail and beat

their breasts like Hindus.” 29 Whilst the reference to ‘Momna’ may be a conflation

with another offshoot sect of the Khojas, the word ‘Mumin’ (‘faithful’) allows us to

discern that the reference was indeed being made to the Bohras, since it is still a term

used in the contemporary vernacular of the community. 30

By the early 20th century the literature registers a marked shift. Agendas of reform

within the community demanding ‘modernisation’ generated an interesting yet

problematic set of archival traces, which enables one to cautiously plot the historical

relations of the community during the early years of the British Raj. Having said that,

28
Amiji, ‘The Bohras of East Africa’, p.37.
29
Jafar Sharif, Qanun-I-Islam, originally published in 1832, William Crooke (ed.) (London: Curzon
Press: 1972), p. 13.
30
Some colonial sources that note the Bohras are: James M. Campbell (ed.), Gazetteer of the Bombay
Presidency, Vol. 9, pt. 2: Gujarat Population: Musalmans and Parsis (Mumbai: Government Central
Press, 1899). There is also passing mention of the Bohras in Report of the Bombay Provincial Banking
Enquiry Committee 1929–1930 (Bombay, 1930).
12
nearly all publications on the Bohras in the past one hundred years have relied almost

exclusively on one single source, The Gulzare Daudi for the Bohras of India,

authored by Mian Bhai Mullah Abdul Hussain, a Bohra ‘dissident’, writing in the

early 20th century. 31 Such a reliance on one single source and the Bohra clergy’s

conscious policy of maintaining ‘silence’ on issues of dissension has meant that

whenever the Dawoodi Bohras are discussed, as late as the 1990s, be it in magazine

features, newspaper articles, inter-faith dialogues or even academic conferences, the

narratives tend to almost invariably be coloured by dissident voices and literatures.

In this regard, Asghar Ali Engineer’s numerous studies and writings on the

community have also maintained a near-monopoly of available historical readings on

the community until the 1990s. 32 In his 1989 study, The Muslim Communities of

Gujarat: An Exploratory Study of Bohras, Khojas, and Memons, Engineer

ethnographically plots the three Gujarati mercantile communities to understand the

various factors that enable or inhibit the minority Muslim communities from

participating in the Indian political realm. As a Reformist within the community,

Engineer notes that the Bohras and Khojas have a “tightly controlling centre”,

whereas the Memons are “democratically functioning”. 33 In terms of interactions with

other communities, Engineer notes that Bohra and Khoja leaders do not encourage

“interaction with other communities”. Based on fieldwork and interviews, Engineer

31
Mian Bhai Mullah Abdul Husain, Gulzare Daudi for the Bohras of India (Ahmadabad, Reprint,
Surat: Progressive Publications, 1977).
32
Whilst Engineer has written frequently in newspapers and magazines about reform-related issues, a
couple of his key writings include: Asghar Ali Engineer, The Bohras (Ghaziabad: Vikas Publications,
1980) and Asghar Ali Engineer, Bohras and their Struggle for Reforms (Mumbai: Institute of Islamic
Studies, 1986).
33
The Memons, who fall under the larger umbrella of Sunni Muslims, are also originally a business
community from Kutch (Gujarat). See Asghar Ali Engineer, The Muslim Communities of Gujarat: an
exploratory study of Bohras, Khojas, and Memons (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1989), pp. 192–3 and
Sergey Levin, ‘The Upper Bourgeoisie from the Muslim Commercial Community of Memons in
Pakistan, 1947 to 1971’, Asian Survey, 14, 3 (1974), pp. 231–243.
13
suggests that the Bohras look upon other Muslims as “inferior” and “violent”. 34

However, the High Priest (referring to the current Dai-al-mutlaq, Syedna Mohammad

Burhanuddin) maintains close ties with Sunni establishments “for his own

interests”. 35

Although Engineer’s experience and struggle for reforms are the focus of a later

chapter, what remains pertinent is that, despite the apparent polemics of the Reformist

arguments, his studies have facilitated insights into the fluid historical linkages

between community/capital and also enabled the Bohras to be represented in larger

pan-Indian discussions on secularism and minority political participation. The

difficulty in critiquing the Reformist literatures in circulation today is that whilst they

have sought to muster the tenets of ‘civil society’, demanding recognition from the

‘secular’ Indian state, it has come at the expense of engaging the subaltern voices of

the majority of Bohras who have remained ‘loyal’ to the current Dai-al-mutlaq,

Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin. For instance, at a 2007 academic conference held

in Singapore, Engineer represented the Bohra community as follows:

The ordinary Bohras are described as mu’minin and they are supposed to be slaves
(‘abd). The earlier da‘is never called their followers as ‘abdi (slave). Now highly loaded
terms are used for the da‘i who is treated almost like a god on earth. Another term used
is Huzura’la (in his august presence). Thus a deliberate attempt has been made by the
present da‘i to cultivate a culture of slavery and giving high priest a status, which even
the Prophet of Islam (PBUH) never claimed. A glance at the website www.mu’iin.com
is enough to establish this.

Not dedicating the mosque to the da’i is considered soulless and offering prayer in it
will not be acceptable to Allah, as if Allah needs da’i’s permission to accept prayer. 36

34
However, it is pertinent to note that most of the fieldwork respondents for Engineer’s study are from
the ‘progressive Bohra’ or ‘reformist Bohra’ community. Engineer, The Muslim Communities of
Gujarat, pp. 14–15.
35
Ibid., p. 264.
36
Asghar Ali Engineer, ‘The Bohras in South and Southeast Asia’ (paper presented at the conference
Recentering Islam: Islamic Transmission and Interaction between South and Southeast Asia, held at
the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, June 5-6, 2007, Singapore).
14
While we will return to Engineer’s polemics in a later chapter, with the debates for

Reform becoming prominent in the 1970s and 80s, the Bohras began grabbing the

attention of secular scholars and historians. 37 One of the earliest studies to appear was

Theodore P. Wright’s 1975 article, which deals with the struggles between the Dawat

and the Reformists in the context of what Wright terms ‘competitive modernization’.

Wright concluded that the Reformists’ lobby remained marginalised because it was

worthwhile, in socioeconomic terms, for members of the community to be in harmony

with Dawat than against it. 38 P.N. Chopra’s 1982 study also attempted to briefly

locate the Bohras in the larger context of Indian Muslim groups and identity

formation. 39 Farhad Daftary too has provided a brief discussion on the Bohras in The

Short History of the Ismailis. 40

37
While scholars have frequently referred to the Gulzare Daudi, the other major documentary source,
which both the Dawat and Reformist writers do regard as generally authoritative, is the Mausm-e Bahr
written originally in Gujarati using Arabic script and since published in numerous Gujarati editions that
remains the single most important work on Bohra history. Completed in 1882 and authored by
Muhammad Ali ibn Jiwabhai, an official under the 47th Dai, Syedna Abdul Qadir Najmuddin, the first
two volumes document the Prophet and the Imams, ending with the Imamat of Tayyib in 526H. The
third volume contains the history of the Bohras in India. The end-point of the second volume is
significant because after the occultation or ‘satr’ of the 21st Imam Tayyib, the Bohras have followed the
line of Dai-al-mutlaqs as representative of the Imam, which continues till date. As one source declares,
the “satr of Imam Tayyib took place for many reasons such as the discernment of the true (believers)
from the false, the raising of the people of belief and knowledge and giving to them of exclusive
bounties.” In his satr, the Dawat of the Imam is instituted through the Dai-al-mutlaq, Mazoon and
Muqasir. “The dictates of the Imam are constantly reaching the Dai-l-Satr by way of which he carries
out the affairs of the Dawat and, as we witness daily, reveals the glories of the Imam himself.” See
Fazaailo Misril Fatemiyyah, manuscript, Mustafa Shaikh Dawood (trans.) (Bombay: Awliya-ul
Kiraam Archive, 1997).
38
Theodore P. Wright, ‘Competitive Modernization within the Daudi Bohra Sect of Muslims and its
Significance for Indian Political Development’ in Helen Ulrich (ed.) Competition and Modernization in
South Asia (Delhi: Abhinav, 1975).
39
Interestingly, in the natural sciences, the Bohras’ strict code of endogamy prompted several
biological researchers to use them as subjects of a genetic study. A. Jindal, and S. K. Basu, ‘ABO
blood group incompatibility differentials in reproductive performance with respect to maternal age and
parity among Dawoodi Bohras of Udaipur, Rajasthan’, Indian Journal of Medical Research, 74 (1981),
pp. 688–95.
40
The earliest study that describes the Bohras is John Norman Hollister’s The Shia of India (London:
Luzac, 1953). Satish Mishra’s survey of Gujarati Muslims includes useful chapters on the Bohras and
the Khojas. See Satish Chandra Mishra, The Muslim Communities of Gujarat (Baroda: Asia Publishing
House, 1964). For general studies on Shias in India, see David Pinault, The Shiites: Ritual and Popular
Piety in a Muslim Community (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993) and David Pinault, Horse of
Karbala: Muslim Devotional Life in India (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001). The only issue with
Pinault’s studies is that he focuses mostly on the Twelvers in Lucknow and Darjeeling, with little
mention of the smaller Ismaili sects.
15
Shibani Roy’s The Dawoodi Bohras: An Anthropological Perspective published in

1984, however, is different. Based on fieldwork conducted at a time when the

Reformist movement had reached intense levels in terms of publicity and press

coverage, most of which portrayed the Dai-al-mutlaq and the Dawat-e-Hadiya (‘the

rightly guiding mission’) in a negative light, Roy’s anthropological study highlights

the debates within the community during the 1970s. Foregrounded by an extensive

introductory chapter, which plots the history of the Dawat in India and its Imams and

Dai-al-mutlaqs from the 10th century Fatimid era, the book concludes with the 1979

Conference of Fatimid Knowledge, which was organised by Syedna Mohammad

Burhanuddin with the aim of initiating greater cohesion within the community.

Roy’s study is remarkable in terms of its context. It acts almost as a journalistic

record of events that unfolded in Udaipur, where a group of young members of the

community revolted against the authority of the local Amil (‘appointed representative

of the Dai-al-mutlaq’). Written in response to the Reformist allegations at the time,

the crucial source that Roy’s study allows access to is the document which lays down

the 1979 Five Point Directives of Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin, guiding his

followers “in the face of various odds and hurdles by the followers with the changing

social events of Bombay and Rajasthan”. For Roy, the directives were seen as a

“pragmatic approach to oversee the religious and social welfare of the followers in the

different lands amidst variety and social difference”. 41

41
Roy, The Dawoodi Bohras, p. 40.
16
The 1979 Five Point Directives were as follows – first, being faithful to the religion;

second, character building and education; third, industrialisation and

entrepreneurship; fourth, service to humanity and duties for this world; and fifth, the

other world. The Directives sought to reassert the orthodox Bohra approach to life as

balanced between religious service and everyday affairs of modern citizenhood. Roy

notes that “education to the youth and children has been considered of primary

importance by which not only the community but the nation would benefit from

too”. 42 Roy concluded her study with a statement that neatly captures the ‘identity

mix’ the community has adopted from the 1980s: “in every directive the Syedna

keeps in view the benefit to the nation. This nationalistic spirit is retained in the other

point wherein he encourages industrialization in face of educated youths opting for

white collared jobs.” 43

The feminist-scholar Rehana Ghadially has also challenged the Reformists’, and

Engineer’s assertions in particular, about the ‘plight’ of Bohra women and Dawat’s

‘oppressive’ structures. Ghadially’s earliest article discusses the politics of reform that

gripped the Bohra community during the 1970s and it then extracts a gendered

reading in an attempt to discern what sort of impact this had on the practice of veiling

and the adorning of the purdah or rida amongst the women of the community since its

introduction in 1979. She notes that “even though there was a ‘silent uproar’, no overt

protests broke out”. 44 A later 1996 article documents the campaign for ‘women’s

emancipation’ within the community by concluding that the Bohra women were able

to assert their voice in community affairs during the 1930s, by linking themselves

42
Ibid., p. 45.
43
Ibid., p. 41.
44
Rehana Ghadially, The Campaign for Women’s Emancipation in an Ismaili Shia (Daudi Bohra) Sect
of Indian Muslims: 1929–1945 (WLUML Dossier September 14–15, 1996).
17
with Gandhi’s freedom struggle. Ghadially’s other two papers discuss female Bohra

specificities: the first looks at the experience of ziyarat (‘pilgrimage’) across various

Durgahs in Gujarat, forming an interesting dynamic in terms of differently narrating

female religiosity. The most recent publication in 2005 looks at women’s observances

in the calendrical rites of the Bohras, where Ghadially approaches the Bohra woman

as an experiential category, and how such observances form part of the Bohra ethic of

“living religiously”. 45

While Roy’s and Ghadially’s studies provide important glimpses into the ‘subaltern

metaphors’ of the community and their interactions with the post-colonial state, the

most detailed anthropological study to date is Mullahs on the Mainframe by the

Harvard-trained anthropologist Jonah Blank. Given the dearth of literature on the

Bohras, Blank’s carefully documented ethnography has become a critical resource in

shedding light on the contemporary identity mix of the community. 46

In terms of content, Blank describes rituals of a Dawoodi Bohra’s life from birth to

infancy to rituals of adulthood such as marriage, divorce and death. Along with life

rituals, calendar year ceremonies such as Muharram, Ramadan, Zyl-Hajj, and Bakri

Eid are also recorded, based on participant-observation, interviews with Dawat

45
Rehana Ghadially, ‘Women's Vows, Roles and Household Ritual in a South Asian Muslim Sect’,
Asian Journal of Women's Studies, 4, 2 (1998), pp. 27–52; Rehana Ghadially, ‘Devotional
Empowerment: Women Pilgrims, Saints and Shrines in a South Asian Muslim Sect’, Asian Journal of
Women's Studies, 11, 4 (2005), pp. 79–101; Rehana Ghadially, ‘Veiling the Unveiled: The Politics of
Purdah in a Muslim Sect’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 12, 2 (1989), pp. 33–48. There
is also wonderful gendered reading of Muharram rituals in the Bohra community. See Rehana
Ghadially, ‘Gender and Moharram Rituals in an Isma’ili Sect of South Asian Muslims’ in Kamran Scot
Aghaie (ed.), The Women of Karbala: Ritual Performance and Symbolic Discourse in Modern Shi’i
Islam, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), pp. 183-199. For a much broader discussion on the
dynamics between the domestic and public sphere, moments at which the distinctions are blurred and
how the very category of “domestic life” can be opened up as a discursive site for the understanding of
identity formation in the South Asian context, see Ruby Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early
Mughal World, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
46
Blank, Mullahs on the Mainframe, p.1.
18
officials and supplemented by survey responses. One of the most interesting aspects

of his fieldwork is the discussion on Qasr-e Ali (‘the noble household’) of the Da’i-al-

mutlaq. 47 The chief criticism the Reformists have levelled is that the Qasr-e Ali holds

too much power and its privileges are too highly concentrated among the blood

relatives of the Dai-al-mutlaq. However, upon spending some days with the Qasr-e

Alis, apart from the luxury of globetrotting (i.e., accompanying the Dai-al-mutlaq

when he visits the faithful in different regions of the world), Blank notes that their

lifestyle is very much ‘mediocre’ and descriptions provided by reformists such as

Engineer of Qasr-e Ali ‘wealth and wastage’ need to be held suspect.

Focusing mostly on the post-1980s intricacies of the community, Blank notes that the

Bohras have fused the modern and traditional in no place better than in the realm of

education. Despite their merchant tradition and emphasis on business-oriented

occupations, the community registered higher levels of literacy when compared to

other Shia and Sunni denominations. Blank associates this with the trasnational

network of Burhani schools established by the Dawat since the 1960s whose mandate

has been to teach science and religion alongside each other. The ‘jewel in the crown’

is however noted to be the Al-Jamea-Tus-Saifiya, the 19th century Islamic academy in

Surat with its more recently established satellite campus in Karachi, which provides

its student with a full range of both secular and Islamic subjects. Blank’s contention is

that while in some Muslim societies such as Turkey or pre-revolutionary Iran, secular

education led to the downgrading of the role of Islam and religion in the general

worldview of its people, in the case of the Bohras the opposite remains true. “The

acquisition of western-secular knowledge”, notes Blank, “is encouraged in order to

47
Ibid., p. 135.
19
further reinforce tradition”. 48 As such, ‘tradition’ and ‘community’ emerge forcefully

from the narratives of modernity and the traditional-modern dichotomy as

incompatible and hostile to each other is re-cast as anything but a problematic

construct.

Blank also discusses how the Dawat maintains its ‘spiritual and political hegemony’

over a community that is dispersed transnationally. Several techniques are noted;

from the spiritual end of the spectrum there is the position of kal ma’sum (‘being like

mas’um’) that the Dai-al-mutlaq occupies. 49 This is a position consolidated by

references to Fatimid theology and discourse. In the governance of everyday life,

Blank notes how the core aspects of Bohra dress and economics have also been used

as a mode of maintaining spiritual hegemony. In terms of bodily pronouncements, the

maintenance of beard and dress have been crucial in establishing an ‘Islamic’, yet

distinctly ‘Bohra’, identity since the late 1980s. Interestingly, it is the use of modern

technology, Blank discovered in his fieldwork, which has helped in improving the

level of orthopraxy among the members. In an era beset by the hypermobility of

bodies and knowledge, with air travel becoming faster and cheaper over the past few

decades and the Dawat’s willingness to adopt technologies from facsimile and

electronic mail to SMS (especially since the ‘Islamization’ programme was launched

in the 1970s), the Dai-al-mutlaq has been able to re-establish close access to the

devotees that had been the hallmark of the Bohras in previous centuries when the

community was geographically less dispersed. 50 For Blank, this re-invigoration of

orthopraxy has enabled the Bohras to adapt to changing contexts and adopt modern

technologies for their benefit:

48
Ibid., p. 80.
49
Ibid., p. 159.
50
Ibid., p. 174.
20
 Moreover, it [the Bohra apex-clergy] has done so not by rejecting modern or Western
ideas and technologies, but by embracing them: the Bohras have used modernity as a
tool to reinvigorate their core traditions. The case study of the Bohras should serve as a
powerful refutation to those who would essentialise Islamic revivalism, or even (to use a
more ideologically laden term) Islamic fundamentalism. 51

Undoubtedly, Mullahs on the Mainframe forms a crucial reference point for the

present study as it succeeded in not only filling a crucial gap in the literature but also

engaged with the ‘orthodox’ idiom, in terms of presenting an alternative narrative of

‘global’ Islam which seems to be contemporaneously consumed by images of burqa-

clad Iranian women or bazooka-harnessing Afghans. However, Blank’s study is also

not an entirely unproblematic celebration. Presented as a broad anthropological

survey, it fails to adequately historicise a number of key moments from the period

1915 to 1985 that enabled the Bohras to attain the unique identity mix which he

observed and documented in the 1990s. Although he does provide a significant

discussion to the ‘Reform movement’, the study fails to access and adequately

historicise the inner working of the community’s structure during the different

Reformist waves over the 20th century.

In terms of being able to engage the gaps in the literature, the current thesis seeks to

historicise the emergence of the various ‘agendas’ of Reform that competed to define

the ‘modern Bohra community’ in colonial and post-colonial India. As a result, when

the few available secondary sources on the Bohras are mobilised, they are at times

read as historical texts, at once malleable and indicative of the particular contexts of

their writing and emergence. This is also applicable to the various Reformist

literatures highlighted earlier, which acted to insert the Bohras into ongoing debates

about ‘modernisation’ during the colonial and post-colonial era, and how politically

51
Ibid., p. 1.
21
vulnerable groups such as the Bohras sought to refashion their relationship with the

state as an arena which consisted of social groups and not just individuals, whose

relations are further mediated by power. 52

‘Apolitical Quietism’ in the Dawoodi Bohra Tradition

In his lengthy study on the Dawoodi Bohras, Jonah Blank concluded with the

observation, “The Dawoodi Bohras, a rather vulnerable minority throughout their

existence, have always managed to adapt to the world around them without losing

their souls. Modernity, for them, is nothing new.” In the few other scholarly studies

discussed in the previous section, a similar sentiment is voiced. The community has

been repeatedly described as a group that negotiated and continues to respond to the

mandates of modernity with utmost urgency and creativity. In all, amidst recent

searches for ‘moderate’ Islams, the Dawoodi Bohras have been represented as a

relatively positive case study of an Islamic group that has not fallen prey to the

vicissitudes of ‘political violence’. The dominant attribution to these ‘successes’ is to

what Blank terms the ‘apolitical quietism’ of the Dawoodi Bohra clergy. 53

The strict avoidance of political activity by members of the community seems to be in

line with much of broader Shia customs of secrecy and quietism, i.e., the practice of

taqqiya or a doctrine permitting (even encouraging) a believer to disguise his faith in

the face of oppression. Drawing on community pronouncements where the Dawat has

always urged its followers to be loyal to whichever state they reside in, Blank notes

52
For theoretical discussions in terms of how the state/community dichotomy in colonial India was
structured historically, see Gyanendra Pandey, Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006); Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the
Making of Modern India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2002); Ranajit Guha, Dominance without
Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
53
Blank, Mullahs on the Mainframe, pp. 272–274.
22
that the Bohras, very much like the Parsis and the Khojas, have managed to blend into

every context that they found themselves in. 54 The almost dialectical and/or integrated

approach to life between deen and duniya seems to have given the Bohras a fine

balance between negotiating their ‘worldly’ and ‘spiritual’ commitments. 55

Whilst the term ‘apolitical quietism’ could be held as problematic, the existing

literature suggests that two important Shia doctrines exist centrally to the

community’s negotiation of the shifting context on the subcontinent since the arrival

of the first missionaries in the 15th century at Kathiawar from Yemen. First, that true

political/temporal rule will only result with the return of the Imam; during the period

of seclusion, all mumineen or initiated Dawoodi Bohras would avoid ‘overt’ political

conflict and refrain from any agitations which could risk the existence of the

community. Second, the crucial concept of taqqiya or dissimulation permits the

community to accept the dictates of the temporal authority of the time, based on the

prevailing context, while maintaining their own beliefs in private. The practice of

taqqiya has received immense attention from scholars studying the Ismailis (Khojas

and Bohras) given that both communities have historically experienced persecution

not only by Sunni rulers, but also by the Ithna Asharis and, as the developments of the

20th century will highlight, by forces perched within the community as well.

54
This category of productively adapting to changing/evolving landscapes may be complicated further
if one conceptualises the Bohra ‘outlook’ on indigenisation as a colonial/post-colonial form of
‘mimicry’. ‘Mimicry’, the Bohra community’s attempt to un-underdevelop itself, on the one hand
brings to light the ethical gap between the normative/normalising vision of developmentalism and
‘modernity’ in general, but on the other hand, brings to light the distorted nature of the colonial/post-
colonial (mis)imitation of the post-Enlightenment model. In other words, mimicry is also the sly
weapon of an anti-colonial civility; it is an ambivalent mixture of complicity and disobedience. See
Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 30.
55
For instance in a recent visit by the Bohra Dai-al-mutlaq to London, he was welcomed by a couple of
Members of the British Parliament who hailed the Bohras as “peace-loving citizens of the United
Kingdom”. See The Financial Times, ‘MP's pledge to Muslim leader’, 8/6/2007.
23
What has fascinated the sceptic/scholar, especially in the post-Partition period, is the

supposed ‘silence’ Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin maintained as the reformist

challenge reached a feverish pitch. As such, it is the intent of this study to argue that

such a ‘silence’ may be understood as yet another creative adoption of taqqiya and, if

indeed the Bohras chose to latch onto and embrace the orthopraxic reforms that

Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin initiated in 1979 to maintain the Dawoodi Bohra

‘culture and identity’, they were following a long historical and ideological tradition

which may be traced backed to the Fatimids in Cairo but more recently to the

predecessor and father of the current incumbent, Syedna Taher Saifuddin (d. 1965).

Much of the study is dedicated to describing varied events that may be grouped

together as the Reformist challenge of the 20th century, starting from the 1920s when

the colonial government initiated civil laws to the post-colonial period when

understandings of secularism influenced how the Bohras related to and figured within

the Indian public sphere. 56 Echoing Partha Chatterjee‘s comments about the

community, “which ideally should have been banished from the kingdom of capital,

continues to lead a subterranean, potentially subversive, life within it because it

refuses to go away.” 57

The re-reading of the community as a site for subversion is undertaken by presenting

historically specific narratives based on what the Dai-al-mutlaq and other Dawat

officials were announcing to the community internally. Relying on community

56
For an interesting article on secularism in India, see Romila Thapar, ‘Is Secularism Alien to Indian
Civilization?’ in T.N. Srinivasan (ed.), The Future of Secularism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2007). Also see Partha Chatterjee, ‘Secularism and Toleration’ in R. Bhargava (ed.) Secularism and Its
Critics (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994).
57
Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 236.
24
publications and other sources, the study endeavours to present something of an

‘Islamic reality’, seeking to not only contribute to an important yet immensely

understudied group of Indian Muslims, but also indicate how conceptions of

‘devotion’ to the Dai-al-mutlaq provide a useful entry-point into extending the

understanding of Muslim history on the subcontinent.

Methodology and Sources

The nature of my research necessitated the use of a variety of considerably dispersed

sources. A significant part of the study is based on research materials, which include

community publications in the form of newsletters, pamphlets, tracts and

commemorative books on the history and organisation of Dawoodi Bohras in

Bombay. Archival records, especially from the Times of India, The Illustrated Weekly,

Eve’s Weekly and the popular newspaper Blitz, provided useful information on the

historical background of the different debates between the reformists and the Dawat,

therefore, forming a crucial reference point for the study. In plotting the post-1970s

experience, the various reports and tracts published by Reformists such as Noman

Contractor and Asghar Ali Engineer have been treated as primary sources, allowing

access to their polemics and discourses. It is also through secondary sources, namely,

the work of Shibani Roy and Jonah Blank, that I gained access to some ethnographic

information to set the context for my study.

Much of the theoretical basis of the current study is loosely figured on what Partha

Chatterjee describes as the “suppressed narrative of the community”. 58 Chatterjee

reads this from Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, which attempts to theorise the realisation

58
Ibid., p. 236.
25
of the subject’s ‘will’ in ethical life scenarios. Noting that the ‘community’ as a

historical concept may be of urgent theoretical and practical relevance, Chatterjee

grounds the definition of ‘community’ (in this case of the Bohras, a ‘spiritual

community’) as an institution grounded in ‘love’, as a space which exists distinct

from ‘civil society’, where members are first of all designated as individuals coming

together based on market relations and civil law. By allowing the subjectivities of

‘love’ to emerge as a historically charged category and the free surrender of

individual wills, not mediated by civil law contracts, Chatterjee (like Hegel), opens up

that epistemological gap for the expression and interrogation of the narrative of the

community—a narrative which simultaneously resists and embraces the language of

contracts and contingency spoken in civil society and the disciplinary state.

Chatterjee is right in highlighting the ‘community’ as a concept of theoretical and

practical relevance. However, he does not fully develop the levels at which the

community ends up mimicking the modern state. This is particularly important in the

case of the Dawoodi Bohras, where the capital-community opposition is often blurred,

and to accept capital’s construction of the community as its archaic or traditional

other, as Chatterjee does, would be to treat the community as existing outside the

domains of modernity and the disciplinary state. In many ways, considering the

existing literature (with the exception of Blank’s and Ghadially’s studies on the

Bohras), the colonial and Reformist literatures on the community easily slip into the

dichotomy of modernity vs. tradition, which easily goes back to when the colonial

censuses at first, and Reformists literatures later, spoke of the Dawoodi Bohras and its

clergy as ‘unchanging’ and ‘ill-equipped’ to confront the mandates of modernity.

Such a view allowed the colonial state and the Reformists to represent their views as

26
non-intrusive, as bulwarks of modernity surrounded by an archaic community and

traditional clergy.

As the thesis explores the history of the community in colonial and post-colonial

India, the tradition-modern binary is held suspect. In the period under study, the

Bohras have been understood as a community which has seen itself as a part of

India’s coming to terms with modernity, as a force of difference, which critiqued,

inhabited and at times even strategically distanced itself from the political

developments of the nation-state. This approach is grounded in understanding the

public forms of community which affected the Bohras, as well as the reformists

during the colonial and postcolonial eras. For instance, Francis Robinson has argued

that the advent of print resulted in the democratization of religious knowledge, but

also privileged reformist Islam, while discrediting organized movements. Yet, the

type of sources and documents this study unpacks seem to suggest that the situation

was much more complex. The Bohra response to the colonial experience, in fact,

involved the appropriation of new communications media, starting with print,

railways and, in present times, the internet. These successive generations of media

have been used to respond to the ideological challenges, nlt only from the reformists,

but also from the secular modernists and Orientalists. Contained within the narrative

of ‘reform’, which is the mainstay of this thesis, these adaptations contribute to new

forms of community that reconfigure the spiritual practices that link the Bohras to

their past.

While there have been ongoing debates about the most appropriate terminologies to

be used in the sociology of religion, the term ‘community’ has been preferred over the

27
use of other terms such as ‘sect’ or ‘cult’ to describe the Dawoodi Bohras. In the

classic definition of Stark and Bainbridge, a ‘sect’ is defined as a “deviant religious

organization with traditional beliefs and practices”. 59 By contrast a ‘cult’ is defined as

a “deviant religious organization with novel beliefs and practices”. According to these

definitions, both terms place the described group outside the mainstream of large-

scale religious organisations. The Dawoodi Bohras have consciously avoided using

such terminology. In everyday practice the term jamaat is used to describe themselves

and the wider community. In the rare 1990 study, where access was granted to an

anthropologist to understand the inner workings, the term ‘community’ was

consistently used to describe the subjects of his research. In the current thesis too, the

choice of the term ‘community’ is considered most appropriate as it is the nearest

linguistic equivalent to the term jamaat, which the Dawoodi Bohras use consistently,

while avoiding the pitfalls usually associated with the terms ‘sect’ and ‘cult’.

As a result, the study remains sensitive to how the Dawoodi Bohra religious power

structure operates, i.e., taking their guidance from a single centralised clergy with a

strictly hierarchical organisation. At the top of this apex structure is the Dai-al-

mutlaq, whose absolute primacy in all matters of faith is not questioned even by the

small group of Reformists we will continue to encounter in the course of the study.

The Dai-al-mutlaq’s centralised control also extends beyond the spiritual realm into

temporal matters of the believer’s life, constituting a sort of a ‘moral community’. 60

59
R. Stark and W.S. Bainbridge, The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival, and Cult Formation
(London: University of California Press, 1985).
60
Formulations and the literature on notions of the ‘moral community’ are plentiful, even though the
question of what ‘morality’ is and how it may be defined is a deeply contested terrain in political
philosophy. For Frederic Nietzsche, the act of constructing for oneself the notion of what constitutes
the permissible and the forbidden in terms of his/her relationship to the greater community “…is to
imagine ‘the enemy’ as conceived by a man of ressentiment—and here precisely is his deed, his
creation: he has conceived the evil enemy, ‘the evil one’—and indeed as the fundamental concept from
28
At various moments of the 20th century, it is the strict and effective governance of the

believer’s life matters beyond the spiritual realm that became the cause of dispute

with the Reformists.

The matrix in which the Dawoodi Bohra apex clergy and the Reformists were lodged

is in some ways best derived from Michel Foucault when he considers the ‘modern

state’ as an intensely sophisticated structure in which individuals could be integrated

under one primary condition: “that this individuality would be shaped in a new form

and submitted to a set of very specific patterns”. 61 Foucault labels this structure as

possessing a salvation-oriented or ‘pastoral power’. For him it is “oblative,

individualizing, coextensive and continuous with life. It is linked with a production of

truth — the truth of the individual himself”. 62 As such, for the Dawoodi Bohras, as

the apex clergy went about crafting the ‘moral community’, it was not merely a type

of power, which commanded and subjugated. It was and continues to be prepared to

sacrifice itself for the life and salvation of the flock. It is a type of power that does not

just look after the entire community but each individual during his/her entire life. As

such, as the current study attempts to recount the various agendas of ‘reform’ it is also

understood to be presenting a complex relationship not just between the state and the

individual, but also in terms of how the religious structures and the spiritual

authorities of the Dawoodi Bohras challenged the historical constitution of modernity

in India from within. This could not be exercised without knowing the inside of

people’s minds; without exploring their souls; without making them reveal their

which he then derives, as an after-image and counterinstance, a ‘good one’—himself.” See Friedrich
Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, A Polemic, trans. Douglas Smith (London: Oxford University
Press, 1996), p. 39.
61
Michel Foucault, ‘The Subject and Power’, Critical Inquiry, 8, 4 (1982) p. 783.
62
Ibid.
29
innermost secrets. It implies knowledge of the conscience and the ability to direct

it. 63

The biggest challenge the current study faces is how to represent certain religious

knowledge from an ‘objective’ standpoint for two forms of audiences. First, the

Dawoodi Bohra community has been ‘abused’ as an anthropological and historical

category in the dominant literature (with some exceptions). With various postulations

about the Dai-al-mutlaq's ‘excesses’ being centred and paraded by the Reformists in

the print media, the current study remains sympathetic towards presenting a balanced

narrative and suggesting to the reader the true believers that the Bohras are. For

sceptical audiences, a term used to classify historians and anthropologists, whose

interests are less aligned with the reality of the beliefs and more towards how

‘certainty’ is maintained within the community in the face of opposition, change, and

contradiction, one form of resolution the study seeks to present is to allow the

narratives of the Dai and the community to speak for themselves, whilst at the same

time focusing on the moralities that underpin the narratives and the actions they have

generated or inspired from the period 1915 to 1985.

In anticipation, it needs to be acknowledged that any historical study is inherently

contradictory and whilst this study attempts at generating an experiential collage,

which may be acceptable to the devout community and to the sceptic/scholar, it is all

framed and narrated by balancing on a tight-rope. The interstices and margins may

just be the only epistemological spaces that this study can at best seek to lay claim to.

As such, the variety of archival materials used in the study concerning the relationship

63
Ibid.
30
between the late colonial state in India and the Dai-al-mutlaqs hopes to make a

humble contribution to the scant secondary literature that exists on the Dawoodi

Bohras. Whilst the engaged archives are not complete, with much of the literature on

the community still inaccessible to scholars, the hope is to nonetheless provide an

insight into the inner workings of a small Shia community’s remarkable journey along

the arduous road towards modernisation, transformation and alignment with the

modern state. This is a journey that appears to have not only been made by preserving

the key tenets of ‘faith’ and ‘community’, but also by strengthening the internal bonds

while trying to achieve socio-economic success as a strongly committed, cohesive and

networked group in a globalised world.

Structure of the Thesis

Located as a critical enquiry into the historical contingencies which have shaped

Bohra self-identity in late-colonial and post-colonial India, this thesis focuses on

internal debates within the community about agendas of ‘reform’ during the tenure of

two High Priests of the community, namely, Syedna Taher Saifuddin (1915–1965)

and his successor Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin (1965–present). As such, divided

into two major sections, the thesis looks at the ideas and works of those individuals

and groups who attempted to critique the authority of the High Priests over spiritual

and temporal matters of the community from the early 20th century onwards.

In overall terms, the thesis problematises issues of theological authority embodied in

the institution of the High Priest and engages with questions of jurisdiction over

family and civil law matters and control over community resources and institutions.

Unravelling the developments, it is suggested that the Bohra engagement with the

modern period ought not to be read as a simple re-telling or return to a ‘glorious past’.
31
The period under study was distinctive in terms of its own dynamics. As such the

thesis approaches the idea of ‘reform’ by taking as its point of departure the

historiography developed by the subjects themselves. 64 In the discourse which came

to be formed during this period, the two Dai-al-mutlaqs attempted to explain their

own ‘history’ during the period of British colonial dominance and during the

postcolonial period from the vantage point of their own office as the High Priest. It is

through examining these discourses, interactions and pronouncements that one gains

insights into the history of the Bohras through the twentieth century.

Chapter 2 focuses on the period, c. 1915–1965, during which the Reformists used law

suits under newly introduced legislation by the colonial state to put pressure on

Syedna Taher Saifuddin to recognise the need to ‘modernise’ the community.

Contextualised within the colonial public sphere and various legal battles ranging

from the popular Chandabhai Gulla Case to the politics surrounding Bohra resistance

to the implementation of the Mussalman Wakf Act of 1923, the chapter locates how

the High Priest responded to such challenges with the selective re-adaptation of

Fatimid beliefs to legitimise his position. The discussion also highlights how Syedna

Taher Saifuddin increasingly harnessed modern technologies such as print, rail and air

64
For this one may draw upon studies of Sufism in South Asia, especially the work of Bruce Lawrence
and Carl W. Ernst. See Carl W. Ernst, Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History and Politics in a South
Asian Sufi Centre, (New York: State University of New York Press, 2000); Muneera Haeri, The
Chistis: A Living Light, (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2000); Annemarie Schimmel, Islam in the
Indian Subcontinent, (Leiden: Brill, 1980) and Mystical Dimensions of Islam, (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1975). For biographical approaches, see Bruce Lawrence, “The Chistiya of
Sultanate India: A Case Study of Biographical Complexities in South Asian Islam” in Michael A.
Williams (ed.), Charisma and Sacred Biography, (Chico: Scholars Press, 1981), pp. 47-67 and Carl W.
Ernst, “From Hagiography to Martyrology: Conflicting Testimonies to a Sufi Martyr of the Delhi
Sultanate”, History of Religions, 24 (1985), pp. 308-27. In looking at shrines and their interactions with
insitutions, see Richard Eaton, “The Political and Religious Authority of the Shrine of Baba Farid in
Pakpattan, Punjab”, in Barbara Metcalf (ed.), Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in
South Asian Islam, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
32
travel and modern organisational systems to expound his ideas to the Faithful in the

public sphere.

Chapter 3 maintains the timeline of the previous chapter but focuses on the inner

workings of the community by relying heavily on community publications and

pamphlets from the time. Portraying historical change as a crisis of the Self and the

various strategies for re-fashioning a new Dawoodi Bohra self from the period 1915–

1965, the chapter historicises the numerous community initiatives by noting how the

fashioning of the new Self could not occur without redefining the Bohra community

as a whole, for at issue was the status of the Dai-al-mutlaq, which had come under

attack by the Reformists as a ‘backward’ institution. Therefore, the chapter highlights

how Syedna Taher Saifuddin successfully responded to such challenges, embodying

the ideas of knowledge and traditions and simultaneously invoking Fatimid solidarity

and modern belonging, by leading the Dawoodi Bohras, who had been until then

represented as a ‘traditional collectivity’, into a group that demanded the modern

rights of ‘a people’.

While the previous chapter historicises Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin’s ascension

to the role of Dai-al-mutlaq, Chapter 4 contextualises his tenure after 1965. Taking

advantage of the post-colonial ‘secular’ state, the Reformists harnessed print media

and civil society institutions in an attempt to undermine the authority of the Dai.

Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin responded by embracing secularism, eschewing

Islamic extremism and reasserting the ideals of self-reliance, which had been a

hallmark of the community’s existence in India since the arrival of the earliest

Fatimid missionaries in the 11th century at Sindh and Gujarat. Laying the context for

the landmark 1979 Conference of Fatimi Knowledge (al-Multaqa al-Fatimi al-Ilmi),

33
which Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin convened to symbolise measures that aimed

at achieving greater cohesion within the community, the chapter discusses the

different moments when Reform was debated in the print media and how the Dai-al-

mutlaq succeeded in reasserting bonds of culture, traditions and the past embodied in

community institutions.

In the conclusion, the thesis acknowledges the community’s contemporary identity

mix and how dedication to the High Priest operates transnationally. The use of

modern electronic technologies by the Dai in consolidating and creating a ‘unique’

contemporary identity for the community in the post-1980s era is interrogated,

especially as the community became increasingly transnational. In this section, the

thesis examines two significant strategies used to generate a sense of solidarity across

transnational spaces centred on ‘dedication’ to the current 52nd Dai-al-mutlaq, Syedna

Mohammad Burhanuddin: first, the significant revival of medieval Fatimid

architectural motifs in recent mosque and mausoleum building initiatives on the

Indian subcontinent and elsewhere based on medieval Fatimid blueprints said to exist

at the Al-Jamea-Tus-Saifiyah libraries in Surat, and second, the particularities of the

convergence of thousands of Dawoodi Bohras from all parts of the world to listen to

the Bayaans or sermons of Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin during the annual

Muharram commemorations, for which Colombo, Sri Lanka in 2008 has been

selected as a case study.

34
 Chapter 2

‘IN THE COLONIAL PUBLIC SPHERE’:

SYEDNA TAHER SAIFUDDIN AND THE EARLY REFORMISTS

This chapter focuses on the period c. 1915–1965, during which the Reformists used

lawsuits under newly introduced legislation by the colonial state to put pressure on

Syedna Taher Saifuddin to recognise the need to ‘modernise’ the community.

Contextualised within the colonial public sphere and various legal battles ranging

from the popular Chandabhai Gulla Case to the politics surrounding Bohra resistance

to the implementation of the Mussalman Wakf Act of 1923, the chapter locates how

the High Priest responded to such challenges with a selective re-adaptation of Fatimid

beliefs to legitimise his position. The discussion also highlights how Syedna Taher

Saifuddin increasingly harnessed modern technologies such as print, rail and air travel

as well as modern organisational systems to expound his ideas to the Faithful in the

public sphere.

Fatimid Solidarity and Modern Belonging

The strategic concept of ‘apolitical quietism’ and its adaptations since the 15th century

have been evoked by many scholars who have studied the Ismailis. The Dawoodi

Bohra understanding of the term can be gleaned from the writings of Syedi Yusuf

Najmuddin, the former rector of Al-Jamea-Tus-Saifiyah University. In a 1984

document titled 75 Momentous Years in Retrospect, Syedi Najmuddin notes that it was

the 18th Imam, Al-Mustansir Billah (1035–1094 AD), who began preparations for the

oncoming seclusion period, which became a reality by the time the 21st Imam, Al-

Tayyib, left Cairo around 526 A.H. In order to restrict jurisdiction, the territories of

35
Yemen, Sindh and Hind had already been clubbed together by the 18th Imam, Al-

Mustansir, into one single administrative unit. Followers within the fold were placed

under restricted roles, bound not by territory but by a common bond of religious

discipline. For Syedi Yusuf Najmuddin, the Fatimi faith is premised on the fact that

the Imamat would continue from the 21st Imam in his progeny, from father to son, and

“that today an Imam from that august line exists” and that the Dai-al-mutlaq is his

vicegerent. Syedi Najmuddin adds that the eventual decision was made by the 24th

Dai-al-mutlaq, who was also named Syedna Yusuf Najmuddin, to transfer the Fatimi

Dawat from Yemen in 1539 to the shores of India. Such an undertaking involved an

extended period of seventy-five years because it meant transferring “religious lore, a

vast manuscript library, language, literature and traditions”.

One of the most significant aspects carried forth from the experiences of the Fatimi

Dawat in Yemen was a strict avoidance of political activity. Such a strategy enabled

those belonging to ‘the fold’ to maintain all the benefits that had existed under the

Fatimid realm in Cairo. At the same time the elimination of overt ‘political conflicts’

allowed those within the fold to function in accordance with their religious beliefs and

avoid political strife usually linked to the establishment of rule over territory and the

government of physical geographic spaces. Armed with such a strategy of ‘quietism’,

a strict code of behaviour in other aspects of the followers’ life also came to be

enforced. This ensured what Syedi Najmuddin called the ‘continuous contentment’ or

enjoyment of ‘similar bounties’ they had hitherto enjoyed during the Fatimid era

without the associated difficulties of maintaining and governing territories. 65

65
Syedi Yusuf Najmuddin, 75 Momentous Years in Retrospect (Surat: Al-Jamea-Tus-Saifiyah, 1984.
re-published by Mumbai: Manika Printers, 1985), p. 5.
36
Returning to his main focus, i.e., the experience of the community between the period

1910 and 1985, Syedi Najmuddin notes that when the 51st Dai-al-mutlaq, Syedna

Taher Saifuddin, took over the reins of the Dawat in 1915, activities ‘inimical’ to the

Dawat had been festering for over a century. Syedi Najmuddin reads this as an

attempt to weaken the grip over ‘the vast treasures’, which were the defining heritage

of the Fatimids. Noting how previous Dai-al-mutlaqs had paid little attention or not

done enough to silence those who had engaged in the ‘wrongful’ and ‘indiscriminate’

interpretation of the scriptures, Syedna Taher Saifuddin took upon himself the entire

orbit of the ‘vast teaching mechanism’. Not only did Syedna Taher Saifuddin take on

those who remained sceptical of the Dawat’s ability to cope with the mandates of an

emerging modern consciousness across India but he also began to reclaim the

intellectual heritage of the Dawoodi Bohra faith. This was done by forming halqas

(‘public gathering in the form of a circle’) and teaching every conceivable manuscript

in the Fatimid libraries from cover to cover. 66 In the narrative which follows, the

attempt is to posit that the early Reformist challenge of the 20th century was not just

about accountability over the Dawat’s intellectual and temporal resources, but was

66
Halqas are basically ‘study circles’ emphasizing religious knowledge. The formation of halqas date
back to the early days of Islam in Arabia, they are conducted primarily for adults and focus more
specifically on the teachings of the Quran and scriptures depending on the group and the figure leading
the session. In South Asia, the formation of halqas is also associated with various Sufi branches,
especially the Naqshabandiya and Chisti orders. See Carl W. Ernst and Bruce B. Lawrence, Sufi
Martyrs of Love: The Chisti Order in South Asia and Beyond, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002)
and Ali Riaz, ‘Madrassah Education in Pre-colonial and Colonial South Asia’, Journal of Asian and
African Studies, 46, 1 (2010), pp. 69-86. He halqa also has a relevance to theatre. Khalid Amine, a
scholar who studies Moroccan theatre, notes that an Al-halqa is a public gathering in the form of a
circle around a person or a number of persons (hlayqi/hlayqia) in a public space (be it a marketplace, a
medina gate, or a newly devised downtown square). It is a space of popular culture that is open to all
people from different walks of life. “Al-halqa hovers between high culture and low mass culture,
sacred and profane, literacy and orality. Its repertoire combines fantastic, mythical, and historical
narratives from Thousand and One Nights and Sirat bani: hilal, as well as stories from the holy Quran
and the Sunna of the prophet Mohammed (PBUH) along with local witty narrative and performative
forms.” Quoting the playwright/writer El-Meskini Sghir, “an’al-halqa is the didactic and entertaining
space of the general public from different walks of life[...] halqas are characterized by the
representation of the traditional repertoire based on fantastic stories and myths that attract passers-by
who form a circle around actors, acrobats, musicians, or around story-tellers.” See Khalid Amine,
‘Crossing Borders: Al-halqa performance in Morocco From the Open Space to the Theatre Building’,
The Drama Review, 45, 2 (2001), pp. 55–69.
37
about the community’s struggle to maintain its independence and its self-image and

identity which were closely linked to the Dai-al-mutlaq against an increasingly

interventionist colonial state. The contractual basis between leader and followers was

being threatened. Perhaps the most apt metaphor to describe Syedna Taher Saifuddin

is that of the untiring leader amidst the Reformist challenge. He convened almost

twenty-five halqas each day and taught from early morning till midnight, alongside

further elaborations every Thursday, Friday and a waaz (‘sermon’) every Sunday. 67

Sir Adamji Peerbhai: ‘The Difficult Philanthropist’

The earliest stirrings for reforms within the community and the rise of what may be

considered a modern reformist consciousness may be located in the vacuum created

by the internal power struggle over succession between the 49th and 50th Dai-al-

mutlaqs and the subsequent struggle between the family of Sir Adamji Peerbhai and

the Dawat from the 1880s onwards. As the internal dispute over succession lingered,

leading to a severe decline in Dawat resources in the early 20th century, Adamji

Peerbhai filled the vacuum. 68 A self-made industrialist, Peerbhai had profited from the

contracts given out by the British Army in India during the First World War. Born in

67
Syedi Najmuddin, 75 Momentous Years in Retrospect, p. 6.
68
Dawat sources do acknowledge that Dawat wealth had reduced significantly but remain silent on the
precise reasons for the decline. In two brief hagiographies translated from the Tohfato L'alil Akhbaaril
Hudaat which document the decline in wealth during the reign of the 49th Dai, Syedna Mohammad
Burhanuddin, and the 50th Dai, Syedna Abdullah Badruddin, the author notes that of the 15 years that
Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin reigned, “the first five years […] were of considerable difficulty in
which all the Dawat’s debts were settled”. In the case of the 50th Dai, Syedna Abdullah Badruddin,
who passed away in 1915 A.D. after nine years on the Gadi (‘helm of Dawat’), the hagiography notes
how “he was particularly consumed in the cause of fulfilling the debts of Dawat. Molana was often out
in this regard, even mealtimes would be missed for the sake of this endeavour.” ‘Syedna Abdullah
Badruddin (RA), 50th Dai-al-mutlaq’ is a translation from the Tohfato L'alil Akhbaaril Hudaat
(Mumbai: Duat Mutlaqeen Archive, undated). In an attempt at settling the debts, Syedna Abdullah
Badruddin also continued developing the ‘Dawoodi Fund’, which had been established by the 48th Dai-
al-mutlaq, Syedna Abdulhusain Husamuddin (d. 1891), and also established the Faiz-e-Hussaini Trust
which was initially established in Karachi in 1888 and after the Partition of India was formed in
Mumbai. The Trust continues until today, providing members of the community with active support
when they travel for their Haj or ziyarat. The Trust looks after requirements such as ticketing, visas,
accommodation, sabak, guidance for arkaan, and safar. See ‘New Borah High Priest: A Personal
Sketch’, Times of India, 7/4/1906.
38
1845 at Dhoraji in Kathiawar, Adamji Peerbhai rose to prominence in the early 1870s

after receiving the government contract for army camp equipment, breaking the

monopoly of the Parsi firm, Futteqhar and Jubbulpore. 69 In 1878 he carried out a large

contract for Maltese carts, earning him a position among the big industrialists of

Bombay. 70 By 1897, Peerbhai had become an influential figure within the Bombay

Bohra community and had established madrasas, schools and hospitals to uplift the

community.

Although Adamji Peerbhai never openly challenged the authority of the Dai-al-mutlaq

until his death in 1913, tensions had existed for a number of years. Yet these tensions

were resolved to some degree around 1897 when Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin

(the 49th Dai-al-mutlaq) conferred upon the industrialist the title of Rafiuddin

(‘praiseworthy’) at a public ceremony, which was held to celebrate Peerbhai’s

ascension to the role of Sheriff of Bombay (1897–1898). 71 Nonetheless, indicative of

the tension between allegiance to ‘community’ and the callings of a ‘civil society’,

domineered by the presence of the colonial state and modern civility, the simmering

tensions were apparent when at the 1897 ceremony, Adamji Peerbhai’s son,

Mohamadally, spoke on his father’s behalf:

The Reverend Syedna Maulana Burhanuddin Saheb and the Gentleman of the Bohra
Community – I thank you most cordially on behalf of my father for your very kind
words…in some of the address you speak of my father’s popularity as the cause of
contentment of this high civic honour, but allow me to say, it was not his popularity
but your popularity, the popularity of our Bohra community, that brought my father

69
Apart from a short mention by Theodore P. Wright in his article on the Bohras, there is no secondary
literature that documents the life and times of Adamji Peerbhai. See Wright, op. cit., p. 174. However,
for a detailed study on the great businessmen of Gujarat in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, which
includes the Parsis, see Makrand Mehta, Indian Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Historical
Perspective: With a Special Reference to Shroffs of Gujarat: 17th to 19th Centuries (Delhi: Academic
Foundation, 1991); Dwijendra Tripathi, ‘Indian Entrepreneurship in Historical Perspective, A Re-
evaluation’, Economic and Political Weekly, 6, 22 (1971); and Tripathi, Business Communities of
India, pp. 23–76.
70
‘A Bombay Philanthropist: Mr. Adamji Peerbhoy’s Charities’, Times of India, 12/3/1903.
71
‘To Mr. Adamji’, Times of India, 31/12/1897; ‘Guzerat In Famine Time’, Times of India, 7/9/1899.
Also see Blank, Mullahs on the Mainframe, p. 236.
39
 the honour. When we see these large mixed gatherings around us, we almost feel
proud to say that the Bohras are not without friends amongst Europeans, Parsees,
Hindoos and other communities of Bombay. Let me assure you, Syedna Sahib, had it
not been due to your influence, my father, who is of a resisting disposition would
have hardly come out to such a gathering. 72

Speaking on behalf of the then 49th Dai-al-mutlaq, Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin,

one Sheikh, Adam Yusufbhai, had declared just earlier to Adamji Peerbhai:

Your philanthropy and public benevolences cannot be overlooked. The sanatorium

that you have set up at Chorni Road, at the expense of several lakhs of rupees, is a
standing monument of your love for the happiness of our community. By the
establishment of Madrasas and schools in Bombay as well as in Kathiawar, with
necessary arrangements for providing boarding and lodging, free of cost, to all the
boys of our community, you have given a real impetus to education amongst them.
By establishing comfortable inns and resting houses at Mecca, Medina and Kerbala,
you have rendered invaluable assistance to the numerous devotees who visit these
sacred places. Last, but not least, is the timely and effective assistance you rendered
last year in 1877 to your famine stricken brethren in Kathiawar and Yemen. 73

Despite attempts by community elders at co-opting Peerbhai, tensions between the

philanthropist and the 50th Dai-al-mutlaq, Syedna Abdullah Badruddin, only gathered

momentum. Soon both parties began competing fiercely on ‘modernising’ the

community and establishing charitable causes. 74 In response to Peerbhai, the Syedna

Badruddin convened a meeting of several Bohra merchants and traders from Bombay

72
‘Entertainment to Mr. Admaji Peerbhoy J.P.’, Times of India, 31/12/1897.
73
Ibid.
74
Within the ‘cosmopolitan’ landscape of colonial Bombay, the community history marked another
significant shifting point as it became embroiled in sectarian violence. Since 1904, the Bohras in
Bombay, especially around Bhindi Bazaar, had been having regular clashes with members of the Sunni
community during Muharram with the trigger event seeming trivial at best. The Sunni community in
1904 had insisted on its right to beat drums as the tabot procession passed the Dawoodi Bohra mosque
on Doctor Street, leading to disturbances and fatal clashes. In 1909, the Bohras, it is claimed, had
insisted on playing music within the mosque, which is said to have caused some concern among the
Sunni community. Since 1904, however, the colonial government had made special police
arrangements in the quarter during Muharram with both communities expected to remain in their pre-
designated quarters. See ‘The Mohurrum Festival’, Times of India, 28/3/1904; ‘Origin Of The Row’,
The Times of India 14/2/1908; ‘The Mohurrum Riot’, The Times of India, 15/2/1908. On how
Muharram commemorations registered a shift in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Bombay, see Jim
Masselos, ‘Change and Custom in the Format of the Bombay Mohurrum During the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries’, South Asia, 5, 2 (1982). For broader discussions, see Jim Masselos,
‘Appropriating Urban Space: Social Constructs of Bombay during the Raj’, South Asia, 14, 1 (1991);
Jim Masselos, The City in Action: Bombay Struggles for Power (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2007) and most importantly Nile Green, Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the Western Indian
Ocean, 1840–1915 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Green’s tremendous study brings
together the history of colonial Bombay, the Indian Ocean and Islam during the experience of Empire.
Most importantly, Green places Islam at the centre of Bombay’s colonial modernity, potentiated
through its status as a leading port city and its heterogeneous population.
40
to raise subscriptions for an orphanage for girls in 1910. A resolution was passed at

this gathering emphasising that the Bohra community would “heartily participate in

the objects of the fund and were ready and willing to contribute to it”. 75 Affluent

members of the community were even encouraged to donate to ‘other Moslem

projects’ too, as long as they declared themselves as ‘Bohras’ on the list of donors.76

In an attempt at reaching out to the community, Syedna Abdullah Badruddin boarded

trains and travelled to various parts of the subcontinent, rarely resting in one place for

too long. A notice from 1911 read:

His Highness Sardar Sayedna Abdulla Badruddin, High Priest of the Bohra
Community after a long tour of Ujjain, Indore, Karachi, Delhi, Agra, etc. and visiting
the Governor-General of Indore, the Commissioner of Sind and other officials started
from Jaipur by the Punjab express and halted on Wednesday night at Ankleshwar
where at the request of the Jamaat next morning he went to the masjid for prayers.
He later started by special train and arrived at Surat after eight. The railway platform
was crowded by Bohras, a band played, rockets were fired. The roads were decorated
with bunting and arches en route. 77

Wherever the Dai-al-mutlaq went, the followers were encouraged to turn up in large

numbers, seeking deedar (‘sight’) and blessings. Syedna Badruddin also began to

build and restore a number of mosques, madrasas and musafirkhanas across the

subcontinent. 78 Where possible, affluent merchants and traders were asked for

donations. Meanwhile, in terms of the overall outlook towards the State, the Bohras

remained loyal to the Raj. They actively participated in the various prayer ceremonies

organised by most religious communities around the subcontinent for the safety of

British troops and victory for the Empire as WW1 raged on. 79 With his efforts, the

75
‘Orphanage For Girls’, Times of India, 10/8/1910.
76
‘Moslem Orphanage, Opened by Lady Clarke’ The Times of India, 20/12/1910; for a reception that
was held in honour of the Governor General, one community member declared his donation as follows:
‘Dawoodi Bohra Community through ‘A Friend’. See ‘The Reception Fund’, Times of India,
22/11/1921.
77
‘Railway Intelligence’, Times of India, 6/5/1911.
78
‘Rebuilding the Masjid at Begampura, Surat at a cost of Rs. 40,000’, Times of India, 19/1/1912;
‘Opening The New Sidhpur Musafirkhana’, The Times of India, 17/2/1914.
79
‘Outlook In India, Trade With The Enemy’, Times of India, 11/8/1914; ‘The Righteous War, A Day
Of Intercession, India’s Prayers For Victory’, Times of India, 5/8/1915; ‘Ahmedabad War Fete’, Times
41
50th Dai-al-mutlaq, Syedna Abdullah Badruddin, had in his short tenure of nine years

(1906–1915), nonetheless established a number of models that his two successors

would adopt, albeit subjected to their own personal characteristics and shifting

contexts.

An Initial ‘Intrusion’: The Chandabhai Gulla Case

With the passing of Adamji Peerbhai in 1913, the major challenge emerged around

1915. The event also coincided with the ascension of Syedna Taher Saifuddin and the

ensuing sectarian violence that consumed Bhopal. 80 Fleeing Bohras sought shelter in

Ujjain, and both the Dawat and Peerbhai's sons struggled to out-manoeuvre each other

in the relief efforts. When the displaced began returning to Bhopal, in 1917 the Dai-

al-mutlaq purchased several parcels of real estate, including the current head office

properties in downtown Mumbai that make up the Badri Mahal. 81 Citing the

contentious issue over who administers Dawat resources, the sons of Peerbhai filed a

lawsuit against Syedna Taher Saifuddin, claiming that the properties had been

acquired from the gullas (‘collections boxes’) of the Seth Chandabhai durgah located

in Bombay Fort. The plaintiffs demanded that the daily collections at the Chandabhai

durgah be declared public charities, whilst Syedna Taher Saifuddin contended that

neither the mosque, nor the gulla nor the offerings were charities. The major argument

lodged by the defence was the oath of Misaq and long-standing Bohra tradition

premised on Ismaili jurisprudence gave the Dai-al-mutlaq unlimited control over all

aspects, both secular and temporal, of the followers’ lives as long as the Imam-uz-

of India, 14/12/1916; ‘India And The War’, Times of India, 2/9/1916; ‘Intercession Day’, The Times of
India, 5/8/1916.
80
Farhad Daftary, The Ismāilis: Their History and Doctrines (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1990), p. 289.
81
‘Calls for charges to be dropped (Bombay)’, The Times of India, 10/10/1917 and ‘A Public Meeting
of the Dawoodi Bohras (Surat)’, Times of India, 16/10/1917.
42
Zamaan remained in seclusion. In the version of the Misaq that was presented as part

of the hearing at the High Court of Bombay in 1920 by Syedna Taher Saifuddin, the

English rendition noted that “you should help with your life and property and you

should obey the Imam of the time or his Dai sincerely”. 82

After a lengthy trial, which lasted for several months in 1920, Justice Marten, the

presiding Judge, passed a decree declaring the Chandabhai gullas as charities. 83

However, Syedna Taher Saifuddin lodged an immediate appeal with the aid of his

barristers. The wording of the appeal became that ‘historical’ moment during which

the emergent tension between the spiritual and temporal authority the Dai-al-mutlaq

and what may be referred to as the slippery notion of ‘community’ in the colonial

context would come to be defined vis-à-vis the steady intrusions of colonial civil law

into the religious institutions of India. Syedna Taher Saifuddin contended that Justice

Marten should not have even allowed the suit into the courts. He said it was not the

right of the colonial courts to decide the best interests of the Chandabhai charities or

to grant the “prayers of the plaintiffs or to pass any decree”. 84 It was further asserted

that the Advocate General who appeared on behalf of the plaintiffs had been deceived

by ‘the promoters of the suit’ by wrongful information and the suppression of the ‘real

facts’ and this was mainly a result of the ‘ignorance’ of the position of the Dai-al-

mutlaq and Ismaili jurisprudence within the colonial judicial system.

That the learned judge ought to have held that the Dawoodi Bohra religion is what
the defendants’ witnesses deposed to and what is evidenced by the Meshak and the
religious texts of authority of the Dawoodi Bohrahs and that the said religion

82
As quoted by N.P. Nathwani, Dawoodi Bohra Commission: Report of Investigations Conducted by
the Commission Appointed by the Citizens for Democracy on the Alleged Infringement of Human
Rights of Reformist Members of the Dawoodi Bohra in the Name of the High Priest (Ahmedabad:
Nathwani Commission, 1979), pp. 11–13; Also see Noman Contractor, The Dawoodi Bohras (Pune:
New Quest Books, 1980), p.21.
83
‘The Original Side, Sardar Sayedna Saifuddin Taher (appellant) vs. advocate general of Bombay
(respondent)’, Times of India, 24/12/1921.
84
‘Appeal by Mullaji, Dawoodi Bohra Case’, Times of India, 18/4/1921.
43
 precluded the idea of the third defendant as Dai-al-Mutlak being accountable to
anyone except the Imam in Seclusion.

The text continues:

That the Learned judge’s decree declaring the Dai-al-Mutlak an ordinary trustee
violates one of the cardinal tenets of the Dawoodi Bohra religion which holds that the
Dai-ul-Mutlak holds the [Chandabhai] property as a representative of the Imam in
Seclusion and as a representative of God himself and that no one except the Dai-al-
Mutlak can by any possibility be the manager of the mosque, tomb and gulla funds. 85

The appeal presented thirty-three well-crafted points resisting the intrusion of the

colonial state in community matters. What is most pertinent is the deep contradiction

in the universalising tendencies of ‘civil law’ as an extension of the civilising mission.

The Chandabhai Gulla case and the initial 1921 Bombay High Court decision

declaring the gullas as public charities also alludes to the bonds of community as they

stood in colonial India. As opposed to civil society, which theoretically at least treats

its subjects as sovereign individuals whose relations are mediated through the market

and laws, the Dawoodi Bohra community, and Syedna Taher Saifuddin in particular,

were invoking primordial bonds of religion and culture.

This is significant where colonial governmentality was attempting to accommodate

‘tradition’ into its narrative. It could view the realm of the community only as its

Other, condemned as an ‘ordinary trustee’ at best, that could not have a legitimate

existence within its domain. As Partha Chatterjee voices, “Community, which ideally

should have been banished from the kingdom of capital, continues to lead a

subterranean, potentially subversive, life within it because it refuses to go away.”86

For this, an official Dawat document quotes the Advocate General, Sir Thomas

Strangman, who appeared on behalf of the plaintiffs in 1921:

85
Ibid.
86
Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments, p. 236.
44
 Looking back to the proceedings, I think what impresses me most, even more than
the extravagance of the claims, was the personality of Mullaji, a frail looking figure
possessed nevertheless of an iron will, great determination, and organized capacity.
At the time he assumed office the administration must have been extremely slack. Yet
he managed in very few years not only to pull the administration together but also to
obtain a hold upon his followers greater perhaps than that of any of his
predecessors. 87

The Chandabhai Gulla case was eventually settled when the Bombay High Court

issued a fresh decree with ‘some modifications’ to the initial decision passed by

Justice Marten in 1920. The Chief Justice ordered that two sets of receptacles be

placed at the durgah, with plaques clearly advising donors that the offerings for one of

the boxes would be entirely at the disposal of Syedna Taher Saifuddin. 88 The decree

also clarified that such an injunction in no way decided whether any other gulla funds

or general Dawat funds are charitable funds or not. In what seemed to have been a

resolution to the dispute, the Chief Justice remarked that in the future there be as little

litigation as possible in these matters, and any future litigation should be undertaken

only after a thorough consideration of the facts by the Advocate General. 89

‘Angry Men’: The Anjuman-i-Dawoodi and Young Men’s Bohra Association

The Chief Justice’s remarks, however, were proved wrong and with a number of

litigation suits looming by 1924, the community’s fears about increasing

marginalisation prompted a Bohra to query Mahatma Gandhi on where the

community would figure within the ambit of swaraj. The writer expressed anxiety

87
Fusion of Two Golden Eras, author, n.a. (Mumbai: Dawat-e-Hadiyah, Department of Statistics and
Information, Pamphlet, 1998), p. 1. Whilst this document suggests that Thomas Strangman made the
comment in 1918, this is highly improbable since the Chandabhai Gulla case was only settled by the
Bombay High Court in 1921.
88
For a balanced discussion see Blank, Mullahs on the Mainframe, p. 237; for the Reformist version
see Nathwani, Dawoodi Bohra Commission, pp. 11–13 and Contractor, The Dawoodi Bohras, pp. 6–7.
89
From 1921 onwards, in an attempt to ‘reclaim’ lost devotional space, the Bohra community
celebrated the annual urus in memory of Chandabhai in a grand fashion with about 10,000 devotees
converging each year. See ‘Chandabhai Seth, Bohras Observe Death Anniversary’, Times of India,
8/8/1936; ‘On Chandabahi’, Times of India, 20/8/1935; ‘Dawoodi Bohras gather at Chandabhai’, Times
of India, 29/7/1937.
45
about the future safety of the small community, especially against ‘fanatical Sunnis’

and requested the community be specifically named in the mystic formula of ‘Hindu-

Musalman-Sikh-Christian-Parsi-Jain unity’. The writer held that such a mention in the

mantram would assuage the community’s fears, adding, “our people believe that they

are happy under the present regime and their religion is not assailed. Similarly our

community should feel secure when Swaraj is gained.” 90 Apart from publishing the

contents of the letter in the Navajivan, Mahatma Gandhi did not provide any clear

response. 91

Amidst a growing climate of clamour for the application of civil laws to the

administration of Dawat resources and legislation for the Mussalman Wakf Act being

discussed in the Legislature, Syedna Taher Saifuddin began to consider a series of

orthopraxic reforms in 1924. The initial step was taken by a group of about fifty

members, who declared themselves to be the Anjuman-i-Dawoodi. Sympathetic to the

Dai-al-mutlaq, the group began to encourage male members of the community to

maintain beards. They claimed that local Amils had been informed that no marriage

ceremony could take place if the groom was beardless. At the time, the common

practice had been for some Bohra men to maintain short beards, while most wore
90
‘Through Indian Eyes – Where?’ Times of India, 17/5/1924.
91
Although the Bohras remained silent on the politics of the Khilafat Movement, the timing of such an
appeal to Mahatma Gandhi may have accrued from pan-Indian developments unfolding at the time.
The Khilafat Movement was reaching a stage of collapse by 1924 and the appeal, it may be held, was
made with a growing sense of unease that the Bohras, along with other smaller communities, may have
felt. While Mahatma Gandhi never openly commented on the Bohras, his regard for the smaller
religious and merchant communities of Bombay and Western India in general remained tolerant. This
is best captured by the respect he showed for the Parsi community in 1921, despite their non-
participation in the non-cooperation movement: “I know that you are following with considerable
interest the present non-co-operation movement. You may know, too, that all thoughtful non-co-
operators are anxiously waiting to see what part you are going to play in the process of purification
through which the whole country is passing. I, personally, have every reason to have full faith in your
doing the right thing when the moment for making the final choice comes to you.” See ‘Address to the
Parsis’, Young India, 23/3/1921. While the Bohras adopted a quietist stance during the period, Aga
Khan III (d. 1956), the spiritual leader of the Khoja Ismailis, participated wholly in the Khilafat
Movement and, as Van Grondelle notes, “did not hesitate to speak for Islam as a whole, or indeed did
not hesitate to judge what was acceptable to Islam”. See Van Grondelle, The Ismailis in the Colonial
Era, pp. 38–40.
46
moustaches and kept them clipped. The Anjuman-i-Dawoodi declared publicly that

the practice of a complete shave is an “innovation which has no religious basis” and

“striving to oust the Prince of Wales fashion, the orthodox are attacking what they

consider a dangerous custom”. 92 Appeals were made to Syedna Taher Saifuddin to

issue a “list of heretics from time to time” so that the community could be acquainted

with the accused and disapprove of any ‘wrongful’ actions that may be taken in the

name of ‘Daudi brothers’. 93

Along with calls to maintain beards came the movement against the wearing of black

caps by male members of the community. 94 It was declared that “black was the colour

of Bani Abbas”, the figure held responsible for usurping the power of Fatimid Imams

in fifteenth-century Cairo. The Dawoodi Bohra community, which was seen as the

inheritor of the Fatimid traditions, would not adorn black as a ‘mark of displeasure

against such a mortal offence’. This declaration provoked an immediate response

from the Reformists: “If the black colour is really satanic, why should you wear a

black coat or black socks, or black shoes? Why do you single out a black cap for

punishment?” In an initial indication of how important the care of the Bohra body

would be in the coming decades, the query elicited a response from the Anjuman-i-

Dawoodi: “That is because you put the cap on the head which is the most prominent

part of the body”. 95

As the work of the Anjuman-i-Dawoodi began to gather headlines and public

92
‘Noncooperation as a Cure for the Beardless’, Times of India, 21/4/1925.
93
‘Bohra Recusants’, Times of India, 23/4/1925.
94
For broader contextual discussions in terms of Islamic revival in India, see: Francis Robinson, The
`Ulama of Farangi Mahall and Islamic Culture in South Asia (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001); Francis
Robinson, ‘Religious Change and the Self in Muslim South Asia since 1800’, South Asia, 20, 1 (1997);
and Barbara Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1982).
95
‘Down with the Black Cap’, Times of India, 1/5/1925.
47
attention, a group of Reformists from the Bombay Bohra community sent a delegation

to Syedna Taher Saifuddin in 1925 contending that the edicts issued were not

practical, and that the practice of not wearing a beard would be difficult to do away

with. At the time, it was maintained that the Dawat was not carrying on this

campaign, but the renegade group Anjuman-i-Dawoodi was responsible, including an

assault on Ebrahim Adamji Peerbhai in 1922 in the wake of the Chandabhai Gulla

case ruling. 96

In the context of growing tension between the Dawat and the Reformists led by

Amiruddin Tyebji, 1925 witnessed the establishment of the Young Men’s Bohra

Association (YMBA) under the patronage of the latter. 97 The objective of the new

grouping was “to maintain and advance social and other rights and privileges of its

members, to devise means and methods by which education among Bohras may be

popularised and encouraged and to provide recreation for its members.” 98 At the

association’s first annual general meeting in 1926, Amiruddin Tyebji spoke at length

96
‘Beard Crusade’, Times of India, 30/4/1925.
97
His sons then continued the early reformist challenge that had been posed by Sir Adamji Peerbhai,
when they took the Dawat to court when a group of students and trustees were prevented from visiting
the durgah of Syedi Hakimuddin in Burhanpur. In this regard Richard Eaton's study on the shrine of
Baba Farid becomes increasingly relevant. It documents a legal dispute after the religious head of the
shrine, Said Muhammad, died in 1934 leaving his son as successor, whose succession was disputed by
a group of other descendants of Baba Farid. In the course of the trial, the lawyers solicited devotees’
testimonies from Sahiwal, Bahawalpur and Lyallpur, a “remarkable sampling of shrine’s local
constituency” and attempted to understand how Islam as sustained and mediated by this shrine was
popularly perceived in one locality. The case became interesting when the Anglo-Indian civil court
even accepted or at the least debated over whether Said Muhammad had received a dream from Baba
Farid about his son’s succession. The theoretical difficulties for the government profession were
apparent, and whether such a judgement meant the violation of non-interference in religious matters. In
the litigation, the basic issue that came up was whether the shrine was understood as a local institution
(governed by its own customs) or an Islamic institution (governed by Sharia). Likewise, in the case of
the Dawoodi Bohras, the court cases over durgahs has presented an interesting playground for the
Reformists, but also enabled a particular literature and rationality to emerge amidst British Imperialism
with Islamic reform and Muslim separatism on the rise in 1930s India. See Richard Eaton, ‘Court of
Man, Court of God: Local Perceptions of the Shrine of Baba Farid, Pakpattan, Punjab’ in Essays on
Islam and Indian History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 225–248. Also see Francis
Robinson, ‘Islamic Reform and Modernities in South Asia’, Modern Asian Studies, 42, 2-3 (2008), pp.
259-281.
98
‘Bohra Association’, Times of India, 4/5/1925.
48
admitting that although the YMBA had managed to get less overall support and

members than originally envisaged, their “real strength lay in the honesty and

earnestness of their purpose to educate their brethren.” 99 It was further declared that

the YMBA would not be deterred by threats because they “were living under the

benign British rule and enjoyed freedom of speech, thought and action, and as they

knew under the great proclamation of the late Queen Victoria the Good they had the

full liberty of following customs according to their own dictates of conscience”. 100

Tyebji went on to criticise the ceremonies performed on the occasion of deaths and

marriages as ‘wasteful’ and urged that these customs be revised in the “light of

economy and such of them as were found to be extravagant and unnecessary should

be eliminated”. Despite having only 18 members, the YMBA continued to focus on

the educational upliftment of the community over the next few years. 101

The controversy over maintaining beards came to an end in March 1930 when Syedna

Taher Saifuddin expressed his intention to “put out of the fold those who had violated

the laws of the Shariat”. Matters had also been exacerbated when some members,

including those from the YMBA, had their Nikah ceremonies performed a year earlier

without the permission of the Dai-al-mutlaq. Syedna Taher Saifuddin had refused to

perform the Nikah because the accused were in violation of the mandates of the

community by refusing to maintain beards and had not heeded his calls in 1929 to

return to the fold. 102 The decision for excommunication seems to have also been

99
‘Reform Movement among Bohras, Young Men at Work’, Times of India, 21/6/1926.
100
Ibid.
101
‘Dawoodi Bohras, Pressing Needs of the Community’, Times of India, 18/7/1927 and ‘Bohra
Benefactor’, Times of India, 25/5/1928.
102
The notification to return to the fold was posted by the attorneys of Syedna Taher Saifuddin. It
read: “Under instructions from our client His Holiness Sardar Syedna Taher Saifuddin Saheb, the Dai-
al-mutlaq and Mullaji Saheb of the Dawoodi Bohra community, we hereby bring to the notice of those
concerned who may not be aware of it that such persons as belong to or live with families of the
seceders from the Dawoodi Bohra community do not believe in our client as the Dai-al-mutlaq it is
49
based on pressure exerted by orthodox members, when it was declared at a meeting of

about 6,000 Bohras at the Badri Mahal requesting Syedna Taher Saifuddin to take the

“necessary steps” against “a few reformers who were not only acting against the

precepts of their religion, but were bringing the community into ridicule in public by

their articles in the Bombay Samachar and Times of India.” 103 As the YMBA

attempted to salvage the situation, even sending a deputation of about fourteen

members to meet Syedna Taher Saifuddin, it was made clear that the decision was

final.

Although the YMBA never questioned the spiritual authority of the Dai-al-mutlaq,

Syedna Taher Saifuddin, by the 1930s it had become embroiled in the Wakf Act

controversy by publicly demanding that the Act remain applicable to the Dawoodi

Bohras. Whilst the Wakf debate is the focus of the following section, what remains

pertinent is that in response to a resolution by Gullamhussein Matcheswala, a Bombay

Legislative Council MLC sympathetic towards Bohra appeals for the exemption, the

YMBA declared that they “thereby vindicated the inalienable right of every Indian

Muslim, whether he be a Dawoodi Bohra or otherwise, to have proper accounts of the

Wakf rendered”. The YMBA added that “it looks forward and relies upon these

members of the Bombay Legislative Council, on the floor of the Council Hall as well

as elsewhere, to do justice to their cause in the same dispassionate and fair manner on

a future occasion, should any such necessity rise again.” 104 In August 1933, however,

most of its members resigned and the secretary, Amiruddin Tyebji, reported having

submitted to those members a ‘claim for damages’ citing that the resignation letters

essential in their own interests that they should approach our client and give an explanation of their
attitude and satisfy him that they are followers of His Holiness at heart within fifteen days from the
date thereof failing which they also will be considered to have seceded from the Dawoodi Bohra
community.” ‘Notification’, Times of India, 13/4/1929.
103
‘Bohras Refuse to Wear Beard, Head Priest’s Ban’, Times of India, 12/3/1930.
104
‘Young Men’s Bohra Association Pass a Resolution’, Times of India, 14/9/1933.
50
were wholly unjustified and the letters of resignation were “all in one particular form,

and they are believed to have been inspired by the anti-reformist section of

Bohras”. 105

The ‘Politics’ of the Mussalman Wakf Act, 1923

The passing of the Mussalman Wakf Act in 1923 presented a new set of complications

to the Dawat and the Dai-al-mutlaq’s attempt at consolidating the community.106

There was increased lobbying by reformists, including the YMBA, for its application.

Syedna Taher Saifuddin appealed to the Governor-General, Sir Leslie Wilson, for an

exemption from the operation of the Act. 107 In June 1925, the appeal for exemption

was approved and the community organised a large gathering at the Sir Cowasji

Jehangir Hall in Bombay to express its appreciation for the government. Attended by

community elders and the Bombay elite, the keynote speaker, Salehbhai Karimji

Barodawala, who was a member of the Bombay Municipal Council and Bombay

Legislative Council, 108 made three points: First, similar gatherings ought to be

organised across the country and unanimous resolutions be passed that the Bohras be

exempted. 109 Second, any application of the Act would amount to an interference with

the religion of the community. Third, that Barodawala was not alone in his support for

the community and his opinions was ‘strongly backed’ by Sir Thomas Strangman, the

105
‘Anti-reformist Bohras sued for damages’, Times of India, 4/8/1934.
106
For an introduction to the Mussalman Wakf Act, 1923, see Gregory C. Kozlowski, Muslim
Endowments and Society in British India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 180–
186.
107
As one report declared, “The Standing Committee of Dawoodi Bohra Education Conference have
resolved that the local Governments of such provinces that have not hitherto put into force the Moslem
Wakf Act 1923 be moved to put the said Act into force in their respective provinces, and further, to
apply the Act to all the sects of Moslems in general and to the Dawoodi Bohra Community in
particular.” See ‘Resolution’, Times of India, 12/2/1925.
108
S.K. Barodawala also become Sheriff of Bombay in 1926. ‘Bombay's Sheriff, Dawoodi Bohras
Entertain S. K. Barodawala’, Times of India, 26/7/1926.
109
The community mobilised and across the various jumaats spread over India, Resolutions were
passed. See ‘A Thanks Meeting: Poona Bohras Gratitude for the Government.’ Times of India,
9/7/1925.
51
late Advocate-General, the Bombay Bar Association, the Honourable Judges of the

Bombay High Court, the Judicial Commissioner in Sindh and by various “famous

judicial authorities in the other Provinces of India”. 110

The major argument presented by community spokespersons was that any application

of the Wakf Act would impinge on the Dawoodi Bohra faith. 111 At the same meeting,

Mohammadally Allabux, who described himself as the Secretary of the Bohra

community, thanked the Government of Bombay, but stated that the exemption had

only been granted until 1929. 112 Presenting the Resolution, Allabux asserted that the

Wakf Act was contravening the proclamation of the colonial government that there

would be no interference in religious matters. With growing sentiment that the

government was ignoring the community, he concluded by noting that the application

of the Wakf Act “will be subversive of the tenets of the religion of the community”.

However, looking closely at the Resolution, another reason is discernible:

This meeting observes with very great regret and apprehension that the exemption of
this Community has been granted for a period of three years only pending further
orders. This meeting understands that the reason, why absolute exemption was not
granted, was that the Government believed that there was a division of opinion on the
subject in the Community. This meeting emphatically declares that there is no such
division of opinion on the subject in this Community, which unanimously demands
exemption on religious grounds. It further declares that, if a contrary opinion is held
by a few persons, posing as educated members of the Community [read YMBA],
such opinion is contrary to the religious beliefs of the Community and in violation of

110
‘Dawoodi Bohra Community Exempted from Wakf Act’, Times of India, 24/6/1925.
111
The imposition of the Wakf Act was complex for the Bohras. As Nile Green notes, prior to 1915 the
religious economy of Bombay was one where “distinctive and often mutually competitive Islams were
produced or refined and in some cases exported from there to the far regions of the West Indian
Ocean.” After 1915, with Mohammad Ali Jinnah becoming the leader of the Muslim League, the new
imperatives of nationalism and the search for a unified Indian Muslim ‘community’ symbolised by
Jinnah pulled Bombay’s Muslims in directions which were more heavily focused on consolidating the
Muslims of Bombay into a national or transnational visions of a single ‘community’. See Green,
Bombay Islam, op. cit., 2011. In terms of colonial authority and the administration of different
communities of Bombay, see: Sujata Patel and Alice Thorner (eds.), Bombay: Mosaic of Culture (New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995); Prashant Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropolis:
Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890–1920 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); and Jim
Masselos, The City in Action: Bombay Struggles for Power (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
2007).
112
‘Bohras Support to Britain, Expression of Loyalty’, Times of India, 17/10/1939.
52
 the fundamental principles of the Dawoodi Bohra religion. 113

Thus the community asserted its right to non-intervention from the colonial state and

demanded the right to govern its own resources. In November 1929, as the three-year

exemption period approached its end, a deputation consisting of 260 Dawoodi Bohras

representing the community from various parts of India approached the Hon. Moulvi

Rafiuddin Ahmad, Minister of Education, at the Secretariat in Bombay to urge a

permanent exemption. In the course of a long statement made by the deputation, it

urged Rafiuddin Ahmad not to be swayed by a small group of ‘seceders’ who had

approached him in October 1929 demanding the application of the Act. The

deputation sought to address the lingering claim cited by the government in

1925,which had noted a permanent exemption was impractical since opinion within

the community was split. The number of those demanding the application of the Wakf

Act, the deputation added, was said to have dwindled since 1925 and “their total

number all over the country does not exceed 200 persons; whereas the number of

those who acknowledge the Dai-al-mutlaq [as the rightful governor of the community

and its resources] is nearly three lakhs whom the deputation now waiting upon has the

honour to represent”. 114 The petitioners claimed that the plea for exemption was based

entirely on religious grounds:

Wakf property is property dedicated to God. Its control and management is,
therefore, properly vested in His representative from the time of the Holy Prophet.
The religious belief of our community is that all Wakfs are vested in the Mullaji
Saheb as the representative of the Imam, and should be managed by him alone. 115

The figure of 200 seceders appears to have been a stretch as the Reformists countered

with a lengthy petition of 3,200 signatures in support of the application of the

113
‘Dawoodi Bohra Community Exempted From Wakf Act’, Times of India, 24/6/1925.
114
‘The Wakf Act, Dawoodi Bohras’ Plea for Exemption’, Times of India, 12/11/1929.
115
Ibid.
53
Wakf. 116 Nonetheless, it may be asserted that Syedna Taher Saifuddin’s popularity

within the community was increasing tremendously. Between 1926 and 1929 Syedna

Taher Saifuddin immersed himself entirely in the educational upliftment of the

community along with the initiation of numerous mosque-building initiatives across

India. It was officially declared that the Dawoodi Bohra community possessed Wakf

properties of the value of 20 crore, yielding annual revenues of 15 lakh rupees with

348 mosques and 16 gullas across India. Syedna Taher Saifuddin now began to

muster the resources for the betterment of the community in a very systematic and

organised manner. 117

Despite all these attempts, on July 27, 1931 the exemption the community had

enjoyed from the Wakf Act expired. There now occurred the largest public

mobilisation that the community initiated in the early 20th century. From August 1931,

traders around Bombay began to observe hartals and undertook processions, which

usually started from Bhindi Bazaar and ended at the Badri Mahal on Hornby Road, as

a sign of peaceful protest and expression of loyalty to Syedna Taher Saifuddin. 118 On

August 7, 1931 the community appointed a committee with S.K. Barodawala as

President and Mahomed Allabux as one of the members at an event which brought

hundreds of Dawoodi Bohras together at Ghurratul-Masjid or the Azam Mosque in

Dhaboo Street, Bombay. Loudspeakers were installed both inside and outside the

116
In the lengthy counter-appeal, the Reformists noted: “We 3,200 Dawoodi Bohras … respectfully
bring to Your Excellency’s notice that we have nothing to do with these 260 Dawoodi Bohras and also
with the prayers embodied in the memorial, and we emphatically disown them and their actions for all
purposes in connection with the momentous burning question now before the Government.” See
‘Mussalman Wakf Act, Memorial for Application to Dawoodi Bohras’, Times of India, 19/12/1929 and
‘Dawoodi Bohras, Plea For Application Of Wakf Act To Trust Funds’, Times of India, 11/11/1929.
117
‘The Wakf Act, Dawoodi Bohras’ Plea for Exemption’, Times of India 12/11/1929.
118
Similar hartals were launched in various parts of India, including Ahmedabad and Madras. See
‘Dawoodi Borahs Protest Against Wakf Act: Threat To Organize Hartal’, Times of India, 29/7/1931;
‘Breach of Peace Feared in Surat: Bohras on Black Flag Protest’, The Times of India, 6/8/1931;
‘Merchants Protest’, Times of India, 3/8/1931.
54
mosque premises and shouts of ‘Allaho Akbar’ greeted the passing of each resolution.

Speaking at the gathering, S.K. Barodawala alleged that Rafiuddin Ahmad as Minister

of Education had misused his powers and demanded that Governor Sir Ernest Heston

intervene and grant a permanent exemption. 119 The hartals across India forced the

government to table a motion at the Bombay Legislative Council in October 1931,

demanding a debate and resolution to the ‘widespread dissatisfaction’. 120 After close

consideration, the Bombay Legislative Council, with Rafiuddin Ahmad as reporting

Minister, refused to submit to the public outcry and insisted that the Wakf Act would

continue to apply to the Dawoodi Bohra community. 121 The community, however,

refused to submit to the Bombay Legislative Council decision and continued to

launch hartals across the subcontinent. 122 Such was the extent of mobilisation that the

community even managed to have the matter raised at the House of Commons by

December 1931, but with little success. 123

119
‘Dawoodi Bohras and The Wakf Act, Demand For Exemption. Protest Meeting and Procession’,
Times of India, 7/8/1931. As 1931 progressed, more hartals followed: ‘Muslim Wakf Act, Hartal On
Friday’, Times of India, 28/8/1931; ‘Bohras Protest Against Wakf Act’, Times of India, 29/8/1931.
Hartals were even observed in Mombasa: ‘Mombasa Bohras Protest against Wakf Act’, Times of India,
2/9/1931.
120
‘Adjournment Motion, Bohras and the Wakf Act’, Times of India, 3/10/1931.
121
‘Wakf Act To Apply To Dawoodi Bohra Community’, Times of India, 7/10/1931.
122
‘Bombay Bohras, Meeting to Protest against the Wakf’, Times of India, 26/10/1931; ‘Protest
Against Muslim Wakf Act’, Times of India, 17/11/1931; ‘Hartal by Dawoodi Bohras’, Times of India,
22/10/1931; ‘Meeting of Dawoodi Bohras’, Times of India, 22/10/1931; ‘Protest Against Wakf Act’,
Times of India, 17/12/1931.
123
‘Allegations against Dawoodi Bohras, Question in Commons’, Times of India, 3/12/1931.
55
Figure 2.1. Bohras protesting in Bombay against the imposition of the Wakf Act. Source: ‘Procession
of Dawoodi Bohras in Bombay’, Times of India, August 8, 1931.

The community’s grievances were eventually debated at the Bombay Legislative

Council in October 1932 when its members discussed the findings of the Bombay

City Mussalman Wakf Inquiry Committee, which had published its report in June

1931. Whilst the debate was intense, most of the Sunni MLAs opposed any

exemption from the Act, stating that it might destabilise the very basis for constituting

a Central Wakf Board. Amongst those advocating exemption, MLC Gullamhussein

Matcheswala noted that Section 13 of the Act, which allowed any local government to

exempt any community or group from its operation, was incorporated specifically for

the Dawoodi Bohras by the Central Legislature. Matcheswala added that the Central

56
Provinces Government had exempted the Dawoodi Bohras from the application of the

Act and, as a result, the community’s demand should be paid attention to. 124

With the frequency of protests and hartals increasing, the community managed to

bring about one final resolution in August 1933 with the help of three Shia MLCs,

recommending the community’s exemption from the Act. Whilst the resolution failed

to gain enough support from the Bombay Legislative Council, it launched a public

debate on the very nature of the Wakf Act and its applicability to groups who

demanded exemption. 125 As a result, the community passed its own Resolution,

withdrawing support for those Sunni MLCs who did not support the resolution moved

by Matcheswala in 1933. In a letter to the editor of the Times of India, Mohammadally

Allabux, a key spokesman of the community at the time, quoted Nawab Shah Rookh

Yar Jung, a Shia MLC who had supported the resolution:

I submit we must consider the personal position and the spiritual status of His
Holiness the Mullaji Saheb and the real Meaning of the Dai-ul-Mutlak, which is
missionary absolute; he has got the highest and fullest powers over his followers.
Now, Sir, for us laymen to dispute his authority, over his religious followers would be
inadvisable. 126

Allabux’s letter provoked a response from a member of the Bombay Legislative

Council identifying himself only as ‘Sindh MLC’. The writer clarified that all council

members were against any interference in religious beliefs and none of them sought to
124
‘Dawoodi Bohras And The Mussalman Wakf Act, Exemption Plea In Bombay Council’, Times of
India, 17/10/1932; ‘Muslim Wakfs Act, Adoption of Inquiry Report Urged’, Times of India,
15/10/1932; ‘Bombay Governor Heralds Dawn Of Brighter Day’, Times of India, 9/12/1932; ‘The
Wakf Act, Bohras Protest Against Application’, Times of India, 17/11/1932; ‘Mussulman Wakf Act,
Bohras Urge Exemption from its Operations’, Times of India, 17/12/1933. A number of anonymous
letters were also published in the newspapers, which demanded the application of the Wakf Act:
‘Bohras And Wakf Act by ‘HONESTY’’, Times of India, 4/3/1933; ‘Muslim Wakf Act by ‘A YOUNG
BOHRA’’, Times of India, 25/2/1933; ‘Exemption From Wakf Act by ‘ANTI WAKFITE’, Reply to
Alleged Insinuations’, Times of India, 9/3/1933; ‘The Wakf Act by ‘CO-RELIGIONIST’’, Times of
India, 13/3/1933; ‘Dawoodi Bohrahs & Wakf Act: Is religion Affected? by ‘APAKSH-PAT’’, Times of
India, 1/4/1933; ‘Mussalman Wakf Act, Its Application To Dawoodi Bohras by ‘HONESTY’’, Times
of India, 21/8/1933.
125
‘The Wakf Act, Position of the Bohras Considered’, Times of India, 18/8/1933. Also see ‘Bohras
Claim Rejected, Govt. to be guided by Council’s Vote’, Times of India, 18/8/1933.
126
‘Dawoodi Bohras and Wakf Act, Mr. Mahomedally Allabux’s reply to Sunni MLC’, Times of India,
25/9/1933.
57
question the position of the Dai-al-mutlaq as the spiritual leader of the community. It

was further maintained that the resolution did not manage to garner support because

most members felt that the Wakf Act did not, in any manner, interfere with the

religious beliefs of the Dawoodi Bohras and nor did it affect the position of the Dai-

al-mutlaq. 127 As a result the Wakf debate came to be locked between the community’s

assertion of independence and the State’s persistent ‘ignorance’ of the internal logic of

devotion to the Dai-al-mutlaq. Allabux, in a final response to ‘a Sindh MLC’,

captured it best:

I must point out that there is a good deal of confusion in the views of your
correspondent and he does not seem to be aware that one fundamental religious belief
of the Dawoodi Bohras is that they believe in His Holiness the Mullaji Saheb as the
representative of the Imam and vested with all the powers of the Imam in the absence
of the Imam. The object of the Wakf Act is clearly to interfere with the powers of His
Holiness the Mullaji Saheb as representative of the Imam and is clearly therefore a
manifest interference with the religious beliefs of the Dawoodi Bohras. Of course the
religious beliefs of other Muslims are different from those of the Dawoodi Bohras in
this respect and therefore the Wakf Act may not be an interference so far as their
religious beliefs are concerned. Therefore the challenge thrown by your
correspondent does not need any further reply except as stated above. 128

Summing Up

The pressures of modern subjecthood loomed on the shores of the Dawoodi Bohra

community and the debate about the rights of the community unfolded on the colonial

landscape: the evoked collectivity was bound by culture, traditions and most

importantly the primacy of the Dai-al-mutlaq in all matters. The collective was not

bound by economic and legal contracts—these remained secondary—leading to an

odd realisation that the Dawoodi Bohras wanted to be governed by another set of

institutions and practices than those of civil society. The ‘other’ institutional

framework becomes apparent in the following sections, which document the ‘inner’

workings of the community and its operations developed by Syedna Taher Saifuddin.
127
‘Dawoodi Bohras and Wakf Act, No Interference in Muslim Religion, A Sind MLC’s reply to Mr.
Mahomedally Allabux’, Times of India, 3/10/1933.
128
‘Dawoodi Bohras and Wakf Act, Mr. Mahomedally Allabux’s reply to Sind MLC’, Times of India,
10/10/1933.
58
An important caveat is also required that the ‘outer’ debates encountered in previous

sections should not be seen as separate. Both realms informed each other, but have

been separated to allow the newer strategies and responses to emerge more

coherently.

59
 Chapter 3

‘IN DEFENSE OF COMMUNITY’:

SYEDNA TAHER SAIFUDDIN AND THE REASSERTION OF AUTHORITY

The following chapter maintains a timeline similar to the preceding chapter but

focuses on the ‘inner’ workings of the community by relying on community

publications and pamphlets from the period 1915–1965. Portraying historical change

as a crisis of the Self, and the various strategies of re-fashioning a ‘new’ Dawoodi

Bohra identity, the chapter historicises numerous community initiatives undertaken by

Syedna Taher Saifuddin. The fashioning of the new Self could not occur without

redefining the Bohra community as a whole, for at issue was the status of the Dai-al-

mutlaq, which had come under attack by the Reformists as a ‘backward’ institution.

Therefore, the chapter highlights how Syedna Taher Saifuddin successfully responded

to such challenges, embodying the ideas of knowledge and traditions and

simultaneously invoking Fatimid solidarity and modern belonging, leading the

Dawoodi Bohras, who had been until then represented as a ‘traditional collectivity’,

into a group that demanded the modern rights of ‘a people’.

The ‘Archetypal’ Prodigy

By 1925, with the Hakimiyah Durgah case at Burhanpur, amongst other cases,

pending and under a climate of growing Reformist clamour, Syedna Taher Saifuddin

commenced what Syedi Najmuddin refers to as the ‘great educational uplift of the

Bohra community’ which was also made to coincide with the Misaq or oath of

allegiance of his son and heir apparent, Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin. The

ceremony took place in 1930 in Surat, which was the official seat of the Dawat at the

time, and Syedna Taher Saifuddin personally administered the Misaq and elevated his
60
son to the rank of Moomin Baligh (‘responsible follower’) of the Dawat. Surat, it may

be posited, was a natural choice for it was also the site of Al-Dars al-Safiyah, the

Islamic seminary established in 1814 under the 43rd Dai-al-mutlaq, Syedna Abdeali

Saifuddin. 129 By 1930, Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin would be elevated to the

rank of Haddiyah (‘guide to righteousness’) after the completion of his training.

Syedna Taher Saifuddin declared a list and description of books on Fatimid

philosophy that the young Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin is said to have been

taught as part of this training:

It is Allah's special bounty unto me that I have been attending the training of my son
personally despite the enormous burden of work which keeps me very preoccupied.
This year in a congregation of Momeneen, I have raised my son Mohammed
Burhanuddin to the high rank of 'Haddiyah' and I administered unto him the homily.
O, young man, show your chivalry in the service of the progeny of the Prophet. May
Allah keep you in His care. Be a good Heir to a good Predecessor. And remember
that the followers of the faith are my children. In that way they are your brothers.
Give them your pure affection. That is the demand of your faith. 130

With the appointment of an ‘exemplary’ and apparent successor, Syedna Taher

Saifuddin embarked upon ziyarat of Karbala and Najaf in Iraq in 1934, not just with

the aim of visiting the graves of Imam Hussain and Imam Ali but also to engage, as

Syedi Najmuddin notes, with the Shia Ulema and other Islamic scholars of Iraq in an

attempt at clearing several ‘misgivings’ which were prevalent in the Fatimi Dawat.131

Although the exact exchanges between the Fatimi and Iraqi counterparts remain of

circumspect speculation, it is plausible to suggest that the exchange may have

129
As the former seat of the Dawat until it was shifted to Mumbai in the 20th century, the city of Surat is
of tremendous importance to the Bohras. As the city to which most of the Qasr-e Alis trace their
ancestry, Surat also has a particular importance for the Bohra elite. Zaini Bungalow, Syedna
Mohammad Burhanuddin’s official residence in the city, is also located here along with a number of
quarters for the teachers at the Al-Jamea-Tus-Saifiyah Academy. In terms of commerce and the role of
Bohra merchants in helping shape the mercantile landscapes of the city, see Lakshmi Subramanian,
‘Surat during the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century: What Kind of Social Order?’, Modern Asian
Studies, 21, 4 (1987), pp. 679–710 and Ashin Das Gupta, ‘The Merchants of Surat, c. 1700–50’ in
Edmund Leach and S.N. Mukherjee (eds.), Elites in South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1970) pp. 201–22.
130
Syedi Najmuddin, 75 Momentous Years in Retrospect, p. 7.
131
Ibid., p. 10.
61
revolved around the anti-Ismaili propaganda campaign, which had been launched in

the immediate aftermath of the Fatimid Caliphate. With explicit endorsement by the

Abbasid Caliphate, the Sunni establishment had launched a movement to declare the

Ismailis as mulahida (‘heretics’ or ‘deviators’) from the true religious path. 132 While

the Alid genealogy of the Fatimid Imams was denied, the polemicists concocted

various doctrinal bases in ‘accounting’ for the ‘sinister’ and ‘immoral’ objectives, and

‘libertine practices’ of the Ismailis. The Sunni authors refused to distinguish between

the different Shia schools of thought and branded them all ‘heterodoxies’ and

‘heresies’. In the course of the 10th century AD, the polemicists and participating

heresiographers effectively had created the ‘black legend’, documenting sordid tales

which over time came to be accepted as accurate descriptions of Ismaili beliefs and

motives. The defamatory components of the anti-Ismaili campaign continued to fire

the imagination of countless generations of writers from medieval times. 133

To counter such discourses, Syedna Taher Saifuddin obtained the necessary consent

from the government of Iraq, at the time under King Faisal II, Iraq's last monarchical

ruler, to fabricate in India a silver and gold mausoleum for the Mashad of Imam

Hussain and Imam Ali which was then presented to the two sacred shrines. The first

zari or trellis was constructed in 1937, executed under the guidance of Syedna Taher

Saifuddin for the mausoleum of Imam Hussain in Karbala. Several hundred artisans

from all parts of India aided in the making of the zari which was composed of solid

silver with borders of gold in which are inscribed verses from the Quran. 134 It was

132
Abbas Hamdani, “The Fatimid— Abbasid Conflict in India”, Islamic Culture 41 (1967): 185-91.
133
Many of the essential components of the anti-Ismaili ‘black-legend’ campaigns are traced back to
one heresiographer in particular, Ibn Rizam, who lived in Baghdad around the 10th century AD. His
major treatise against the Ismailis was written with the aid of contemporary informants belonging to
the anti-Qaramati circles of Iraq. For a detailed discussion of Ibn Rizam and the myth of the Ismaili
‘black-legend’, see Farhad Daftary, A Short History of the Ismailis, pp. 10–20.
134
‘Bohras Gift for Kerbala, Valuable Trellis’, Times of India, 16/1/1937.
62
claimed that 199,752 tolas of silver and 250 tolas of gold were used in its making.

Whilst the zari was manufactured in Bombay, it was exhibited in Karachi en route to

Karbala, and it was noted that “large crowds have been going to see it!” 135

Figure 3.1. Accompanied by Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin, Governor of Bombay Roger Lumley
viewing the Zari, 1940. Source: ‘Canopy of Silver and Gold: Sir R. Lumley Sees Fine Work of Art’,
Times of India, 15/11/1940.

The zari for Imam Ali was even more elaborate and was completed in 1940.

Composed of a canopy of gold and silver, again executed under the direct guidance of

Syedna Taher Saifuddin at a cost of Rs. 10,00,000, it was also inspected by the

Governor of Bombay, Roger Lumley. Again nearly 150 skilled craftpersons had

worked daily for four years to complete the zari, which is a miniature building of

135
‘Fencing for Tomb at Kerbala, Stops over in Karachi’, Times of India, 16/2/1937.
63
typically Saracenic and Fatimid motifs. Twenty feet in length and fourteen feet high,

the zari is said to have used up 450,000 tolas of silver and 5,000 tolas of gold. The

inlay is composed of Quranic inscriptions. 136 This is a function his successor Syedna

Mohammad Burhanuddin would continue on a massive scale, both as a community-

building exercise and as a strategy which would underpin the ‘exceptionalism’ the

Dawoodi Bohras fought hard to preserve during the 20th century.

As the various litigation suits raged on, Syedna Taher Saifuddin continued to

consolidate the community internally. A key feature that distinguished him from his

predecessors was the much more physically close relationship he shared with his

followers. Attempting to be more accessible to his followers, he utilised

unprecedented organisational patterns, including weekly communications via waaz

(‘sermons’) delivered in whichever town or city he visited, encouraging the

community to focus on spiritual practices mirrored through the education of his own

son and heir apparent, Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin. 137 All these organisational

devices and ‘new’ practices that were predicated on Fatimid traditions of learning

concentrated authority in the Dai-al-mutlaq to an unprecedented degree. 138 It was held

that once the followers began developing love of the Dai-al-mutlaq, a bond or

affection developed, which then led to closeness with God.

136
‘Canopy of Silver and Gold: Sir R. Lumley Sees Fine Work of Art’, Times of India, 15/11/1940.
Although dealt with at strategic points in the current thesis, a detailed study is required of Syedna
Taher Saifuddin’s role in the restoration of various Fatimid-era mosque complexes in Egypt, Syria and
Yemen, declaring a symbolic and spiritual gesture to any sceptics that he was indeed the bearer and
protector of the Fatimid legacy.
137
Arthur Buehler, ‘Currents of Sufism in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Indo-Pakistan: An
Overview’, The Muslim World, 87, 3–4 (1997), p. 299-314.
138
Syedna Taher Saifuddin, accompanied by Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin, visited the Bombay
Times of India office in 1941. The press notice read, “His Holiness was keenly interested in the work of
the editorial department and the working of the creed transmitting messages from Reuter’s Offices. The
Mullaji Saheb was also shown around the business offices.” See ‘Mullaji Saheb’, Times of India,
27/6/1941.
64
As a result, numerous initiatives were launched. In 1926, the Dai-al-mutlaq attended a

prize distribution at the Anjuman Industrial School in Madras with A.Y.G. Campbell,

Chief Secretary to the Government as presiding chairperson. At this event Syedna

Taher Saifuddin was adopting organisational strategies to consolidate the community,

and was even emulating a modern bureaucratic structure [emphasis mine]:

After the prizes were given away to the pupils by His Holiness, Mr. Shaikh Alibhai,
Education Secretary of His Holiness, delivered a speech in the course of which he
said that it gave his Holiness immense pleasure to take part in that function. He
congratulated the office bearers and members of the Anjuman Industrial School on
the excellent work they were carrying out in the field of industrial education. On
conclusion the secretary announced a cash donation of Rs. 1,500 on behalf of his
Holiness to the Institution. Messrs. H.M. Sharafali and Abdulhussain Jiwaji, two
followers of His Holiness, also promised to pay Rs. 500 each. His Holiness in
addition promised to pay an annual donation of Rs. 100 for prizes. Rs. 500 as an
annual grant has also been announced.

His Holiness before coming to the Anjuman Industrial School visited the Muslim
Orphanage at the Wallahja Road, where after an inspection, he announced a donation
of Rs. 1,000 for the construction of new buildings when the foundation ceremony
would be performed.

His Holiness is leaving Madras for Colombo tonight by special train and will likely
stay there for about a month. On his return to Bombay, he is likely to visit Hyderabad
Deccan. 139

Alongside such declarations came the commitment to enhance access to education

amidst the Dawoodi Bohra communities, which lay dispersed all across the

subcontinent. Syedna Taher Saifuddin boarded trains and went to his followers,

seldom staying in one place for too long. Travelling around India undoubtedly yielded

him a consolidation of his following and an easier method of reconciling the different

needs of the Dawoodi Bohras living in various parts. 140

At every centre Syedna Taher Saifuddin visited, he established an educational unit

almost overnight. Syedi Najmuddin notes that nearly 350 educational units were

established through such arduous travel, enabling a certain standardisation of the

139
‘Anjuman Industrial School at Madras’, Times of India, 15/11/1926
140
‘A Sanatorium for Bohras’, Times of India, 26/7/1921.
65
curriculum being taught to the young. This also allowed the Dai-al-mutlaq to pay

personal attention to his followers who had come under major strain from the

reformist currents within the community. Amidst such a flurry of travel, consolidation

and the challenges of litigation, on 27th Rajab 1352 H (1933 AD) Syedna Taher

Saifuddin raised his son Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin to the rank of al-Mazoon

(‘permitted to rule’) and performed the Nas (‘transfer of traditions’), effectively

designating him as the successor to the Fatimi Dawat. 141 According to Syedi

Najmuddin's memoirs, the 27th of Rajab was chosen with particular consideration, for

it coincided with the auspicious day when Prophet Mohammad (S.A.) was awakened

to the call of Allah in conveying Allah's message to mankind. At a waaz (‘sermon’),

once again in Surat, Syedna Taher Saifuddin proclaimed:

My son having the name Mohammed and title Burhanuddin, similar to that of my
illustrious father -- Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin (the 49th Dai) has, indeed,
acquired a noble character and very holy roots. With 'Bismillah el-Rahman el-Rahim'
I started his education, endowing him with the best in our culture, taught him good
manners and enriched him with the landmarks of Islamic philosophy, chapter by
chapter, books after books [sic]. He has strived with me having reached the position
from where I took him to the final phase of the 'treasures of knowledge' reposed in us
by the Fatimi Imams. All this I did while the demands on my time were heavy facing
the enemies whom the Dawah had to encounter. I am happy that I have now brought
him to the stage, when by Allah's Grace, he will become like me.

He continued:

This Luminous son is a perfect man, a man of knowledge and action, a noble shaikh,
having collected numerous merits and above all, having angelic characteristics and
attributes. By Allah's Grace, he becomes today the ‘Treasure of Deen’, the ‘Reliance
for believers’, the ‘Pride of Mazoons’. After me, my son will shine out as Dai in the
horizon of Dawah calling towards Allah by His will. 142

1934 also became a landmark moment in modern Dawoodi Bohra history with the

result of the Hakimiyah Durgah at Burhanpur case being judged in favour of the

141
‘New “Mazoom” of Dawoodi Bohras, High Priest’s Son Investiture Ceremony at Surat’, Times of
India, 20/11/1933; also see Syedi Najmuddin, 75 Momentous Years in Retrospect, p. 9.
142
Syedi Najmuddin, 75 Momentous Years in Retrospect, pp. 8–9.
66
Dawat by the High Court of Judicature at Nagpur. 143 For the Dawat, this was a

marked event for the judgement acknowledged the validity of the Nas (‘transfer of

traditions’) of the 46th Dai, Syedna Mohammad Badruddin (d. 1840), upon the 47th

Dai, Syedna Abdul Qadir Najmuddin (d. 1885). 144 This undermined the century-long

Reformist allegation that the Nas had been unlawful and that the Dawat had become

the preserve of one particular family that had begun to abuse the financial and

spiritual realm of the community. More crucially, in terms of understanding the

development of the dedication of the community for Syedna Taher Saifuddin, the

High Court result was rationalised internally as being the result of the commitment of

the heir-apparent, Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin, in memorising the entire Quran.

Quoting from a written, yet unreferenced document possibly authored by Syedna

Taher Saifuddin, Syedi Najmuddin notes:

Ever since I have appointed my son to be my successor, Allah has gathered for me
the bounties of this world and the Hereafter. Because shortly after that I was

143
In what has come to be referred to as the Burhanpur Durgah Case of 1925, the Bombay High Court
upheld the rights of Syedna Taher Saifuddin in a landmark 1934 ruling. Since the early 20th century,
under the 50th Dai, Syedna Abdullah Badruddin, the Dawat and Reformists had been contesting each
others’ rights over certain Wakf properties in Burhanpur which consisted of three mausoleums of
Bohra saints, two mosques, graveyards and rest houses. By 1917, relations had soured to such an extent
between the two parties that the Reformists were excommunicated in the same year and barred from
entering the Mausoleum of Syedi Hakimuddin. The Reformists sued, claiming that they had been
illegally denied entry into the Mausoleum and also asserted that they did not wish to secede by
remaining in the community, but at the same time defy the authority of the Dai-al-mutlaq whilst freely
retaining all rights and privileges of worship and the use of properties belonging to the community. The
presiding Judicial Commissioner F. H. Staples, however, saw this as oxymoronic, passing the ruling as
follows: “If he [Syedna Taher Saifuddin] is the Chief Priest, then it would seem to follow that he has
certain powers, including the powers of management of all the trusts of Wakf property belonging to the
community, as also the power to excommunicate persons who flout his authority or disobey him”.
Staples continued, “I, therefore, hold that the High Priest had full power to excommunicate them. I am
of the opinion that the decision of the lower court is wrong and that the reliefs claimed by the plaintiff
respondents should be refused. I, therefore, set aside the decree of the lower court, and instead pass a
decree dismissing the suit with costs.” Quoted from ‘Rights of Bohras' High Priest Upheld, Burhanpur
Durgah Case Appeal’, Times of India, 29/10/1934.
144
According to a hagiography published by the community, the years of Syedna Abdul Qadir
Najmuddin are remembered as follows: “Syedna Najmuddin was 27 years of age when he became Dai
al Mutlaq. During the 47 years of his reign, dissenters rose and grew perilously in power. Syedna (RA),
keeping patience, demonstrated that he was the Dai of Amir ul Mumineen (AS), who had sheathed his
sword and endured the long-suffering after the death of Rasulullah (SA) for the sake of Islam. Syedna
was once asked by his son, ‘Until when will you endure these trials?’ Syedna answered, ‘The fifth Dai
after me [Syedna Taher Saifuddin] will resolve all trials.’ The victories of Syedna Taher Saifuddin
were thus foretold.” See http://www.misbah.info/10th_misbah/topics/urs/urs.htm
67
 fortunate in performing the Ziyarat at Karbala and Najaf. Thereafter, Allah gave us
this great victory in the Court of Law. All this is a result of the auspiciousness of this
young man, Burhanuddin. Indeed, he has now committed Al-Quran completely to
heart. Last year he had completed half of it. May Allah keep him as a source of
happiness for the Imam, and as a shining jewel on the forehead of the Dawah. 145

It becomes pertinent to reflect on what circumstances endowed a living Dai-al-mutlaq

with his charisma and what motivated men and women of the Dawoodi Bohra

community to join the supposed ‘revolutionary’ order amidst a larger climate of anti-

colonial nationalism on the Indian subcontinent. Processes of proto-globalisation,

religious incorporation, saintly veneration, and subaltern subjectivity must be

understood within their social and historical context and complexity. Much of the

‘cult of the personality’ came to be formed around a receptive cultural environment, a

heightening of conventional expectations, bodily practices, narratives of unique

individuality, and most importantly the ability to mobilise technologies in the service

of the intercessionary power of the Dai-al-mutlaq in the name of the followers and the

community at large. Modernity, it seems, had enabled a particular sacred geography

to emerge, which constantly shifted with the movement of the Dai-al-mutlaq,

underpinned by a voluntary mobilisation on a vastly national (and perhaps,

international) scale.

Communion with the Bohras in Yemen

1961 presented yet another marked event in the Dawoodi Bohra modern experience.

Yemen, from where the seat of the Fatimi Dawat had been transferred almost four

centuries earlier, was under the rule of Yahya Muhammad Hamidaddin or Imam

Yahya. 146 According to Yusuf Najmuddin, the “followers of the Fatimi faith there had

145
Syedi Najmuddin, 75 Momentous Years in Retrospect, p. 9.
146
Through the 1960s, Yemen was trapped in overlapping wars. In the North a fight between those
loyal to Imam Yahya and those fighting for a republic became a battle by proxy between Saudi Arabia
and Egypt; in the South a fight against the British led to conflict amongst different groups. Whilst the
68
suffered great hardships for over seventy-five years”. The Bohras residing in Yemen

had been prevented from maintaining any significant contact with the “centre of the

Dawat which was now situated in India”. Several Bohra leaders had been imprisoned

and the Zaydi regime had demolished the mausoleum of Syedna Hatim, the 3rd Dai-al-

mutlaq in Hutaib, Yemen. Given that little communication existed between the

Yemeni and Indian counterparts due to the Zaydi regime shunning foreign contact, the

Yemeni followers had been placed by the Dawat under the guardianship of a person

who Syedi Najmuddin identifies only as Naib (‘deputy’ or ‘representative’).

By 1937, it came to the attention of Syedna Taher Saifuddin that the ‘Naib’ had given

the Bai'ah (‘pledge of allegiance’) to the Imam Yahya. With the future of the Yemeni

Bohra community in jeopardy, Syedna Taher Saifuddin heavily reprimanded the

‘Naib’ in 1937 on the occasion of performing Haj in Mecca. However, given the

climate of persecution, not much could be done until 1961 when Syedna Taher

Saifuddin decided to allow his son and heir-apparent, Syedna Mohammad

Burhanuddin, to travel to Yemen in the hope of performing pilgrimage of the different

mausoleums of Fatimi Dais and also meeting the Yemeni Bohra jamaat. The Yemeni

authorities refused initial requests for visas, and yet Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin

is said to have braved a landing in Aden and reached Raheda, a border crossing into

Yemen. After a temporary halting of the caravan, Syedi Najmuddin describes how the

border guards had prior instructions to ‘welcome a prince from India’.

Bohras do not find mention in any historical studies done on modern Yemen, the general context in the
early 1960s may have provided a temporary window for Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin’s visit to be
undertaken. See Paul Dresch, A History of Modern Yemen (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2000), pp. 89–95.
69
What became apparent was that Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin, under the steady

gaze of the Zaidi Imam Yahya (it is claimed that ‘a special car and a Yemeni security

officer remained in constant attendance’), was able to complete the 25-day visit

amidst great jubilation amongst the community the world over. It had been almost

four centuries since the centre of Dawat had been transferred and as long since a Dai-

al-mutlaq (in this case, the Mazoon) from India had visited the Yemeni Bohra jamaat.

As Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin made his way back to Surat with stop-overs in

Karachi and Delhi, a major celebration had been planned in Mumbai. At a public

gathering, Syedna Taher Saifuddin declared the titled of Mansur-al-Yemen (‘the one

who was given all succour by Allah, in Yemen’). 147

The assumed aura of mystery, power and authority, believed to be intrinsic to the

current Dai-al-mutlaq of the time, Syedna Taher Saifuddin, and his-heir apparent,

seemed to have been made out as preordained and given at birth, which in reality was

acquired by the Dai-al-mutlaq gradually through a process of constant personal testing

and publicly allegorised community histories, heritage and revival. 148 The years

between 1930 to about 1965 marked a gradual process that may be claimed to be both

culturally predictable but extremely difficult to achieve. The Dai-al-mutlaq became at

147
Syedi Najmuddin, 75 Momentous Years in Retrospect, p. 10.
148
In 1940, for instance, nationwide celebrations were launched to commemorate 25 years since
Syedna Taher Saifuddin had ascended to the role of Dai-al-mutlaq. Apart from opening the Saifee High
School for Boys in Bombay and donating a zari for the tomb of Imam Ali, the community mobilised in
large numbers to celebrate the occasion. Whilst congratulatory messages poured in from various
dignitaries across India, the Reformists led by Amiruddin Tyebji lodged a new defamation suit against
Syedna Taher Saifuddin. Tyebji alleged that Syedna Taher Saifuddin refused to solemnise his marriage
because he had refused to maintain a beard. Once again, Bombay became a crucial site for the
community to show their loyalty to their Dai-al-mutlaq amidst such challenges. One newspaper report
observed, “Several floral arches were erected on the roads and buildings were decked with flags and
bunting. In a car, artistically decorated with flowers, the Mullaji Saheb with the heir-apparent, was
taken in procession through Bohra localities to the Bohra Mosque at Doctor Street. Feats of physical
culture and lathi plays were performed at various places during the progress of the procession. At
convenient stages offerings of coconuts, sweets and silk were made by devotees to the Mullaji Saheb,
who returned them. Women of the community, clad in festive garments, thronged all the available
space in buildings situated on the route of the procession.” ‘Bohra High Priest's Silver Jubilee, Bombay
Celebrations’, Times of India, 8/1/1940.
70
once of this world and beyond it; the effects of power so compelling for the

community, which had been mobilised through different systems amidst the clamours

of the Reformists, enabled Syedna Taher Saifuddin to reach into the hearts of the

followers, transcending literal understandings of physical space, obstacles and

geographical distance. 149

Once again, the ‘remarkable’ visit to Yemen of 1961 was marked by a significant

victory in the judicial field amidst the larger context of legal challenges the Dawat

was facing at the time. In the 1950s, Home Minister Morarji Desai steered the

Prevention of Excommunication Act through the Bombay Legislative Assembly,

describing excommunication “as a monstrous thing for any government to

tolerate”. 150 Although the Act did not explicitly target the Dawoodi Bohras, according

to Jonah Blank “there was no other denomination for whom excommunication was a

salient issue in the 1950s, and the Bohras were the only group to challenge the act in

149
It is documented in many a community pamphlet that Syedna Taher Saifuddin travelled a lot in
trains. He always maintained his back towards the engine, and in front of Syedna Taher Saifuddin sat
Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin. For one writer who documents the occurrence, “this deed of Syedna
Taher Saifuddin proved that thy has turned his back to the pace of life. Although thy is present in the
same era, travelling within the pace of life. And facing towards a vessel, which is the best of the
vessels, to pass on the Barakaat and the Blessings. Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin sitting in front of
his Bawaji Saheb Syedna Taher Saifuddin as a vessel is well aware that the Maula in front of him is the
ocean of Ilm E Ale Mohammed and is passing on that Ilm in this vessel.” See Aliasger Saifuddin
Rasheed, Sheik al Doat al Mutlaqeen: Syedna Taher Saifuddin (R.A.) (Mumbai: Dawat-e-Hadiyah,
Department of Statistics and Information, undated), p. 2.
150
It was Morarji Desai who coined the concept of ‘a government within a government’ (a term which
would become the mainstay of the Reformists in the 1970s) when he declared at the Bombay
Assembly, “the Mullaji Saheb told me, he was the ‘spiritual and temporal head’ of the Bohra
community. What does that mean? Does it not mean that there is a state within a state?” ‘Powers of the
Mullaji Saheb Described as “Monstrous”, Home Minister's Criticism in Bombay Assembly’, Times of
India, 2/4/1949. The anti-Excommunication bill was passed in the Bombay Assembly on April 6, 1949;
see ‘No More Tyranny by Religious Head, Anti-Excommunication Bill Passed by Assembly,
Government to Ban Advertisements of Charms and Magic Cures’, Bombay Chronicle, 7/4/1949. Whilst
Moraji Desai’s memoirs do not mention his stance on the Bill, his statements were made in the debates
leading up to the Indian Constitution in late 1949. Overall, Desai notes, “Ample provisions have been
made in the [1949] Constitution for building a socialistic state of society and for the protection of
fundamental rights.” In terms of what he describes as ‘Prohibitions’, Desai noted, “There is clear
directive in the Constitution concerning the introudction of prohibition… This is the only way the
present uncertain position can be altered.” See Moraji Desai, The Story of My Life, Vol. 1 (Delhi:
Macmillan, 1974), pp. 261–270.
71
court.” 151 The Act, which was upheld by the Bombay High Court in 1951, was

overturned in 1961 on the grounds that it was “in clear violation of the rights of the

Dawoodi Bohra community under Article 26(b) of the Constitution.” 152 As Syedi

Najmuddin records the event, the plea by the Dawoodi Bohra community was upheld

on the very day that Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin returned from his Yemen visit

to Delhi via Karachi. Upon landing at Delhi, “the [Parsi] lawyer from Bombay, who

had gone there [Delhi] to plead on behalf of the Dawat, was observed at the departure

lounge. 153 In fact, he was there to catch the evening flight to Bombay. He shouted

from where he was and gave the good news of the great victory of the Dawat in the

Supreme Court.” 154 The ‘remarkable’ visit of 1961 had become an overwhelming and

almost divinely ordained moment of victory and consolidation for the Dawat and its

followers. 155

The Treasured Academy: Al-Jamea-Tus-Saifiyah

As the ‘love’ for the Dai-al-mutlaq began to be inculcated to greater extents, Syedna

Taher Saifuddin launched yet another innovation in ritually re-inscripting the 19th

century Islamic seminary el-Dars-el-Saifi in Surat. As a spiritual and intellectual

space, he went about re-defining its centrality in terms of its function, which had

151
Blank, Mullahs on the Mainframe, p. 239.
152
‘Excommunications Based on Religious Ground Valid, Supreme Court Declares Bombay Act Void’,
Times of India, 10/1/1962; also see Blank, Mullahs on the Mainframe, p. 239; and Nathwani, Dawoodi
Bohra Commission, pp. 39–41.
153
Ever since the Chandabhai Gulla Case of 1921, the Dawat has relied heavily on Parsi lawyers,
generally from the prominent Mumbai firm Mulla & Mulla. See Blank, Mullahs on the Mainframe, p.
246.
154
Syedi Najmuddin, 75 Momentous Years in Retrospect, p. 12.
155
As the events unfolded, what became apparent within the Dawoodi Bohra psyche reminds one of
Max Weber's postulations of ‘charisma’ as a source of revitalisation and ‘freedom’ from routine social
constrains. The events described above, as against Weber's understandings, however, stressed the
dialectic between temporal authority and spiritual power, an antithesis between conventional and rigid
understandings of centre and periphery. Such dichotomous distinctions lay criticised and taken to task
in the unique experience of the Dawoodi Bohras by asserting that these supposedly opposing forms of
social relations actually co-exist in dialectical tension within the same community.
72
traditionally been the training of scholars and extending the community's intellectual

wealth, but also in making religious knowledge accessible to all members of the

community. With a new building programme, which was launched in the 1950s, the

seminary along with the adjoining mosque was expanded to include Fatimid

architectural motifs. Syedna Taher Saifuddin also renamed the academy Al-Jamea-

Tus-Saifiyah. Furthermore, the curriculum underwent major changes – with fresh

attention towards the revival of Fatimid art and architecture and the overall study of

Fatimid heritage being at its forefront. Likewise, according to Syedi Najmuddin, this

‘revival’ was in line with the Fatimid philosophy of blending the old and the eternal

with the new and beneficial. Subjects of the modern sciences were taught alongside

English language and literature, clustered under a larger philosophical umbrella,

which was now called ‘Sunnat Thaletha’ (‘The Third Tradition’). 156

The biggest innovation came in terms of how the academy's Imtihanus Sanavi

(‘Annual Examinations’) came to be held from 1951 onwards. Each year, during the

month of Shaban the examinations would begin with the spiritual gathering of the

Zikra. After the announcement of the specific dates, the Dai-al-mutlaq would arrive in

Surat and personally conduct the examinations of the students. The new examination

style was distinct from what had been practiced earlier at Al-Dars-Al-Saifi and by

other Islamic seminaries of the period. 157 The student, known as Taleb e-ilm, seated in

front of the Dai-al-mutlaq, facing the Qibla would answer questions posed to him or

her. Advanced students were tested in public gatherings with various academics,

community elders and believers present, thus allowing the community to confirm the

credentials of their future religious guides under the watchful gaze of Syedna

156
Syedi Najmuddin, 75 Momentous Years in Retrospect, p. 13.
157
See Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India and Francis Robinson, The Ulama of Farangi Mahall.
73
Saifuddin. As Aliasger Rasheed, a student at Al-Jamea-Tus-Saifiyah in the 1960s

recalls:

Being the vicegerent of the Imam uz Zaman (S.A.), he [Syedna Taher Saifuddin] was
the source of Ilm-e-ale-Mohammad (S.A.), and had inherited the Ilm [Knowledge],
Taqwa [Fear of Allah], Taharat [Purity] from the previous Doat Mutlaqeen (A.S.).
The Doat Kiraam, had given the prophecy that the Zuhoor of Imam Uz Zaman (S.A)
would take place in the glorious period of Syedna Taher Saifuddin (R.A). Syedna
Abdeali Saifuddin (R.A) had established Dars Al Saifee for the purpose of zuhoor of
Imam Uz Zaman (S.A). The Doat Kiraam after Syedna Abdeali Saifuddin (R.A)
persisting the ritual, quenched the thirst of thousands of Mumineen by spreading the
Ilm of Ale Mohammed (S.A) through Dars Al Saifee. Ultimately there came a time
when 51st Dai, Syedna Taher Saifuddin (R.A) arrived with all his glories. He with
his keen sight and his distinctive Islamic method of education imparted the Ilm of
Ale Mohammed (S.A) according to the pace of modern era. 158

Dwelling further on the development of Zikra in the early 1950s and the changes

Syedna Taher Saifuddin initiated at Al-Jamea-Tus-Saifiyah, Syedi Najmuddin, who

was the rector at the time, notes how the Dai-al-mutlaq's attempts were also in

response to ‘freeing’ the academy from the ‘self-styled Ulemas’ who had taken

control of the curriculum and its administration. Both the Dawat and Reformist

narratives document this shift in a similar fashion, albeit adopting different tones. For

instance, the dissident writer Mian Bhai Abdul Husain, writing in 1919, notes how the

43rd Dai, Syedna Abdeali Saifuddin (d. 1817), had established the Academy in 1814

modelled as a Fatimid lodge by borrowing the analogy of the Egyptian Fatimid lodge

from the time of the Imams. Initially, taking advantage of the religious freedom and

prosperity the community experienced under British rule, the academy was built on a

large scale which supported about five hundred Dawoodi Bohra students from all

parts of India and Yemen at a yearly cost of about forty thousand rupees. 159 However,

the colonial chronicler, James Campbell, notes that by 1897 the Academy had been

reduced significantly in scale and was assumed to have been maintained at a yearly

158
Aliasger Rasheed, Zikra and Imtehaan – The Season of Gathering Bounties (Mumbai: Dawat-e-
Hadiyah, Department of Statistics and Information, Pamphlet, 1996), p. 2.
159
Abdul Husain, Gulzare Daudi, p. 50.
74
cost of about ten thousand rupees supporting about one hundred students. 160 The

decline went further, with the Academy being reduced to a maktab (‘school’) by

1919, which Abdul Husain claims, provided little more than primary-level

education. 161

Considering that Abdul Husain was fighting for reforms within the community, his

claims need to be approached with some caution. The major reason for the decline,

according to Abdul Husain, was that the Academy had moved away from its founder's

initial spirit of “spreading higher sectarian education on an extensive scale and

encouraging an open competitive system”. 162 The democratic principle of selecting

priests based on merit had been abandoned by the ‘priest classes’, which Abdul

Husain clarifies as representing the local Amils, their subordinate Mullahs or Pesh

Imams. 163 Abdul Husain's narrative becomes polemical when he accuses the previous

Dai-al-mutlaqs of appropriating all the higher degrees of priesthood for their own

family members “without much regard for the literary and ecclesiastical qualifications

of the incumbents”. 164 Whilst the claim may have some historical basis, Abdul Husain

160
James Campbell also notes that the site of Al-Jamea-Tus-Saifiyah in Surat was not only a preserve
for the enhancement of intellectual wealth of the community, albeit in a limited sense by the late 19th
century, but also for helping the less fortunate amongst the community. Citing P.C. Mazoomdar's 1883
document titled The Oriental Christ, and although upon examining Mazoomdar texts it makes no such
mention, Campbell notes, “besides on education, the head Mulla spends large sums of money in
feeding and clothing strange and destitute Daudis, and in helping the poor among his people to meet
the expenses of marriage and other costly ceremonies”. James M. Campbell, Gazetteer of the Bombay
Presidency, Vol. 9, pt. 2: ‘Gujarat Population: Musalmans and Parsis’ (Mumbai: Government Central
Press, 1899), p. 32. It is highly plausible that Campbell's impression of the Dai-al-mutlaq “feeding and
clothing strange and destitute Daudis” stems from a 19th century drought which had swept the region of
Kathiawar for 12 years causing thousands of Dawoodi Bohras to converge upon Surat and seek refuge
under Syedna Abdeali Saifuddin, the 42nd Dai-al-mutlaq, who, according an official Dawat publication,
“ensured with great sacrifices, that each believer was well cared for until the end of the drought”. See
The Unique event of Fatemi History, author n.a. (Mumbai: Dawat-e-Hadiyah, Department of
Information and Statistics, 1997), p. 2.
161
Abdul Husain, Gulzare Daudi, p. 52.
162
Ibid., p. 50.
163
Ibid., p. 52.
164
Ibid., pp. 52–3.
75
remains optimistic about Syedna Taher Saifuddin, the Dai-al-mutlaq at the time of

writing:

However, I have full confidence that before the Government interference becomes
necessary and the matters come to the extreme, His Holiness, the present Syedna,
who has the reputation of being the great advocate of learning, as well as of being
considerate and highly educated, will mend matters and check the subordinate
priests. I am glad to note here that according to Shaikh Fazullabhai B.A. His Holiness
has already started an educational policy based on modern principles which promises
to bear good fruits. 165

What remains fascinating in the different literatures on the Dawoodi Bohras that have

emerged in the 20th century, both by Reformists such as Asghar Ali Engineer and

even secular scholars such as Jonah Blank, is that they barely attempt to historicise

how the ‘early Reformists’ presented a particular ‘adoration’ and respect for the Dai-

al-mutlaq. Their opposition was meant in the service of the Dai-al-mutlaq, albeit

couched within the modernist spirit of the late 18th and early 19th century colonial

state. Although well beyond the scope of an MA thesis, it must be noted that a closer

study of the early Dawoodi Bohra Reformists is highly warranted. It may even be

claimed, with utmost caution, that the early Reform movement defies the more

contemporary pigeonhole definitions of those who came to be termed as

‘Progressives’ or ‘Reformists’ of the late 20th century, especially since the mid-1970s.

The early 20th century Reformists such as Abdul Husain need to be understood in

their own ‘Islamic terms’. 166 However different their strategies, the early movement

shares closer affinities with the Dawat than their later counterparts such as Noman

Contractor and Asghar Ali Engineer in meaning, structure and perhaps even intent. To

this, we need to refer back to Syedi Najmuddin's memoirs of what happened in 1965,

merely days after the passing of Syedna Taher Saifuddin. As public outpourings of

165
Ibid., p. 65.
166
Metcalf, “Introduction: The Pattern of Islamic Reform” in Islamic Revival in British India, p. 3.
76
grief continued, with various dignitaries making different claims, the Vice-Chancellor

of Aligarh Muslim University, Nawab Ali Yawar Jung, declared in an official eulogy:

Since assuming the spiritual leadership of his community [in 1915], His Holiness
attempted to introduce modernization on the basis of constructive work and
accomplished success to a remarkable degree. He pursued a programme of
reconstruction and development. Removal of illiteracy, provision of facilities for
education, introduction of technical bias in schools, training for worthwhile
occupations, crafts and trades, accent on a life of sweat, self-reliance and devoted
service to fellowmen, medical aid and relief, stimulus to cooperative enterprise and
the steady diversion of talent and resource to industry were some of the major aspects
of the developmental work he had been carrying on. 167

Amidst the different commemorations, the Dawoodi Bohra community was making

way for Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin to ascend to the role of the 52nd Dai-al-

mutlaq and although the transition went smoothly, with most followers responding to

the renewed call for allegiance to the new incumbent, Syedi Najmuddin notes that the

Reformist camp was experiencing a renewed upsurge in activity. The biggest

challenge emerged from the ranks of Al-Jamea-Tus-Saifiyah itself, where a few high-

ranking Ustads (teachers) were incriminated for being sympathisers of the Reformist

agenda. The Dawat's official claim was that such inimical activity had been going on

for over forty years, and as Syedi Najmuddin notes, “under the guise of scholars,

teachers and even obedient followers, [they had] carried out an unobtrusive and

subversive campaign”. 168 Under intense pressure from the community at large and

clever politicking described by Syedi Najmuddin as a “serene and sagacious

approach” on the part of Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin, the accused were forced

to publicly admit their guilt and were brought to task. As far as the Dawat was

concerned, “the cancer was excised and a new course set for the onward progress of a

renowned and historic academy”. 169 Reverting to Abdul Husain's claims about the

degeneration of the Surat academy, especially around the 1920s, it is plausible to

167
As quoted in Syedi Najmuddin, 75 Momentous Years in Retrospect, p. 16.
168
Ibid., p. 17.
169
Ibid.
77
claim that both Syedna Taher Saifuddin and his heir-apparent, Syedna Mohammad

Burhanuddin, may have been aware of and even ‘tolerated’ the presence of Reformist

sentiments within the academy's hierarchy for much longer than officially declared.

Syedi Najmuddin's claim, which was mentioned earlier, of ‘freeing’ the Academy

from the ‘clutches of the self-styled Ulema’ and the creation of the unique event of

Zikra in 1951, where the Dai-al-mutlaq would personally examine students, may then

be understood as not simply a response to the early Reformists who had been

lamenting the loss of a great and historical Academy and the need for the introduction

of ‘secular’ subjects into the curriculum. Rather it may also be read as a calculated

strategy on the part of both the 51st and 52nd Dai-al-mutlaqs to gradually regain

control of the treasured Academy over which their authority had waned, particularly

under their predecessors as a result of the intensive bombardment of litigation suits

brought against the Dawat and the resulting decline in the official wealth since the

1920s.

Spiritual Assembly of Zikra: Fatimid Blueprints, Indian Contexts

After 1965, with the passing of Syedna Taher Saifuddin and with his successor

Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin’s grasp on the Academy secured, the Zikra came to

be redefined to not only mark the commencement of annual examinations, but also a

yearly congregation which would aspire to recount and celebrate the innumerable

blessings and achievements of Syedna Taher Saifuddin. In preparation for this event

on a grand and unseen scale, the 52nd incumbent launched a major reconstruction

project of the 19th century Surat mosque and adjoining buildings of the Al-Jamea-Tus-

Saifiyah in 1988 which had been initially constructed by the 42nd incumbent, Syedna

78
Abdeali Saifuddin, in 1814 and then later developed by the 51st Dai-al-mutlaq,

Syedna Taher Saifuddin, in the mid-20th century. According to an official Dawat-e-

Hadiyah publication, the older structure was to be completely replaced and areas

around the vicinity were to be purchased to enable the size of the mosque to expand to

become as large as it was when first built. The major challenge was in making its

design appropriate to the times, but also simultaneously preserving and representing

the original artefacts. Once again, the design was to eschew the symbolisms of what

the Dawat historians and commentators have termed the ‘Burhani era’ which is a

period commencing from 1965 in which Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin has been at

the helm of the Dawat and led various building and restoration activities on the

subcontinent and beyond. 170

Drawing on classical Fatimid concepts of architecture, design and the distinctive Kufi

script 171, the envisioned mosque was to occupy a particularly important position

within a larger sacred geography. This would remind the community of its modern

achievements, place it within a larger Islamic culture amidst an increasingly sectarian

post-colonial Gujarat. Most importantly, in what may be referred to as that

‘idiosyncratic Bohra modern’, the Dawat document notes the builder's intent in fine

detail:

The benedictions of the Imams in Cairo and early Duat in Yemen were to be visible
in it. The blessings of the illustrious 51st al-Dai al-Mutlaq, Syedna Taher Saifuddin
Saheb (AQ) who laid the foundation of this age of unprecedented spiritual and
material progress had to be manifest. The remembrance of Imam Husain (SA),

170
The Unique event of Fatemi History, p. 2.
171
Irene Bierman argues that the Fatimid rulers of Egypt were the first to use writing on buildings and
textiles ("the public text") to present their own distinct ideology to the diverse members of Cairene
society. Fatimid doctrines, she argues, were presented in a distinct ‘Fatimid’ form of Kufic script
embellished with tendrils, leaves, and flowers. Although Bierman's thesis has been questioned of late, a
debate the following chapters will elaborate further, it may be pertinent to note that the Fatimids did
develop their own version of the Kufic script to make public statements. See Irene A. Bierman, Writing
Signs: The Fatimid Public Text (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
79
 already occupying its natural position in the heart of each believer, a symbol of the
spirituality of the age of the 52nd Dai al-Mutlaq also had to find expression in the
masjid. With all the history and sacredness it had to embody, the masjid must
nevertheless be contemporary in its use of technology, in particular, it must cope with
the staggering requirements of Ashara Mubaraka, when hundreds of thousand would
gather to hear the Dai of Imam Husain (SA) recount the great sacrifice of the
grandson of the Prophet (SAW). Thus the building of temporary extra floors for the
event must be effortless, the relaying of the discourses worldwide must be facilitated
by a state of the art technology. The cooling system must cope with a completely
packed masjid on a hot day. Its utilities and amenities must contend with all
172
requirements of the day and much more in the future.

The publication documents how the construction of the mosque proceeded, and in

1996, before its official inauguration, thousands of Dawoodi Bohras journeyed to

Surat from various parts of the world to spend a few days offering any form of

khidmat (‘volunteering’) in the service of the mosque and the Dai-al-mutlaq. Many of

the female followers spent days reciting the Quran on the mosque premises, while the

male followers lifted bricks, moved sand and performed various menial tasks in the

spirit of performing khidmat for Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin. With the

construction nearing completion, the 1st of Shaban, 1417H (December 10, 1996) was

chosen by Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin as the date for the Zikra majlis, iftetah

(‘inauguration’) of the restored mosque and the commencement of the examinations

at Al-Jamea-Tus-Saifiyah. As the days drew closer, the document notes, the streets of

Devdi Mubarak, the centre which had represented the presence of the Dawat in Surat

for almost three centuries, was entirely covered by a ‘green cloth’. The cloth covered

the seven mausoleums, the new mosque and the Al-Jamea-Tus-Saifiyah building. It

goes on to note that “devotees of any or no building skill alike swept the floor, picked

at the carvings and placed one piece or another into its appropriate place. Any work

was good enough to participate in the building of this house of Allah and with it claim

the right to be promised abode in heaven.” 173

172
The Unique event of Fatemi History, p. 2.
173
The Unique event of Fatemi History, p. 4.
80
As the opening day approached, the influx of pilgrims increased and the Surat train

station is said to have been filled with distinctly dressed Dawoodi Bohra pilgrims.

Amidst the usual traffic, vehicles carrying more pilgrims arrived, identified easily by

flags which read ‘Ya Hussain’, ‘Long Live Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin’ and

‘To Surat’. Almost 150,000 Dawoodi Bohras descended upon Surat for this historic

event. The mosque had by now been completed – the ninety-nine names of Allah

written in the Kufic script adorned with gold, further away the names of the Panjetan

Paak, the Imams and Duat Mutlaqeen once again in Kufi script, the word ‘Allah’

engraved on the stained glass and the timeless Fatimi Mishkats (‘emblematic

chandeliers’); all lent sacredness and reverence to a structure which would later

become a blue-print for the building of numerous Dawoodi Bohra mosques in various

parts of the world.

Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin arrived amidst much celebration; he opened the

ceremonial lock and then looked at the mehrab (‘a niche set into the middle of the

qibla wall’) as its veil was lifted.“A gasp of awe ran through the masjid”, notes the

celebratory tract, “as a larger than life replica of the mehrab of al-Jami al-Juyushi,

built by Amir al Juyush, Badr al Jamali in the 11th century stood adorning the front

wall, with all the verses and designs covered in gold”. 174 Ascending the takht (‘the

throne of righteousness’), Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin declared:

O' Mumineen, contemplate that Surat is the centre of trade and business; thousands
of people around the world come here with the purpose of trade. But you all, O' my
Dear children have arrived in Surat with a different purpose and aim. You all have
arrived at the gates of Dars Al Saifee and Masjid Al Moazzam, which were
established by Syedna Abdeali Saifuddin (R.A) and were reconstructed by Syedna

174
The Unique event of Fatemi History, p. 4. Although elaborated in a following chapter, for details on
the restoration and replication of al-Juyushi architectural motifs, see Ja'far us Sadiq Mufaddal
Saiffuddin, Al Juyushi: A Vision of the Fatemiyeen (Croydon: Graphico, 2002), p. 14.
81
 Taher Saifuddin (R.A) and now I have renovated both. You have arrived in this
Majlis seeking Knowledge and wisdom. Your every step towards this goal assures
you of a hasanat and that the angels take you in their confines. Today the angels
welcome you all in this Majlis of Zikra. And Mamlook E Ale Mohammed proclaim
‘Marhaban Be Wafdillah’. 175

Drawing from the first words (i.e., ‘Marhaban Be Wafdillah’ or ‘Greetings to the

virtuous’) the Prophet Mohammad is said to have uttered on seeing thousands of

Muslims gathered at Mount Arafat during the farewell Hajj, Syedna Mohammad

Burhanuddin continued:

O' believers who dwell in my heart, you have left your homes and come here bearing
difficulties to witness the iftetah of this Masjid, to see me, to please me -- this act of
yours is nothing but love for me.

This Masjid of Syedna Abdeali Saifuddin Saheb is magnificent. I am indeed very

happy to see it. But my greater happiness is on seeing you, Mumineen.

I know you always think of me, but there may be times when this world sways you
from doing so. Be assured though, that I have never forgotten you for a day, or for an
hour or even for a moment – and I never will.

I am ever concerned about you, that no unhappiness should touch you, that you may
never be subject to grief or pain. Why should you then be worried? I Mohammed
176
Burhanuddin, will come to your aid in your hour of need.

Similar to Barbara Metcalf's postulation that the Indian Muslim Ulema during the 19th

century have been somewhat ignored in the literature because their “activities were

relatively inconspicuous”, relegated to the margins and dismissed as “isolated

underworld relics of a traditional, unchanging past”, the movement of renewal and

religious purification led by Syedna Taher Saifuddin and then by Syedna Mohammad

Burhanuddin within the Dawoodi Bohra community during the 20th century presents a

peculiar similarity. Using what may be referred to as relatively ‘new’ institutional

forms and technological devices, both Dai-al-mutlaqs chose a strategy of turning

within, steering clear (except ceremonially) with the framework of the modern state

175
Aliasger Rasheed, Zikra and Imtehaan – The Season of Gathering Bounties (Mumbai: Dawat-e-
Hadiyah, Department of Statistics and Information, Pamphlet, 1996), p. 2.
176
The Unique event of Fatemi History, p. 5.
82
and exchanges with other communities. Their sole concern was to preserve the

religious heritage – the quintessential role of the Dai-al-mutlaq from the post-Fatimid

centuries – to consolidate the presence of the Fatimid Dawat on the Indian

subcontinent, which was coming to be increasingly dominated by larger Muslim

movements such as the Deobandis, Barelwis and even modernist thinkers such as

Mohammad Iqbal and later Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

Summing Up

The penultimate aim was to propagate instructions on ‘authentic’ religious practice

and belief. From the mid-1920s especially, Syedna Taher Saifuddin attempted to and

succeeded in presenting his successor as the archetypal prodigy, an ideal Selfhood

that each follower ought to aspire towards, as a persona that embodied the living faith

of the Fatimi Dawat in India. Like the majlis of the Zikra, which was a ‘new’ form of

organisation, presenting an innovative technique of communication, the following it

generated too was ‘new’. For the Bohras of India, here was a moment where “their

emphases within their religion and their consciousness of it were new in their time”,

as Barbara Metcalf notes. 177 Such a consciousness of renewal, the need for ‘an

internal conversion’, became even more pertinent from the mid-1970s till the mid-

1980s as the Reformist challenge to the Dawat and the authority of the Dai-al-mutlaq

took on newer forms and became even more intense under the post-colonial Indian

state.

177
Metcalf, ‘Introduction: The Pattern of Islamic Reform’ in Islamic Revival in British India, p. 12.
83
 Chapter 4

‘AT THE HEART OF SECULARISM’:

SYEDNA MOHAMMAD BURHANUDDIN AND
THE PRINT REFORMISTS, 1965–1985

While the previous chapter historicised Syenda Mohammad Burhanuddin’s ascension

to the role of Dai-al-mutlaq, this chapter contextualises his tenure in the post-1965

period. Taking advantage of the post-colonial ‘secular’ state, the Reformists

harnessed print media and civil society institutions in an attempt to undermine the

authority of the Dai. Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin responded by embracing

secularism, eschewing Islamic extremism and reasserting the ideals of self-reliance,

which had been a hallmark of the community’s existence in India since the arrival of

the earliest Fatimid missionaries in the 11th century in Sindh and Gujarat. Laying the

context for the landmark 1979 Conference of Fatimi Knowledge (al-Multaqa al-

Fatimi al-Ilmi), which Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin convened to symbolise

measures aimed at achieving greater cohesion within the community, the chapter

unpacks the different moments when ‘Reform’ was debated in the print sphere and

how the Dai-al-mutlaq succeeded in reasserting bonds of culture, traditions and the

past embodied in community institutions.

A Resolution for Change: al-Multaqa al-Fatimi al-Ilmi

The year 1979 has been marked by many scholars as a defining moment in the re-

emergence of a particular late-modern Islamic consciousness and particularly an

epochal event in the rise of Shia identitarian expressions in South Asia. 178 The Iranian

178
For an interesting discussion on the impact of the Iranian Revolution in South Asia, see Vali Nasr,
‘The Iranian Revolution and Changes in Islamism in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan’ in Iran and the
Surrounding World: Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics (Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 2002), pp. 327-354.
84
revolution has been understood in much academic literature as an event that

demonstrated how it was indeed possible to advance ‘tradition’ as practice and

effectively consolidate popular group identification. Moreover, 1979 also brought

about a landmark event in the modern experience of the Dawoodi Bohras in the

Indian subcontinent. As Syedi Najmuddin notes, it had been incumbent on the Dai-al-

mutlaq of each era to provide proper and timely advice to his followers, especially the

“Dai of a miniscule denomination [who] had to ensure the practice of a pristine faith

free of dilution and pollution.” 179

On January 1979, at a landmark event titled the Conference of Fatimi Knowledge (al-

Multaqa al-Fatimi al-Ilmi), Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin invited Dawoodi

Bohras from across the subcontinent and beyond to gather in Surat at the Al-Jamea-

Tus-Saifiyah academy amidst the yearly Zikra majlis preparations for the annual

examinations at the academy. Most, if not all, literatures which document the Multaqa

have chosen to focus on two particular resolutions. First, the Resolution stated that

male Bohras should maintain a beard and female Bohras should adorn a rida (burqa)

and in the second, Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin asked his followers to adhere to

the Shariah and abandon even the largest of businesses that were based on interest.

Both resolutions and their implications for the community's ‘contemporary

appearance’ have been relatively well documented by Jonah Blank and it is futile to

recapitulate such findings. The aim here is to unravel the historical context that led to

such a landmark event, especially amidst the developments that had been taking place

in the reformist camp, especially from the mid-1970s.

179
Syedi Najmuddin, 75 Momentous Years in Retrospect, p. 21.
85
For Syedi Najmuddin, the Multaqa was groundbreaking for it encouraged “open

debate and discussion” with all the followers who were given the “freedom to ask

questions” of the Dai-al-mutlaq. 180 Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin is noted to have

mentioned in his inaugural address at the Multaqa:

Today, we face scientific and technical advance, the result of man's learning and
research. The achievement in reality is the work of the Creator, the Wise and in
consonance with the Will of the Almighty, the Omniscient. What should follow and
reason requires it, is that man's devotion and humility to the power of Allah and
submission to it should be strengthened. But man was beguiled by Satan.

He denied the Creator and went astray. Profiting from the bounties of Allah and
deriving the maximum advantage from the wonders of Creation, man yet renounced the
Creator and obedience to Him. Not merely that but more, man matches disobedience
with further disobedience and stumbles in error, turning from obedience to Allah to
worship of Satan. He taints society with his false and ungrateful ideology and ventures,
which mislead and oppress, perpetrating a sin. He threatens the Deen of Allah and its
believers. He glorifies in his ignorance by denying to the faithful knowledge of things
he himself is ignorant of. 181

Increasingly, in the midst of an Indian subcontinent that was moving away from its

professed Nehruvian secularism of the early independence years, the Dai-al-mutlaq, it

may be posited as a Clifford Geertz metaphor, was becoming ‘carefully oppositional’.

In the events that the following sections will document, it will become apparent that

the Dawoodi Bohra weltanschaung was not traditional any more in the sense of being

accepted without question. Although such an assertion, as we saw in the previous

chapter, may be extended to Syedna Taher Saifuddin too, Syedna Mohammad

Burhanuddin's years were much more complex with the ‘newer’ proliferation of

technologies and the burgeoning ‘secularist’ print media. The Multaqa was then a

self-conscious presentation, formulated against the ravages of a modernity that

seemed to be ‘assimilating’ the Dawoodis into the larger imagined ‘Hindu sphere’,

much more than the current Dai-al-mutlaq could find comfort in. Jonah Blank makes

a somewhat similar observation about the very basic difference between the father

180
Ibid.
181
Ibid.
86
and son. Whereas Syedna Taher Saifuddin exhibited a deep interest in the larger

world(s) beyond the Bohra community, with his fascination for modern ideas and

Western customs continuing to grow, Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin “has never

been as interested in secular affairs, as his predecessor had been.” 182 “It was he

[Syedna Taher Saifuddin]”, Jonah Blank observes:

…who truly opened up the community to outside influences, exposed it to a variety of

changes. According to sources who knew him personally, not only did Taher Saifuddin
consider such changes inevitable and necessary, but he found modern ideas personally
fascinating. This does not imply that the former da'i was any less devoted to spiritual
pursuits: Taher Saifuddin's extraordinary scholarship and piety are not disputed even by
those who disagree with his overall outlook. For Taher Saifuddin, both the spiritual and
secular realms held a wealth of possibility. 183

Although both the 51st and 52nd Dai-al-mutlaqs shared a profound religious

sensibility, the Multaqa in 1979 and the later developments within the Dawoodi

Bohra community need to be understood within a dynamic context, with the current

incumbent introducing orthopraxic reforms within a climate where his followers were

experiencing enhanced social ties to the larger ideological mainstream of Indian

society. 184 The ‘syncretist’ and ‘quietist’ tendencies of the Dawoodi Bohras, which

had become elements of a marked strategy for centuries, were now being

characteristically reworked within the repertoire of received Ismaili beliefs, indicative

of how Islam, like all traditions, is always shifting in emphases, continually

reformulating and redefining itself. Indicative of such a subtle shift, Syedna

Mohammad Burhanuddin elaborated in his 1979 sermon: 185

Know ye, that the acquisition of life in this world of sublimity and baseness, is but
death; but, for him who dies in the fold of Deen, is life. So strive to acquire that which
gives life over life and eschew that which is death and indeed the death. Heeding what
the true sages have said that the world is nothing; have the wisdom to gain something
from nothing.

182
Blank, Mullahs on the Mainframe, p. 185.
183
Ibid.
184
For details on the 1979 directives regarding the dress code and the maintaining of beards, see ibid.,
pp. 187–190.
185
Syedi Najmuddin, 75 Momentous Years in Retrospect, p. 20.
87
 As votaries of the truth, we must comprehend the wisdom of Imam Al Moiz: If Truth
was a path, and if Falsehood was a path, both would claim on equal status, giving to
each a basis. And Falsehood, if granted a basis, would knock down Truth. The basis is
but for Truth only. Falsehood is nullified, denied the basis.

If indeed any single label was to be forced upon this period of the Dawoodi Bohra

identity, especially in the Indian subcontinent, it could be that of ‘rationalising’ in the

Weberian sense of making religion self-conscious, inward-looking, systematic and

based on abstract, yet scripturally defined, principles. The Multaqa provided a sense

of cultural worth and led to a particular community ethos for the Dawoodi Bohras.

Surprisingly, despite the difficult demands that the Dai-al-mutlaq made of his

followers, especially of abandoning Ribah or taking of interest, it continued to be

appealing to people who were part of an increasingly connected social and political

world.

Based on Ta'wil or the esoteric interpretation of the scripture, the Dai-al-mutlaq began

to reassert that beneath the Zahir (‘apparent’) aspects of the revealed texts, a deeper

and more Batin (‘truth’) lies hidden. While any Muslim and even a Dawoodi Bohra

could access the apparent meanings of the Quran, only a true Mumin (read: loyal and

dedicated Dawoodi Bohra) could aspire to unravel the Batin, with the guidance and

help of the Imam of the era or his representative, i.e., the Dai-al-mutlaq. The Ismailis,

in particular, regard the entire Quran as a text with hidden allegorical interpretations

underlying even the most seemingly straightforward of passages. 186

186
See Farhad Daftary, Medieval Isma‘ili History and Thought. For a broad overview on Ismaili
Studies, see Farhad Daftary, Ismaili Studies: Medieval Antecedents and Modern Developments
(London: The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2002).
88
The Udaipur Revolt and Measures of ‘Progress’

Amidst the re-assertion and the call to display the followers’ love for the Dai-al-

mutlaq, there was a message for the Reformists’ movement, which was being led by

two individuals in particular, Norman Contractor and Asghar Ali Engineer. Syedna

Mohammad Burhanuddin noted in his sermon:

We also face another group; those who are zealous for Deen but lack intellectual
consciousness and apprehension. Their faith stands on a shaky foundation. They reject
the wonders of Allah and His Omnipotence and refuse to even think about it. In this
frame, they inadvertently aid the foes of Allah's Deen and those who have a vested
interest in plotting against it.

Therefore the believer is obliged to tend both these spheres. He must combine the
knowledge that ensures fulfillment in this world with the knowledge that guarantees the
Hereafter. That knowledge requires a comprehension and consciousness of the rarities
of the arts and encompasses learning and wisdom, particularly gnosis of the religious
need and of Shari'ah. 187

Ismaili gnosis was partly the response of Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin to the

most recent and perhaps dramatic challenge to the authority of the Dawat during the

1970s in the city of Udaipur. Located in Rajasthan, Udaipur is also known as the City

of Lakes and has a very large Bohra population; according to contemporary sources,

the local Bohra jamaat numbers from about fifteen to twenty thousand, concentrated

mainly in four adjoining neighbourhoods. 188 The conflict is said to have emerged in

1970 when municipal elections were held in all four zones where the Bohras were in

the majority. In the post-Partition era, the Bohras had been steadfast supporters of the

Congress party. In Udaipur, as in other parts of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan,

the local Dawat authorities had been urging the community to vote for the Bohra

candidates of the Congress and support the candidacy of the Congress party to local

office. As the municipal elections for 1970 approached, a left-leaning group of

187
Syedi Najmuddin, 75 Momentous Years in Retrospect, p. 21.
188
See Shibani Roy, The Dawoodi Bohras, p.40; Blank, Mullahs on the Mainframe, p. 241; Wright,
Competitive Modernization, p. 154.
89
Dawoodi Bohra youth, who later came to refer to themselves as the ‘Bohra Youth

Association’, challenged the local Amil's choice of Congress candidates by entering

the electoral process on their own and subsequently winning the elections in the four

wards. The election of 1970 and the Bohra Youth Association registering a victory is

not contested by either the reformists or the Dawat narratives. However, the narrative

becomes contentious, perhaps even contested, in documenting the developments that

followed the victory.

For Noman Contractor, 189 a key reformist of the time, the dissent in Udaipur was a

local issue between the Amil, who was the representative of the Dai-al-mutlaq, and

the local youth. The Amil was believed to have been “playing fast and loose with the

monies he had received for public purposes”. As Contractor elaborates, “it seems he

used to get money from both the sources, i.e. from the leader of the ruling party and

from His Holiness”. 190 Instead of deploying the money for the betterment of the local

community, the Amil is claimed to have “used a major portion of it for personal

ends”. 191 As a result, the local Youth, considering the Amil to be highly corrupt,

sought to put forward their own candidates with the hope of circumventing his

influence. The Amil, who had been treading a fine line over the supposed influence he

had garnered with the Chief Minister who was under the impression that the local

Amil had direct access to the Dai-al-mutlaq, is alleged to have exacerbated matters

and portrayed the Bohra Youth Association in a negative light after the electoral

defeat of the candidates he had nominated. In Contractor's understanding of the

189
Like the early 20th century Reformists such as Adamji Peerbhai, Noman Contractor was a Bombay
industrialist who was a leading figure in the Reform movement, from the 1950s till the 1980s.
Contractor, with the help of other philanthropists, founded the Kandivali Housing Colony, Mohammedi
Foundation Trust, Ikhwanus-Safa Trust and the Progressive Printing Press. He even wanted to establish
a co-operative bank but it did not materialise in his lifetime.
190
Noman Contractor, The Dawoodi Bohras, p. 15.
191
Ibid.
90
genesis of the conflict, the Amil's clever politicking led to the victimisation of the

Bohra Youth whose otherwise well-intentioned, locally grounded concerns were

presented to the Dai-al-mutlaq as “proving harmful to the community”. 192 Contractor

explains in colloquial detail:

The defeat of the officially sponsored candidates in the municipal elections gave a
severe jolt to A [i.e. the local Amil]. He resorted to several manipulative practices to
regain his lost status. He persuaded His Holiness to the view that a section of the Bohras
– particularly the young – were restive and may even pose a threat to the authority of
His Holiness. He attributed the defeat of the officially sponsored candidates to the
machinations of these young Bohras. It seems His Holiness quite uncritically accepted
A's version of the developments. 193

In an attempt at understanding the ground realities better and addressing religious

affairs, Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin, according to Contractor, appointed his

brother and then Rector of Al-Jamea-Tus-Saifiyah as his representative in Udaipur.

All powers relating to religious and financial matters were delegated to him. This

proved detrimental to the aspirations of the Bohra Youth Association and served the

interests of the erstwhile local Amil, for, according to Contractor, Syedi Yusuf

Najmuddin “was highly prejudiced against the Bohra youth and on more than one

occasion gave public expression to it”. 194

Although Contractor's narrative needs to be read with caution, the Udaipur revolt

brought to the forefront a series of debates within the community, ranging from issues

surrounding the status of women, the precarious distinction between the realm of

spiritual authority and secular presence, the extent to which the Congress and the

Janata Dal governments (in power only from 1977 to 1980) were willing to intervene

in the internal matters of the community and the subsequent strategies that the Dawat

devised and the Reformists used to cope with and present such a challenge,

192
Ibid.
193
Ibid.
194
Ibid.
91
respectively. Although there are multiple takes on what precisely occurred during the

1970s and 1980s, it has been the Reformist narrative that has received far wider

representation in the print media.

Before we turn to a closer inspection of the print campaign that the Reformists

launched against the Dai-al-mutlaq, more intensely from the mid-1970s, it may be

pertinent to discuss an early anthropological study conducted by Shibani Roy who

documented the Udaipur rebellion as it unfolded. Roy's work emerged at a time when

the Reformist movement had reached intense levels in terms of publicity and press

coverage, which sought to portray the High Priest and the Dawat in a negative light.

Writing in the 1980s, she conducted most of her fieldwork in the 1970s. For Roy, the

strategy of voting en masse for one political party favoured by the Dai-al-mutlaq

enabled the Bohras to maintain internal coherence. The case of Udaipur in the 1970s,

however, shattered this delicate balance. Political participation and its related access

to the political mechanism did not mean being able to vote for anybody that one

desired, but voting en masse for a purpose which sustains the way of life of a

community which was being bombarded by anti-Muslim rhetoric, especially in a post-

independence Gujarat, the region with which the Bohras identified the most. 195

The earliest entries in print on the Udaipur revolt appear from around 1974. By then,

the lines had been drawn between those considered loyal to the Dai-al-mutlaq and

those demanding reforms in Udaipur. Sunday World, a weekly magazine, noted in

April 1974: “a matter of immediate concern is the increasingly militant turn that the

argument has taken”. 196 The town of Udaipur was by now divided into two groups:

195
Shibani Roy, The Dawoodi Bohras, p.5.
196
‘Bohra Protestantism and Tradition’, Sunday World (4) 16, 21/4/1974.
92
the Bohra Youth Association, which claimed to represent a ‘majority’ of Udaipuri

Bohras and those who came to be known as ‘Shababis’, the group which remained

loyal to the Dai-al-mutlaq. 197 One of the major issues of contention was the misaq or

oath of allegiance that each Bohra is supposed to take. The ceremony held at the age

of puberty, which is obligatory for every follower who wishes to be part of the

community, is a covenant between the believer and God, effected through his Wali.

The Reformists, who declared themselves as individuals “inspired by the democratic

institutions”198 of India, found it difficult to reconcile how any individual could, at

least according to their understanding of what the misaq expected of them, “spend his

property and life in the cause of the Dai”. 199

The Reformist movement, amidst the larger political climate that saw the curtailment

of human rights under the Indira Gandhi emergency regime, won immense sympathy

amongst leftist thinkers and public intellectuals. 200 In an interview with The

Hindustan Times, Asaf A. Fayzee, a prominent scholar on Ismaili jurisprudence, even

went to the extent of claiming that “the meesaq is not derived from the Holy Quoran

but in a later document. The Meesaq is an ancient document which should be

interpreted with the times.” 201

197
The literal transliteration of the word ‘Shabab’ means ‘youth’ and is an organisation, which is open
to all Bohra youth males who have taken the Misaq up to the age of 35. Shababul-ediz-zahabi was
established in 1965 on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of Syedna Taher Saifuddin.
198
‘Ferment Among the Bohras’, Times of India, 25/8/1974.
199
‘Bohra Protestantism and Tradition’, Sunday World (4) 16, 21/4/1974.
200
The period between 1977 and 1979 was also one of the most difficult in terms of the negotiation and
nature of ‘secularism’ in India. Indira Gandhi's Emergency of 1975–1977, and her subsequent ouster at
the 1977 polls, had thrown doubt on the pluralist framework, which had been a major paradigm of
Indian politics since 1947. While Marxist paradigms had existed as undercurrents till then, they came
to the fore in the mid-1970s. See Harry W. Blair, ‘Mrs Gandhi's Emergency, The Indian Elections of
1977, Pluralism and Marxism: Problems with Paradigms’, Modern Asian Studies, 14 (1980), pp. 237–
271.
201
‘Bohra Protestantism and Tradition’, Sunday World (4) 16, 21/4/1974. The sole written text of the
Misaq in the public domain is the document that was presented by Syedna Taher Saifuddin in 1920
during the Chandabhai Gulla case and was published by Mian Bhai Mulla Abdul Husain. See Abdul
Husain, Gulzare Daudi, pp. 91–100.
93
Amidst the demands to ‘modernise’ and ‘relieve’ the followers from what was

perceived as an out-dated religious rite of passage, it needs to be noted that the misaq

is probably the only major ritual that remains unique to the Dawoodi Bohras. The

Dawat remained silent on the Reformists’ brandishing of the misaq as an oppressive

article of faith that enabled the Dai-al-mutlaq to declare baraat (‘social boycott’) on

any of the dissidents. For most of the 1970s, the Reformists at most public gatherings

constantly exhibited a particular written version of the misaq which Syedna Taher

Saifuddin had submitted in court during the Burhanpur Dargah case of 1921. The

silence in the English print media was finally broken in 1981 when Syedi Badrul

Jamali, a nephew of Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin, spoke out in an interview with

The Week:

First of all people who say this are misinformed and have not read the Koran. They have
read a translation, yes...but I can show you the Koran, just now, where it is clearly stated
that we have taken the Misaq of Adam, the first of the Prophets. So from where did this
idea about persecution of the Bohras come? The Misaq was from the beginning. Misaq
is what it is. Okay? Nobody is compelled to give this Misaq. If you want to give it, you
give, if you don't, you don't. 202

In a sermon delivered at the time, Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin articulated a clear

and coherent view of the way the world was and the way one ought to live within it –

a view, which stood radically different from that of the Reformists, who were, by and

large, committed to notions of progress and secular constitutionalism adapted mostly

from a selective mix of leftist and liberal postulations. This is not to claim that the

Dai-al-mutlaq remained opposed to any measure of ‘progress’ as defined by the

bulwarks of the Reformist movement; the claim here was to approach Islam, and the

‘Bohra modern’ more specifically, as spheres which could easily harmonise in

202
Debashi Mukherjee, ‘The Syedna is infallible’, The Week, 20/3/1981.
94
imagining a more comprehensive weltanschauung that dealt with the various ills of

modernity and its associated alienations.

‘Progress’ for the Dawoodi Bohras was inherently linked with the realisation of what

Syedi Najmuddin referred to as ‘continuity’ with traditions and creed. For a

community with a fairly clear set of objectives defined by Syedna Mohammad

Burhanuddin, ‘progress’ was a concept that could only come in the service of that

defined worldview. Accepting the complexities involved in seeking a clear definition

of the term, Syedi Najmuddin noted that “progress has to be related to the essentials

of the outlook, beliefs, or principles, which a particular group of people hold or

practice. Strange as it may appear, even deterioration could be continuous, and there

could be progress in deterioration”. 203 In part, as a response to the print campaign

that the Reformists had launched since the early 1970s and in articulating his view of

how the Dawoodi Bohra community could cope with the pressures of modernity,

specifically within an ‘Indian’ post-colonial context, Syedna Mohammad

Burhanuddin in his 1979 Multaqa sermon noted:

Misled are those who allege that Islamic Shariah has not inherent within it that which
does harmonise with the needs of their times. Thus they hope to establish the
imperfection of the Shairah, which we know is the perfect most of all Shariah, the most
complete and the noble. The detractors engage in a comparison of the Shariah with
man-made social orders that they have attempted to perfect. Theirs is a claim of
perfection, the claim of those who themselves are imperfect, transitory and perish even
before they can witness the end result of their handiwork. Truly the Shariah is laid down
to eliminate human imperfection. Its objective is to usher in betterment, wellbeing and
contentment. 204

As the introduction of various orthopraxic reforms continued within the community,

Shibani Roy, the anthropologist who had been documenting the Udaipur fiasco,

observed that since not all Dawoodi Bohras could gain access to the Batin aspects of

Ismaili traditions and thought, the community seemed to have been saved from “the

203
Syedi Najmuddin, 75 Momentous Years in Retrospect, p. 22.
204
Ibid.
95
ravages of fanaticism”. 205 Based on interviews she had conducted with various

community leaders of the time, Roy located the division between ‘tradition’ and the

transfer of knowledge where Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin emphasised the

absolute need for an intercessionary saint to interpret and transmit the canon versus

so-called ‘modernist/reformists’ such as Asghar Ali Engineer who were not formally

trained members of the Ulema, but were from outside the traditional systems of

transmission.

Clandestine Femininity: The Yasmin Contractor Case

Aligned to Francis Robinson's observations on the impact of print on debates within

the Muslim communities of South Asia since the 1880s, public intellectuals such as

Asghar Ali Engineer had begun to increasingly delve with renewed vigour into the

resources of both the Ismaili tradition and Western ideas—now made rather freely

available by print—in attempting to find answers to contemporary challenges. The

very medium of print was then adopted to disseminate their critiques through

pamphlets, and partisan newspapers and magazines. In a 1974 article in the Times of

India, the Reformists alleged:

As the community mainly comprises small businessmen and petty shopkeepers, the rate
of literacy and pursuit of learning, as far as higher education is concerned, has been
traditionally fairly low. Consequently, the elite never developed a critical attitude
towards the religious leadership and in keeping with the character of a business
community, always meekly submitted to whatever fatwas were imposed on it from time
to time, whether they were in conformity with the spirit of the basic tenets of Islam or
not. During the last couple of decades, however, the tenor of the life in the community
has been disturbed mainly on account of two major factors: the accumulation of
considerable sum of money by the Bohra religious hierarchy, and the spread of
education among a section of the Bohra youth in certain urban centers. 206

205
Roy, The Dawoodi Bohras, p. 30.
206
‘Ferment Among the Bohras’, Times of India, 25/8/1974.
96
Amidst calls for the newly emergent formation of ‘educated’ Bohra youth to question

the ‘traditionalist’ outlook of the priesthood, the women's movement for liberation

from patriarchy that came to be conflated with the fast-advancing Dawat religious

structures received renewed impetus. Although there had been an intense debate about

the role of women and the adornment of purdah within the community during the

1930s and 1940s, the movement had mellowed down with the practice of purdah

amongst Dawoodi Bohra women reducing significantly by the 1950s. 207 However, as

the Udaipur revolt reached an impasse, the Reformists alleged that Syedna

Mohammad Burhanuddin refused to solemnise the marriage of about two hundred

couples who were either directly involved in the Bohra Youth Association or openly

sympathised with it. The issue is said to have been raised at the Rajasthan Legislative

Assembly, but to no avail. In utter desperation the women from Udaipur approached

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in New Delhi, with the hope of her intervention. Indira

Gandhi directed an MP from Rajasthan and Dawoodi Bohra dissident, Saleh Abdul

Kader, to persuade Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin to solemnise the marriages, but

once again to no avail. 208

Just before approaching Indira Gandhi, one of the more clandestine strategies that the

Reformist group adopted was in September 1973 when Yasmin Contractor, the

daughter of the reformist leader Noman Contractor, issued a public statement in the

Times of India demanding that her father publicly apologise to Syedna Mohammad

Burhanuddin in order for her marriage to be solemnised in accordance with Dawoodi

207
Rehana Ghadially documents this debate wonderfully. See Ghadially, The Campaign for Women’s
Emancipation in an Ismaili Shia (Daudi Bohra) Sect of Indian Muslims: 1929-1945, WLUML Dossier
(14-15 September 1996): 64-85.
208
‘Ferment Among the Bohras’, Times of India, 25/8/1974. For a detailed understanding of the
context in which Indira Gandhi was operating at the time, and her subsequent decision to declare the
Indian Emergency, followed by discussions with Jayaprakash Narayan, a personality who would also
become crucial for the Reformists, see P. N. Dhar, Indira Gandhi, The "emergency" and Indian
Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 223–269.
97
Bohra rites. The press statement attracted considerable public attention and a

compromise was reached between Noman Contractor and Syedna Mohammad

Burhanuddin. The Dai-al-mutlaq relented to the extent of agreeing to allow a local

Amil in Mumbai to solemnise the marriage, provided Noman Contractor did not

attend the ceremony or participate in any of the rites. 209

Precisely thirteen months later, however, yet another letter to the editor of the Times

of India authored by Yasmin Contractor appeared which resolutely declared the

Bohras of Udaipur as ‘heroic’ as they had refused to “yield to the repressive measures

to dissolve the [Bohra Youth] Association and to tender public apology”. Declaring

the priestly hierarchy as “unrelenting and obstinate”, Yasmin Contractor argued that

prior to Syedna Taher Saifuddin and Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin, it was

common practice for a Muslim Kazi to conduct the solemnisation ceremony of Bohra

couples. In pointing to internal contradictions, she allegorically cited the case of Abde

Fathema, the mother of the Mukasir (‘the third-ranking cleric in the Bohra dawat’) at

the time, whose marriage had been solemnised by a Muslim Kazi in 1932 and then

subsequently declared invalid by Syedna Taher Saifuddin. When the marriage was

contested in court, the hierarchy at the time accepted the marriage as valid, but

thereafter made it obligatory for Dawoodi Bohra solemnisations to occur only by

authorised Bohra priests and only after the blessings of the Dai-al-mutlaq.210

Although it may be difficult to ascertain the validity of Yasmin Contractor's claims,

armed with stop-gap theatricals and assigned as a mode of ‘resistance’ in the hope of

causing problems for the growing hegemony of the Dai-al-mutlaq, the Reformists by

209
Staff Reporter, Times of India, 30/10/1973.
210
Yasmin Contractor, ‘Support Udaipur Bohras’ in Readers Right section, Times of India, 30/11/1974.
98
resorting to such tactics had effectively undermined any remaining glimmer of hope

for reconciliation with the Dawat.

Following Yasmin Contractor, a flurry of articles appeared in the press citing cases of

Reformist women who had been subjected to or had already been placed under baraat

but continued to persevere with the movement. The Reformists even presented cases

of Dawoodi Bohra women of mixed heritage and parentage. The renowned film

actress Asha Parekh's mother, Salma Parekh, who ‘was’ a Dawoodi Bohra, as the

article notes, due to her father Mr. Ibrahim Lakdawala's role in the early reform

campaign, came out in support of the Reformist movement. Noting how crucial it was

for women to mobilise and organise, Salma Parekh noted, “I wish to tell them that

they must change with the times. Bohra women must recognise their right from wrong

and strive for the truth. Slavery in any form in the 20th century is ridiculous”. 211 One

personal account after another followed, couched in intensely emotional language, by

which the Reformists attempted to portray the ‘plight’ of women in the Bohra

community as one of utter desperation. Citing the case of Sakina Attarwala, a

graduate from the University of Bombay, whose marriage had been held up for more

than two years, the article quoted her as saying:

It's a long story. This story seems to have no beginning, has no ending. It's a nightmare
from which sometimes one awakens only to find that it's really true. Our only fault, if
you can call that a fault, was to prevail upon our head priest to give back our
fundamental rights which he has usurped from us by force and other means. We revere
him in religious matters but we want freedom of expression and association. We do not
want him to manage our secular affairs. 212

On March 16, 1975, in an open challenge to the authority of Syedna Mohammad

Burhanuddin, 106 couples from Udaipur who had been refused solemnisation rites

held mass marriage ceremonies. The marriages were performed by non-Bohra Kazis

211
‘Bohra Women Fight for Reforms’, Eve's Weekly, 25/3/1975.
212
Ibid.
99
from Mumbai, once again attracting much public attention. Noman Contractor

declared that “after having failed in all their efforts to persuade Syedna Sahed to

perform nikahs held up for many years, the people of Udaipur at last decided to

solemnise these marriages independently according to the Islamic Shariat, rather than

agreeing to an ignominious surrender on the terms demanded by the priesthood”. In a

haughty rejection of Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin's requests for the couples to

take the Misaq or oath of allegiance, the influence of the Reformists on the print

media had been so vigorous that the press reports polemicised the occasion and the

Reformist ‘plight’ to dismiss Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin as “following the

practices of the medieval period in the 20th century”. 213

Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin and the Dawat remained silent on much of these

events and allegations. However, the Bohra community mobilised and protested

publicly in November 1974 when Shashi Bhushan, a Congress M.P., addressing a

Bohra Youth Association gathering in Udaipur, criticised the policies of Syedna

Mohammad Burhanuddin and accused the Dai-al-mutlaq of permitting the “economic

exploitation of the community by the priestly class”. Bhushan even went to the extent

of euphorically declaring that, like the instance when the government had acted in the

case of the Gurdwaras in 1970s with legislation, he would raise the issue of

“exploitation the of Dawoodi Bohras in Parliament soon”. 214

Bhushan's comments generated an immediate response from different public figures

including the labour leader M. U. Khan, who declared that Shashi Bhushan by

addressing the meeting of the Bohra Youth Association had become “an instrument in

213
‘Marriage – New Bohra Style – A Community Crisis’, The Current, 29/3/1975.
214
‘Shashi Bhushan at Bohra Gathering’, Free Press Journal, 28/11/1974.
100
the malicious campaign against the religious head of the Bohra community”. The

subsequent memorandum that was released to the press noted, “it was a matter of the

very faith of the Dawoodi Bohra denomination that it exercises the discipline over its

members for the purpose of preserving unity in faith. If everyone was at liberty to

defy the essentials of the creed, this community as a group would soon cease to

exist.” 215 Following this, Shashi Bhushan released a public apology and urged the

representative of the Dawoodi Bohras who had approached him to treat the “matter as

closed” and even echoed the Dawat memorandum by agreeing that those who did not

accept the tenets of any religion were free to leave it and follow their own beliefs. 216

In light of the apology, the Dawoodi Bohra community organisers also called for a

silent procession in support of Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin and to protest against

what was termed ‘outside interference’ in the community's internal matters. On

November 27, 1974, thousands of Bohras across India kept their businesses and other

places of work closed to participate in the silent march. 217

215
‘Bohra Protest’, Times of India, 20/11/1974.
216
‘MP Apologizes for Remarks on Bohra Chief’, Times of India, 24/11/1974.
217
‘Massive Protests by Bohras’, Times of India, 27/11/1974.
101
Figure 4.1, Posters put up by Bohras around Bombay in response to Shashi Bhushan’s comments.
Source: ‘The Bohra Civil War’, Onlooker, May 1–14, 1974.

The Challenge of the Nathwani Commission

The polemics only got intense with the 1977 establishment of the Nathwani

Commission. With the Janata Party electoral victory in 1977 and the first non-

Congress government coming to power in the centre in the post-independence era, the

Reformist camp received renewed impetus. 218 The Bohras, who had been staunch

Congress supporters ever since 1947, found themselves without their traditional

support channels. In contrast, the Reformists, especially public intellectuals like

218
For a wonderful history of the Janata Party Movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan for the ouster of
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, which led to the imposition of internal emergency in India (June 1975–
January 1977), see Bipan Chandra, In the name of Democracy: JP Movement and the Emergency (New
York: Penguin, 2003); also see Kuldip Nayar, The Judgment: Inside Story of the Emergency in India
Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1977).
102
Asghar Ali Engineer, had always commanded respect amongst leftist circles and so

the Reformists suddenly found, as Jonah Blank notes, “old friends in high places”. 219

The first point of contact for the Reformists was the new Prime Minister, Morarji

Desai, who had been a crucial proponent of the Prevention of Excommunication Act

in the 1950s. Although Desai remained formally distanced, the Reformists pleaded to

S.M. Joshi, president of the Maharashtra Janata Party who agreed to establish a ‘non-

official’ enquiry commission to look into whether ‘vested interests’ of the community

were running a ‘government within a government’, and if “social boycott was being

promoted and whether due to that there was an atmosphere of terror within the

community”. 220 The appointed Commission was to establish investigation panels in

Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. Jayaprakash Narayanan, 221 the

veteran politician and mentor of the Janata Party, wrote in a letter dated July 14, 1977

to Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin:

The reformist Bohras do not challenge your spiritual status but have been striving for
restoration of their democratic rights and preservation of human values. No other
consideration, in my opinion, should be allowed to gain supremacy over humanity and
freedom of conscience. 222

The Reformists, headed by Asghar Ali Engineer, began to approach their ‘old friends’

such as Jayaprakash Narayan, who wrote to Justice (retd.) V.M. Tarkunde, requesting

him to institute an unofficial commission on behalf of the Reformists and also make

arrangements to invite former-Justice N. P. Nathwani, M.P., to head the Commission.

219
Although Jonah Blank dedicates some discussion to the findings of the Nathwani Commission, he
fails to historicise how the Nathwani Commission came into being and the politics that surrounded it.
Moreover, he fails to dwell on how the Commission was represented in the print media. See Blank, op.
cit., p. 244.
220
‘Non-official Probe Against Bohra Leader’, Times of India, 14/7/1977.
221
For a biography and analysis of Jayaprakash Narayan’s political career, see Bhola Chatterjee,
Conflict in JP's Politics (New Delhi: Ankur, 1984) and Bimal Prasad, Jayaprakash Narayan: Quest
and Legacy (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1992).
222
‘Letter to Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin’, Times of India, 14/7/1977.
103
Surprisingly, in a turn of events some months later, Narayan disavowed the

Commission before it even got underway:

I had never associated myself with the so-called inquiry and further make it clear that
politicians and political considerations should not be allowed to infringe upon religious
susceptibilities or wound them in any way. Every religious community must have the
freedom to resolve its internal religious affairs according to the dictates of its faith and
beliefs. 223

One possible reason for Narayan's disavowal may have been the general concern the

Janata government may have had of alienating the Muslim electorate, especially when

the prominent Mufti Atiqur Rehman Usmani, who was the President of the Muslim

Consultative Council and Vice-president of the Muslim Personal Law Board,

criticised the establishment of such a Commission in an article which appeared in the

September 1977 issue of Onlooker. Responding to Jayaprakash Narayan's assertion,

which he had already begun to deny by then, Usmani voiced that an unofficial

commission investigating if “vested interests in the Bohra community were running a

government within a government and have their own flag and armed forces” was

‘utterly preposterous’ and vehemently objected to any inference that the community

was disloyal to the nation and its values. 224

Along with Usmani’s reservations about the Commission, Asghar Ali Engineer wrote

yet another appeal, demanding the ‘democratic rights’ of the Dawoodi Bohras in

1977. What occurred in response to the publication of the article left the editors of the

Onlooker astonished. Starting with an initial telegram sent by the Principal and staff

of the Taheri High School in Bombay which noted “that we strongly protest that this

[Nathwani] commission should be banned forthwith”, the Onlooker received over 500

letters written by children on ruled exercise book paper – all in protest against the

223
Bombay Samachar as cited by Asghar Ali Engineer, The Bohras, Rev. Ed. (New Delhi: Vikas,
1993), p. 264; originally published in 1980. Also see Asghar Ali Engineer, ‘The Bohras Search for
Freedom’, Onlooker, 15/9/1977, p. 53.
224
Engineer, ‘The Bohras Search for Freedom’, op. cit.
104
establishing of the unofficial commission. By October 10, 1977, S.M. Joshi and

Justice Tarkunde had received more than 3,000 telegrams and almost 1,000 letters

asking for the Commission to be disbanded.

The letters from the community members, in their generality, are said to have

demanded three things. First, that the Indian Constitution had given everyone the right

to practise their own religion and, therefore, the Bohras would not tolerate any

questioning from any outsider. Second, the Reformists were seen as outsiders because

they questioned the authority of the Dai-al-mutlaq, and as a result had undermined

their dedication and loyalty to Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin. Third, the zakat

(taxes) paid to the High Priest were endorsed by the Quran and were paid willingly.

The writer of the article which documented the massive influx of letters in support of

Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin, however, seems to have been a Reformist

sympathiser, given the polemical manner in which any plea or statement by those

loyal to the Dai-al-mutlaq were read and represented as ‘written under coercion’.

Citing Justice V.M. Tarkunde, the writer noted, “most of the telegrams give the

impression that there is some kind of an organised campaign to pressurise members of

the Commission into giving up this inquiry. The priestly group within the community

seems to be the motive force behind such a campaign”. 225 Following the petition and

the letter campaigns, even as the Commission made arrangements to get underway,

Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin remained silent and shunned its proceedings all

throughout 1977. Occasional skirmishes broke out between Dawoodi Bohra

225
‘Should Bohra Affairs Be Investigated?’ Onlooker, 15/10/1977.
105
community members who would usually take out silent processions in response to

Reformist gatherings or when the Nathwani Commission held its proceedings. 226

With the powerful influence the Reformists had over the print media, they presented

letters from diverse secular intellectuals, activists, artists and academics. 227 In late

1977, the Times of India published an open letter of support issued by ten teachers of

Aligarh Muslim University hailing the Nathwani Commission's inquiry into Bohra

affairs. Referring to the practice of social boycott or baraat which had been declared

on the Reformists, the letter noted how such a practice was an “outmoded medieval

practice” to stifle the movement for asserting “human and democratic rights”. The

letter asserted that the enquiry should only be concerned with democratic rights and

should “have nothing to do with religious beliefs whatsoever”. 228 Meanwhile, minor

clashes between Dawoodi Bohra protestors and Reformist proceedings on occasions

such as the Nathwani Commission meetings and the Dawoodi Bohra World

Conference, which was an annual gathering of Reformists from across India,

continued. 229 By mid-1978, with protests by the Dawoodi Bohra community

becoming more frequent and intense, various Janata Party politicians like Ratnasingh

Rajda and the Chief Minister of Maharastra, Vasantdada Patil, came out to declare

that the “government had no intention of interfering in any religious affairs.” 230

226
‘Pro-Syedna Demostrators Caned’, Poona Herald, 4/11/1977; ‘Violence at Pune Reformists' Meet:
13 Chargesheeted’, Free Press, 5/11/1977; ‘Janata Secretary Held: Bohra Stir’, Indian Express,
5/11/1977; ‘Two Bohra Women Assaulted’, Times of India, 20/11/1977.
227
The feminist-intellectual, Ismat Chugtai, in a letter to the Editor, Times of India titled ‘Bohra
Affairs’ dated October 20, 1977 lauded the establishing of the Nathwani Commission: “The setting up
of a committee recently by the Citizens for Democracy to enquire into the alleged atrocities and
suppression of democratic rights must be welcomed by all right-thinking people. We denounce the
practice of social boycott and urge the Citizens for Democracy to go ahead with the inquiry. The Bohra
reformists are not against Syedna Saheb as a religious head of the community. They only desire socio-
economic reforms.”
228
‘Teachers of Aligarh Muslim University Hail Tarkunde Inquiry into Bohra Affairs’, Letter to the
Editor, Times of India, 17/12/1977.
229
‘Bohra Clash’, Indian Express, 27/12/1977.
230
‘92 Hurt in Bohras’ Stir Against Panel’, Times of India, 1/5/1978; ‘Riotous Bohras Caned’, Indian
Express, 1/5/1978.
106
With significant mass mobilisation of Dawoodi Bohras across India, especially in

Bombay, protesting against the Commission, the Janata Party that had risen to power

in the 1977 elections began rethinking the approach they had adopted. Morarji Desai

had remained aloof from the events ever since he was appointed Prime Minister,

except for one occasion in 1977 when S.M. Joshi briefed him on the need to establish

a Commission to look into human rights violations within the community.

Jayaprakash Narayan, the Janata Party patriarch who had led massive rallies against

Indira Gandhi under the banner of ‘Total Revolution’, had subsequently denied any

support or involvement in the Reformist campaign. With the Janata government

withdrawing its explicit acknowledgement of the Commission, the Reformists’

predicament had already begun showing signs of desperation by late 1978.

Similar to the ‘plight’ of the Reformist women, the print media was continuously

mobilised to publish the occasional ‘torture’ story so the movement would remain in

the public imagination. On September 28, 1978, the Mumbai-based English language

weekly magazine Blitz, which had remained sympathetic to the reformist cause,

reported the case of Mulla Taherally A. Lokhandwala, a Hindi teacher at the Taheri

High School in Mumbai. Mulla Taherally was said to have been assaulted by

‘supporters of the Mullaji’ for reading a copy of Blitz within the school premises. On

rushing to the Pydhoni police station and attempting to file a report, Mulla Taherally,

the article claims, “was bluntly told by the officer in charge that that he would not

interfere in the affairs of the school”. The article concludes with a plea: “how long

will the Government sit back and allow ‘religious tolerance’ when goondaism and

mental torture are inflicted by the alleged followers on a section of the community in

107
the name of religion?” 231 Likewise, in an article that Asghar Ali Engineer had written

a few days earlier, he petitioned:

Will our teachers and intellectuals not protest against such a shabby treatment being
meted out to a poor teacher just because he chose to act according to his conscience? Will
the Government of Maharashtra take note of this and take suitable action against the
erring school authorities since it gives substantial aid to the school? Prof. Varde, our
education minister, is a man of great integrity and conviction for social reforms. May I
appeal to him to initiate action against such inhuman practice being resorted to by the
school authorities? 232

In April 1979 when the Nathwani Commission published its ‘findings’, it inevitably

ended up reproducing the very predicaments the Reformists had been complaining

about since the early 1970s. The Report declared that “Baraat should be made illegal”

and even penalised as an offense; that the misaq (‘oath of allegiance’) should be

either limited to the Dai-al-mutlaq's directions over religious matters or done away

with altogether; and that all the Trusts of which Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin was

the sole trustee should be regulated by suitable legislation. 233 With the aid of a

published report that had seemingly ‘verified’ the Reformist ‘plight’, once again a

flurry of articles appeared in newspapers demanding that the Government pay heed to

the findings and initiate suitable legislation. 234 Ideas of secularism, the need to protect

it, flaunt it even, at the expense of the sensibilities of an entire Muslim community

became extremely overwhelming as the Reformists once again mobilised the media

against Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin. 235 Amidst inquisitions like ‘Should the

Syedna Have Secular Powers?’ in the Times of India, which inadvertently presented

the findings of the Nathwani Commission as indicative of obvious violations of

231
‘Mulla Hounds Teacher for Reading Blitz’, Blitz, 28/10/1978
232
Asghar Ali Engineer, ‘Will the Bohra High Priest End His Agony? A Teacher Persecuted’, Clarity,
23/10/1978.
233
Nathwani Commission Report; ‘Where Priest's Will is Law’, Indian Express, 16/4/1979; ‘Reformist
Bohras “mistreated”’, The Hindustan Times, 17/4/1979. Also see Jonah Blank, who engages with the
contents of the report in much detail. pp. 245–247.
234
‘Legislation Sought to Help Reformist Bohras’, Patriot, 17/4/1979; ‘Make Boycott of Rebel Bohras
Illegal, says panel’, The Times of India, 17/4/1979; ‘Darkness at Noon’, Free Press Journal, 22/4/1979.
235
Also see David Selbourne, An Eye to India: The Unmasking of a Tyranny (New York: Penguin,
1977).
108
‘human rights’ and India's secular ideals, the articles more often than not written by

Reformists or their sympathisers, concluded:

Considering the hardships suffered by members of the community who wish to free
themselves from the wide range of restrictions on secular activities, the move to curtail
the religious leadership's powers in non-religious affairs is amply justified. 236

Figure 4.2. Caricature that appeared in the print media after the publication of the Nathwani
Commission Report in 1979. Source: ‘Bohra Boss: India's Khomeni’, Onlooker, May 1–15, 1979.

236
Darryl D'Monte, ‘Should the Syedna Have Secular Powers? Looking at the Nathwani Commission's
findings on the Dawoodi Bohras’, Times of India, 6/5/1979. In stretching the polemics, for instance, in
an India Today article titled ‘Chronicle of Cruelty’, May 16–31, 1979, the writer it is noted wished to
remain “anonymous since he was advised to wear a ‘crash-helmet’ if he revealed his name”.
109
Figure 4.3. Caricature that appeared in the print media after the publication of the Nathwani
Commission Report in 1979. Source: ‘Dawoodi Bohras: Unrest in the Community’, Onlooker, March
7–21, 1981.

110
The Reformists' struggle had caught the imagination of the media to such an extent

that in response to the Multaqa of 1979 and the reforms, which Syedna Mohammad

Burhanuddin initiated, magazines such as the Onlooker even went to the extent of

engaging in outright polemics against the Bohra community and its clergy. Drawing

similarities with Ayatollah Khomeini and branding Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin

as ‘India's Khomeini’, the supposedly ‘secular’ media demonised the Dai-al-mutlaq

unthinkingly. From the caricatures that emerged of the Dai-al-mutlaq holding a whip,

suggesting a demand of compliance from his followers, to the cartoons depicting him

as taking hold of Bohra women and refusing them any freedoms or agency, the tone

of the Reformists and the ‘secular media’ became suggestive of what the neo-

conservative media, contemporarily, brands as the ‘Jihadist’ or ‘irrational Muslim’,

abiding almost unthinkingly to the mandates of an Islamic clergy which struggles to

cope with the complexities of modernity. For instance, about the re-imposition of

purdah in 1979, one article claimed:

Women without purdah, are not allowed to enter religious places like mausoleums,
mosques etc. In one instance a daughter accompanying her mother without wearing a
veil was disallowed from entering the mausoleum at Bhendi Bazaar. When her mother
insisted that her daughter had yet to reach puberty, a physical check was carried out,
perhaps inspired by the notorious incident at Heathrow Airport. 237

In response to the flurry of articles that had begun to appear, the Dawat finally

decided to speak with the Times of India. Tayebally A. Davoodbhoy, a lawyer based

in Mumbai and an official spokesman for the Saifi Foundation, a trust controlled by

Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin, vehemently dismissed the Nathwani Commission

findings. “The Bohras subscribe to a code of beliefs”, Davoodbhoy noted, “there is no

compulsion to remain one. There is a litmus test: either one must accept the authority

of the religious head or not. How else can one million people scattered all over the

globe be kept together?” Davoodbhoy maintained, “Islam prescribes a code for life in

237
‘Bohra Boss: India's Khomeini’, Onlooker, 1/5/1979.
111
its entirety. This covers the food you eat, births and burials, the relationship between

husband and wife. But the very fact that there are 40–50 subsects (comprising both

Shias and Sunnis) in Islam, shows that there are differences. What prevents the rebels

from leaving the fold?” The year 1979, it seems, marked a turning point in the

Dawat's patience with the Reformists. Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin, however,

remained silent and did not grant any press interviews, suggesting that the Dawoodi

Bohras had rejected the bona fides of the Nathwani Commission and the matter

needed to remain internal to the community. In that same 1979 interview,

Davoodbhoy acknowledged, “there is no longer any meeting ground between the

Bohras and the rebels”. 238

Summing Up

After the 1980s, the Reformist movement has effectively gone into decline and has

not engaged in any outright controversy like that of Udaipur in the 1970s. The lack of

overt conflict between the two camps, however, need not be assumed as an indication

of a softening of approaches between the two. In fact, Asghar Ali Enginner, who has

been the leading Reformist figure for over three decades, seems to have given up any

hope of reconciliation. 239 The Dawat, on the other hand, especially in light of the

success of the changes introduced in 1979, has extended the argument it held on to all

throughout the 20th century. Indicative of an odd resolution, years after his initial

press statements in response to the Nathwani Commission Report, Tayabally

238
Darryl D'Monte, ‘Should the Syedna Have Secular Powers? Looking at the Nathwani Commission's
findings on the Dawoodi Bohras’, Times of India, 6/5/1979.
239
By 1983 the reformist challenge had been subdued, although the flurry of articles and pleas
continued for the government to intervene and address the reformist ‘plight’. The Congress
administration continued to remain aloof even after Asghar Ali Engineer met with Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi in 1986. “Bohra Board meets Rajiv”, Poona Herald, 5/2/1986.
112
Davoodbhoy in a 1992 document reflected in a community pamphlet titled ‘Faith of

the Dawoodi Bohras’:

Neither materialism nor the heresies of modernism are allowed to weaken the spiritual
will. The Dai is the sentinel. He warns against passing intellectual fashions and
tempting fads. The Dawoodi Bohra believes in the complete authority of the Dai over
all areas of his life. The austere personality, discipline and administration of the Dai
keeps the believers animated, contented and on the straight path. Authority is
maintained, accepted and respected for centuries because of the legitimacy of the
creed. So the confidence and reverence of the followers is preserved, increased and
vitalized. Belief in the presence of the Dai in the pivotal role is the bedrock upon
which the structure of the entire community is built.

Davoodbhoy continued, reaffirming the community’s dedication for the pre-eminence

of Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin:

Dawat-e-Hadiyah for centuries, has applied the Fatimi philosophy to all the human
problems, approached them in a perceptive manner, blended them with the essentials of
the times so that the best in this world could be ensured hand in hand with eternal
emancipation which was the end purpose of human destiny and Allah's divine will. Al-
Dai-al-Mutlaq's spiritual mission and the efficacy of his administration is one of the
bonds that hold the community together as one entity. Al-Dai-al-Mutlaq enforces the
purity of the followers and preservation of the entity. He expounds and interprets the
law applicable to the faith which interpretation is final and binding. The management
and administration of all properties, institutions and affairs of the community wherever
situated is controlled and administered by al-Dai-al-Mutlaq or under his authority and
written permission and approval. Al-Dai-al-Mutlaq is the Sole Trustee of the property of
the community by virtue of his position as al-Dai-al-Mutlaq. 240

Spanning the ever-increasing multiplicity of worldviews in late-colonial and post-

Partition India, from the earliest of ‘reforms’ initiated by the 51st Dai-al-mutlaq,

Syedna Taher Saifuddin, and then by his successor, Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin,

it seems both had successfully bridged the gap between the impersonal and personal

modes of Islam by emphasising ‘universal love’ and loyalty to the Dai-al-mutlaq. The

very existence of the Reformists and their various ‘agendas’, led by Noman

Contractor and Asghar Ali Engineer, had benefited Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin

much more than the Dawat would like to publicly admit. While the Reformists sought

to take advantage of the post-colonial ‘secular’ state by harnessing the print media

240
Tayabally Davoodbhoy, Faith of the Dawoodi Bohra (Mumbai: Dawat-e-Hadiyah, Department of
Statistics and Information, pamphlet, 1992), p. 3.
113
and civil society institutions in an attempt to undermine the authority of the High

Priest, Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin responded by embracing secularism,

eschewing Islamic extremism and reasserting the ideals of self-reliance. The landmark

1979 Conference of Fatimi Knowledge (al-Multaqa al-Fatimi al-Ilmi) symbolised

these measures, which were aimed at achieving greater cohesion within the

community. In overall terms, the High Priest succeeded in re-invoking bonds of

culture, traditions and the past embodied in community institutions. In effect, he

addressed many of the issues raised by the Reformists, while never acknowledging

their locus standi.

This chapter has not only sought to document how the Reformists freely mobilised the

‘secular’ print media in the 1970s, but also what was simultaneously occurring within

the community. As the various community sources have highlighted, the Dawat,

unlike the Reformist claim of being representative of a particular ‘medieval’ and

‘unchanging’ authoritarian structure, was in fact changing and evolving to the

multiplicity of challenges that confronted it and were intensely committed to the

renewal of the community. From these historical developments, a comparatively well-

organised and socio-economically successful community has emerged in India and

overseas. The community may be described as thoroughly modernised, forward-

looking, and well integrated into (but as the following chapter highlights, identifiably

distinct from) its social environments that, ranging from the violent events in the

medieval history of the Fatimids and the numerous challenges of the 19th and 20th

centuries, appear not to have obstructed this development.

114
 Chapter 5

CONCLUSION

Between Community and Secularism

By the early 1990s, a distinct, though imperceptible, reconfiguration of Dawoodi

Bohra self-identity had taken place as the different waves of the Reformist challenge

had been decisively dealt with, first by Syedna Taher Saifuddin (1915–1965) and

later by his successor Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin (1965–present). Both Dai-al-

mutlaqs responded to the challenges based on the changing dynamics within the

community and the shifting contexts of the late colonial and post-colonial periods.

Through these debates and challenges, the ‘community’ as a sociohistorical category

then emerged as Janus-faced, neither traditional, nor modern, inhabiting both spheres

at once. Both Dai-al-mutlaqs evoked bonds of culture, tradition and the past, but

legitimised these dispositions in modern governmentalities as the previous chapters

sought to highlight. In retrospect, the 20th century marked a crucial epoch of

transition, as the community went about defining itself as deeply traditional and

religious, yet modern and willing to embrace ‘change’.

While this thesis has sought to historicise the role of the various agendas of ‘reform’

in the 20th century, due to space limitations it has not been able to adequately

consider yet another element which has shaped the necessity for change, i.e., the

transnationalisation of the community. The Dawoodi Bohras had moved to various

parts of the world, especially to East Africa, Ceylon and Malaya under British

patronage aligned to colonial trading interests from the 19th century and increasingly

from the 1980s to North America and Europe with younger generations seeking

115
professional careers. It may be recalled that Syedna Taher Saifuddin had succeeded

under colonial rule in consolidating the various communities spread across the Indian

Ocean. Likewise, Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin responded in the 1990s by

reinventing the political structure as a constellation of communities organised in

ever-widening circles. 241

Unlike the ideal of the Gandhian ‘village’ where each unit would eventually become

self-sufficient, the rhyzomic Dawoodi Bohra community structure operates almost as

a pyramid, with its apex structure sustained by the base. This effective but anomalous

apex came to be layered by a number of measure or identity markers initiated since

the landmark 1979 Conference of Fatimi Knowledge (al-Multaqa al-Fatimi al-Ilmi).

These ranged from prescribed dress codes, the issuance of certificates of orthopraxy,

standardisation of the pilgrimage experience and mosque architecture and Internet-

based websites that would be centred on devotion to the Dai-al-mutlaq, Syedna

Mohammad Burhanuddin. Whilst Jonah Blank has studied many of the measures

listed above in depth, many gaps remain, especially with reference to the adoption of

Fatimid architectural motifs at the newly built and restored community mosques

around the world. The community’s use of the Internet as a technology for social

241
As the writing of this thesis was nearing completion, a new study by Jonah Steinberg was published
on complex and intricate details of global Ismailism referring specifically to the Aga Khanis or Khojas,
the sister community of the Bohras. Whilst the introductory chapter of this thesis has documented how
both communities separated, both in terms of theological authority and leadership in 1094 AD, both the
Bohras and ‘Ismailis’ (a terms which, is commonly used to refer to the followers of the Aga Khan)
have designed and maintained very similar centralized structures across varied transnational contexts.
In this regard, Steinberg notes, “The organizational dynamics of the Ismaili community raise important
questions about the nature of citizenship and political identity at this moment in history. They present a
basic challenge to theoretical and popular understandings of the state, of globalization and of Islam.
They point to a transformation in the relationship between territory and allegiance, a fundamental shift
in the possibilities for sociopolitical organization. The Ismailis are widely scattered across the planet,
but their community’s institutional infrastructure is highly centralized and provides for subjects a vast
array of services, symbols and social spaces. …In this way, the complex of Ismaili forms, processes,
and structures seems to represent a new possibility for transnational social organization, for social
participation beyond the nation-state, for citizenship without territory”. Jonah Steinberg, Ismaili
Modern, Globalization and Identity in a Muslim Community, (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press), p. 1.
116
cohesion is also a relatively ignored field, as the accompanying description relating

to the Ashura celebrations of 2007 will highlight.

Perhaps we could begin this discussion with the contemporary Dawoodi Bohra

community structure, which may be defined in metaphoric terms as an oceanic circle

whose centre is filled with every Bohra ready to sacrifice for the community, with

the Dai-al-mutlaq ready to perish for the circles which are spread across the world.

The premise of such a structure is further layered by the various identity markers

spread across time and space, till at last the entire community becomes one life

composed of individuals. To adopt an analogy from Mahatma Gandhi, “the outer

most circumference of this circle [read: Dawoodi Bohra jamaats spread across the

world] would not possess the power to crush the inner circle [read: the centre of

Dawat located in Bombay] but would strengthen it and gain strength from it”. Such a

vision has animated the Dawoodi Bohra experiences of the 20th century, first during

British rule and later in post-colonial India, overall exercising a powerful mobilising

appeal as the previous chapters have shown.

With regard to the reform movement, the most distinct development one is able to

discern is that various Reformists did not fully envision how their demands would

figure within bourgeois civil society with which they identified and the modern state

they relied upon for supporting their reformist agenda. Beginning from Adamji

Peerbhai and his sons to Asghar Ali Engineer and Noman Contractor, it would be

problematic to see them as located outside the community or as anomalous figures

who stood completely apart from other Bohras who they more often than not labelled

as ‘slaves of the Syedna’. As such, despite the valiant and mostly well-meaning

117
attempts of the Reformists, they failed to come to terms with the imperatives of

organising sustained mass-mobilisations (something the Dawat succeeded in, time

and again) while coming to terms with the bourgeois, legal and political orders of

their time.

Both in terms of appeal and resources, the Dawat coped better than the Reformists by

rejecting and accepting the colonial and the later post-colonial state. Not shunning

the structures but also selectively accepting them, the Dawat and Syedna Mohammad

Burhanuddin reckoned with intrusions into community affairs, locating themselves at

the centre of modernising the Dawoodi Bohra self, but also mobilising the

community as an ‘intervention’ and steering it as a whole towards consolidation.

Recalling Syedi Najmuddin’s note about the Dawat policy of ‘apolitical quietism’,

the community would be a nation within a world of nations “without the burden of

managing physical geographical territories”. 242 The community as an expression of

collective life had undeniably become linked to the modern state. Rather than

wishing away the state, it insisted and subjugated it to its pressures. The only demand

the Dawat made from its followers was they embody loyalty to whichever state and

regime they resided under, but also uphold the Dawoodi Bohra ‘identity markers’

listed earlier. And as the following notes on the Dawat’s initiatives since the 1990s

and the observations of Ashura (2007) celebrations in Colombo, Sri Lanka highlight,

the Dawoodi Bohras not only continue to negotiate the modern state, but re-inscribe

it, representing an effort to create something new and authentic from the available

and perhaps even the exotic.

242
Syedi Najmuddin, 75 Momentous Years in Retrospect, p. 15.
118
Writing the Dawoodi Bohra Past

As the community increasingly became transnational from the early 1990s, one of

the new initiatives by the Dawat was the use of print publications, especially in the

English language, which sought to systematically present a civilisational narrative of

the community ranging over a millennia, and documenting the critical role played by

the present Dai-al-mutlaq, Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin, in reinvigorating these

traditions. 243 In 2001, Shaikh Mustafa Abdulhussein led an editorial team in putting

together a biography of the current Dai-al-mutlaq titled Al-Dai Al-Fatimi, Syedna

Mohammed Burhanuddin, An Illustrated Biography which had first been published

by the Al-Jamea-Tus-Saifiyah Trust, London in 2001 and then distributed under the

aegis of Oxford University Press. A first of its kind, especially in the English

medium, the pictorial book features critical turning points in the community’s

modern history such as the nas or ceremony of handing over of traditions from the

51st Dai-al-mutlaq Syedna Taher Saifuddin, to the current 52nd Dai-al-mutlaq Syedna

Mohammad Burhanuddin in 1934, to the reaffirmation of Al-Jamea-Tus-Saifiyah, the

Islamic university in Surat established by the 43rd Dai, Syedna AbdeAli Saifuddin, 244

in 1814 as the centre of learning and knowledge production in the Dawoodi Bohra

canon.

What makes the publication unique is that it not only lays out the major

developments after the 1970s in terms of the different ‘reforms’ initiated by the

243
The set of written communiqués that outline the Dai's personal message to the members of the
community along with the initiation of different reforms are titled Missal- e sharif which were issued
from the mid-1970s until the late 1980s. The Bohra specificities witnessed today such as dress code and
socioeconomic ethics may be located back to these key writings, which were originally published in
Lisanu l-Dawat, or ‘The language of the Da‘wat’, which is written in Arabic script but is derived from
Urdu, Gujarati, Persian and Arabic. For a discussion on Lisanu l-Dawat, see Blank, Mullahs on the
Mainframe, p. 143.
244
Abdulhussein, Al-Dai Al-Fatimi, p. 18.
119
current Dai, but also that it may be considered as one of the first attempts by the

Dawat to present its history in the English language. As such, the pictorial biography

becomes a crucial resource for the community in terms of reinforcing the Dai’s

authority transnationally, but is also indicative of forming a response to and

reclaiming of the public sphere from the stereotypical narratives of Dawat excesses

perpetuated by Reformists such as Asghar Ali Engineer. Similarly, an earlier and

no less significant contribution which suggests this new drive of the Dawat is

apparent when the same ‘Dawat affiliated author’ (to borrow a line from Jonah

Blank), Shaikh Mustafa Abdulhussein, contributed three brief entries on Bohra-

related topics to the Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Modern Islamic World which was

published in 1998. These entries seek to succinctly define whom the Bohras as a

‘community’ are, explain their historical and spiritual lineage, which is intimately

linked to the Fatimids in Egypt, and more importantly highlight the office and

achievements of the current Dai-al-mutlaq, Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin.

Most discerningly, it has been the Al-Jamea-Tus-Saifiyah which has undertaken the

role in publishing books on the Fatimid ancestry of the Dawoodi Bohras. Two recent

English publications include Al Aqmar: A Living Testimony to the Fatemieen and Al

Juyushi: A Vision of the Fatemiyeen, both authored by Jafar us Sadiq Mufaddal

Saifuddin, a grandson of the current Dai, Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin. Drawing

on a range of sources, from medieval Fatimid manuscripts contained at the Al-

Jamea-Tus-Saifiyah libraries to sermons of the Dai-al-mutlaq, the impressive study,

originally written in Arabic, goes on to note that the masjid complex of al Jame' al

Juyushi was built by Amir al Juyush, Badr al Jamali, in the year 1085 AD. 245 Perched

245
Saifuddin, Al Juyushi, p. 14.
120
on the edge of the Muqattam hills overlooking the city of al Qahera (Cairo), the

structure had almost been ruined due to centuries of neglect. A massive restoration

project was undertaken under Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin’s leadership during

the 1980s and it reached completion in 1995. With the restoration work successfully

carried out, Al Juyushi became the architectural and symbolic blue-print for other

Bohra mosques and mausoleums that were to be built in India and elsewhere:

This leadership transferred to successive Doat [referring to the unbroken chain of

succession from the Dais of Yemen to their Indian counterparts] and during the era of
the 51st and 52nd Dai al Mutlaq, father and son both initiated a revolution in the transfer
and replication of Fatemi art and architecture, to reflect the Fatemi legacy that they had
inherited from their predecessors. 246

Even prior to the Al Juyush restoration, one of the earliest architectural projects to

adapt Fatemi architecture in India was the Raudat Tahera, the mausoleum of the 51st

Dai, Syedna Taher Saifuddin, which is located in Bhindi Bazaar, Mumbai.

Construction began in 1965 after the Dai's passing and was completed 11 years later.

According to Shaikh Mustafa Abdulhussein, “it was the first mausoleum in India to

lavishly imbibe Fatimi design principles, heralding a new age in building activity”. 247

Around the same period in the early 1960s, the 17th century mausoleum of the 32nd

Dai executed by Aurangzeb, Syedna Kutbuddin Shahid, and its surrounding

buildings were also restored with a hybrid design which sought to conserve the

original Mughal-style architecture but also actively “infuse the freshness of Fatemi

features”. 248 The development of such a hybrid architectural method evolved further

into the different mosque-building initiatives, which were undertaken by Bohras

around the world. 249

246
Ibid., p. 148.
247
Abdulhussein, Al-Dai Al-Fatimi, op. cit., p. 55.
248
Ibid., p. 58. Also see Saifuddin, Al Juyushi, p. 149–51 which details the use of different Fatimid
architectural forms in the Raudat Tahera.
249
The Bohra-led restoration projects in Old Cairo have not been free of controversy. Paula Sanders,
the only scholar to have studied the restoration projects in detail, dedicates an entire chapter to the
controversy, which erupted in the 1990s, when architectural conservationists raised concerns. Sanders
121
Since taking office in 1965, the current Dai-al-mutlaq has built 140 new mosques

across the world with about 90 new projects under construction to accommodate an

increase in community numbers and establish mosques and community centres in the

West where more and more Bohras are living. 250 One of the first mosques to be built

in the West was the al-Masjid al-Sayafi in Toronto, Canada that was completed in

1990. The al-Masjid al-Sayfi in Dallas, Texas which became a reality in 1998 won

the 1999 Texas Society of Architects Design Award. In Southeast Asia, the al-Masjid

al-Burhani in Klang, Malaysia was completed in 1997.

It may be posited that the diasporic Dawoodi Bohra negotiation of identity,

symbolised through its architectural forms, lies between what could be referred to as

a pre-modern transnational tradition and the spatial politics of the nation state.

Architecture attempts to evoke and recreate an almost ‘ahistorical resilience’ of faith

and belonging, and at the same time serves as a reminder that no analysis is complete

without understanding how Bohras living in different parts of the world are subject to

and negotiate different inequalities and dynamics related to class and race as the

following discussion highlights.

notes, “the preservation community’s condemnation of Bohra restoration efforts is founded upon the
internationally accepted standards of preservation as indicated in the Venice Charter”. For Sanders,
however, the debate is not purely about architectural preservation or features, but “the collision of two
indigenised colonial traditions – one Indian, one Egyptian – in Islamic Cairo. Both are the products of
colonialism, but they emerge out of distinct colonial experiences with different histories and
trajectories”. Overall, Sanders notes that after the Al Juyush restoration was complete, the Anglophone
The Egyptian Gazette ran an appreciative article and editorial commending the transformation of the
“the saddest building” on the street, which had once been the major thoroughfare of Fatimid Cairo. The
Gazette concluded, “No one who saw the mosque before the Bohara [sic] group began its task would
deny the improvement. Not only had the mosque been dilapidated for centuries but also the area in
front of it had been the site of a large onion and garlic market. The Bohara sect did not go to Unesco
for financial aid, or to their national government. This self help project would not be lost on well-to-do
Muslims closer to home.” See Paula Sanders, Creating Medieval Cairo, Empire, Religion, and
Architectural Preservation in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Cairo: The American University in Cairo
Press, 2008), pp. 115–126.
250
It needs to be noted that Mustafa Abdulhussein was writing in 2001. Newer masjids and
mausoleums have been subsequently launched and completed. A good example is the completion of
the masjid in the United States in Fremont, California (metropolitan San Francisco) in August 2005.
122
The seventh Dawoodi Bohra mosque to be opened in the United States of America

was the Anjuman-e-Ezzi in Boston, Massachusetts, which was inaugurated in August

2004 with about 5,000 Dawoodi Bohras attending from all over the world to catch a

glimpse of the Dai as he officiated over the opening ceremonies. 251 However, before

the the North Billerica property where the mosque is located was procured, the local

Dawoodi Bohra community had been meeting at a markaz at the First Parish

Unitarian Universalist Church in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. In the late 1990s, as a

series of mosque projects were being launched across the United States and Canada,

wealthy members of the American Dawoodi Bohra community approached the Dai-

al-mutlaq, expressing an interest in initiating and funding mosque projects both in

Massachusetts and New Jersey. Upon approval, the new mosque complexes did not

merely contain a prayer area, but also spaces dedicated to educational or madrasa

activities for the young, social spaces such as a jamaatkhana and even a housing

development within the vicinity of the mosque. 252 Like most migrant communities,

South Asian mohalla-style landscapes were being mirrored in the architectural, social

and spatial organisation of the Bohra diaspora with a steady recognition of the newer

cultural setting the community found itself in. As the Pluralism Project, an initiative

by Harvard University to document the changing religious landscape of the United

States, notes:

In late 2000 the community found a plot of rural land to purchase in North Billerica and
held a groundbreaking ceremony in July of 2001. On September 12, 2001, the application
to buy the property was addressed in a town hall meeting and, despite requests by other
religious communities for the plot, the Masjid received strong support from the council,
local residents, and soon to be neighbors of the Islamic center. The building went up
extremely quickly but construction was slowed by customs procedures for the importation

251
The Pluralism Project at Harvard University, ‘ANJUMAN-E-EZZI (Boston) (2009)’, Website
accessed on January 20, 2010, http://www.pluralism.org/research/profiles/display.php?profile=74769
252
The Pluralism Project, op. cit.
123
 of architectural and decorative pieces from India and Egypt, extending the project into
2004. 253

Most pertinent, then, is the question of the hybrid culture of post-colonial

transnationality itself. Would it even be possible to contend and recast the category

of ‘Dawoodi Bohra’ as a diasporic category centred on the role of Dai-al-mutlaq?

This category affirms the centrality of the Dai-al-mutlaq by maintaining an affinity to

symbolic markers, but also re-imagines newer contexts attentive to localised

subjections. 254 Identities emerge as attached to particular places by simultaneously

conflating and collapsing the specific involvement of the diasporic individual and

community in a system of hierarchically organised spaces. As such, the transnational

Dawoodi Bohra public sphere, to borrow from Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson,

emerges:

In the pulverized space of postmodernity, space has not become irrelevant: it has become
reterritorialized in a way that does not conform to the experience of space that characterized the era of
high modernity. It is this that forces us to reconceptualize fundamentally the politics of community,
solidarity, identity and cultural difference. 255

Such a notion of transnationalism, in the Dawoodi Bohra case, becomes reconfigured

into the idea of a single imagined community and their relationship vis-à-vis

253
John Eade, ‘Nationalism, Community, and the Islamization of Space in London’ in Barbara
Metcalf (ed.) Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1996), p. 227.
254
From the relatively conducive atmosphere for mosque building in North America, John Eade in his
article titled ‘The Islamization of Space in London’ documents the Bohra experience of building a
mosque complex, first in Boston Manor, a neighbourhood close to Old Southall in London and then
the subsequent decision to relocate the development to Northolt, a place several miles north of
Southall, after protests by the local ‘white’ community. According to Eade, the space in Boston Manor
acquired by the Bohra community in the early 1980s was a former Jewish youth club. This acquisition
triggered off “a series of events that exposed the racist nature of some white residents’ opposition to
Muslim centres”. At first the Conservative and Labour officials agreed to the use of the space by the
Dawoodi Bohras. However, as protests and complaints by the local community continued to increase,
the new Labour government in 1986 offered to buy the Boston Manor site in exchange for a more
‘appropriate’ location. The Northolt Masjid was completed in 1998 after nine years of bureaucratic
and sociocultural challenges. As one of the community websites notes: “it stands testimony to the
resilience of the Dawoodi Bohra faith regardless of environment, and it demonstrates the Bohra
communities attachment to our new land of abode”. See Mark Crinson, ‘The Mosque and the
Metropolis’ in Jill Beaulieu and Mary Roberts (eds.) Orientalism's Interlocutors: Painting,
Architecture, Photography (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), p. 92 and Eade, ‘Nationalism,
Community, and the Islamization of Space’, pp. 227-9.
255
Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, ‘‘Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity and the Politics of
Difference’, Cultural Anthropology, 7, 1 (1992), p. 9.
124
imagined places through architecture and the spiritual authority of the Dai-al-mutlaq.

In this reconfiguration, the native land has disappeared to the play of how religious

longing becomes displaced to other places and is then perpetuated in simulacrum in

the love of the Dai-al-mutlaq. Only love of the Dai-al-mutlaq could transcend the

ever-increasing hierarchical and physical distance between a devout Bohra and an

ever-mobile Dai. 256 Distinctions between ‘core’ and ‘periphery’, ‘here’ and ‘there’,

‘foreign’ and ‘domestic’ become blurred, only to be reaffirmed at the same time. The

enterprise of propagating Bohra-ness qua Bohra-ness becomes, in the contemporary

context, a very modern phenomenon. Rather than purely relying on members of the

community coming to the Dai-al-mutlaq in Bombay, for instance, immediately

identifiable architecture and readily accessible print media has bolstered and

preserved the community as an institution with unprecedented ‘imaginary’

coherence.

Transnational Convergence: Ashura Celebrations in Colombo, Sri Lanka (1428H)

Unarguably, the most important ritual in the Dawoodi Bohra calendar is the

commemoration of Ashura, which literally translated means the ten days of

Muharram. When historicised, the event marks a defining moment in the Shia

weltanschauung, the date on which Imam Hussain and seventy-two of his relatives

and companions were slaughtered on the fields of Karbala in the year 61H/680AD. 257

256
Arthur Buehler makes a similar point about the Sufi Shaykh Jama'at Ali, who took advantage of the
geographical mobility provided by the modern Indian rail network and print media to redefine the role
of the Sufi pir in the early 20th century. See Buehler, ‘Current of Sufism in Nineteenth and Twentieth
Century Indo-Pakistan’.
257
In terms of the general study of the Shia of the sub-continent, which pertain specifically to the
importance of Muharram in the Shia weltanschauung, a few studies need to be mentioned. The
pioneer is definitely David Pinault who has published rigorously on the practice of Muharram by
different Shia groups especially from Ladakh, Hyderabad and Darjeeling. Nadeem Hasnain, Sheikh
Abrar Husain and Richard Wolf have all studied various ritualistic aspects of Muharram and noted
how the event evolved historically over time and could not be essentialised as an event
125
The month of Muharram also signifies the start of the new year and, even though the

first of Muharram is celebrated with a hefty feast in each Dawoodi Bohra home, the

following days are spent in overwhelming grief over the martyrdom of Imam

Hussain. As David Pinault characterises it, “Ashura is an opportunity for Shi’a to

atone for all the moral failings of the world—their own, those of their ancestors and

those of ‘mankind’ in general”. 258

More so than at any other time of the year, Muharram provides an opportunity for

Dawoodi Bohras to develop and express a self-conscious ‘transnational’ solidarity.

Each year, the Dai-al-mutlaq, Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin, personally leads the

Ashura in a different city with thousands of Bohras flying in from various parts of

the world to participate in the waaz (a formal ceremony officiated over by the Dai).

Over the past fifteen years, the Dai has chosen cities as far and varied as Mombasa,

Colombo, Nairobi, Houston and Surat, implicitly reflecting how the community has

spread transnationally, especially over the past two decades. Most pertinently, since

the site of each year’s Ashura service is kept secret until only a few weeks before

Muharram, most jamaats find themselves in a constant state of readiness to host the

Syedna and other Bohras from around the world. As such, Muharram – the ‘event’ –

becomes a commemoration where old histories are renewed and preserved as

timeless (read the ‘Martyrdom of Hussain’), but also each new cityscape becomes a

terrain where the Bohra community’s history is re-inscribed in its willing embrace of

commemorated by the Shias only. Jim Masselos in ‘Change and Custom in the Format of the Bombay
Mohurrum during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’ notes that the Bohras figured in the
Bombay landscape and their practice of Muharram included ‘bloody’ matam, which made them
notorious, although much of it happened in their ‘own’ mosques in various localities across Bombay
such as Bhindi Bazaar. Pinault, The Shiites, p. 106.
258
Ibid.
126
‘transnationalism’. In the context of this paper, Robin Cohen’s observation seems

most pertinent:

Transnational bonds no longer have to be cemented by migration or by exclusive territorial claims. In

the age of cyberspace, a diaspora can, to some degree, be held together or re-created through the mind,
through cultural artefacts and through a shared imagination. 259

As such, this multitudinous convergence of Bohras raises many complex questions:

from notions of how bodies and knowledge transfer and produce themselves across

religious, political and cultural spaces (or ‘scapes’ as Appadurai conceptualises it) in

the late-modern context, to the provisional act of readiness which each local jamaat

undertakes in terms of hosting Bohras from all over the world. Both of the above

concerns, it should be asserted, are interrelated and only raise more questions of how

such small, yet mobile communities, preserve and perpetuate a sense of commonness

and belonging amidst scholarly assertions of ‘fragmenting’ globalised identities. 260

In this section, however, I focus primarily on one operational element of Muharram,

i.e., how the Bohras use modern communications technology not merely to organise

but also to create a community history during and after the event of Muharram. In the

ensuing paragraphs, I attempt to unravel this ‘transnational’ event as a site where

identities are negotiated time and time again by analysing two contemporary sources,

which have documented the Ashura of 1428H/2007AD in Colombo, Sri Lanka. At

the outset, however, I would like to note that any attempt to analyse these sources in

259
Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (London: UCL Press, 1997), p. 35.
260
My aim here is not to counter dominant scholarly assertions, especially within Cultural Studies,
where considerable debates have raged about how transnational identities are marked by dual or
multiple identifications. For instance, see Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch and Christina Szanton
Blanc, ‘Transnationalism: a new analytical framework for understanding migration’, in Nina Glick
Schiller, Linda Basch and Christina Szanton Blanc (eds), Towards a Transnational Perspective on
Migration (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1992), pp. 1-24. What I am trying to assert
here is that, given how this condition of transnationalism is comprised of ‘ever-changing
representations’, they inadvertently provide an ‘imaginary coherence’ for a set of identities which are
in a constant state of flux across political and cultural borders. See Stuart Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and
Diaspora’ in Jonathan Rutherford (ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (London: Lawrence
and Wishart, 1990), pp. 222-37.
127
depth, given space restrictions, would not only be vainly ambitious, but would also

be futile.

A Token of Remembrance: Ashura 1428/2007 261

The DVD compilation of the Dai’s coming to Colombo in 2007 documents the

Syedna’s visit from the moment of landing at Bandaranaike International Airport to

the various activities he attended to and presided over till his final departure on May

15, 2007. The main purpose of the DVD it seems was to document the cultural

activities of the Ashura from the daily waaz sessions to the official nikah ceremonies

that are held under the auspices of the Dai after the official commemoration of

Ashura had ended. Thereafter, this DVD was disseminated as a ‘token of

remembrance’ to almost every Dawoodi Bohra home, not just in Colombo but also

across the world. As such the visual content of the video, from fleeting

representations of devout Bohras attending daily waaz sessions to images of the

Syedna meeting the President, ministers and other dignitaries of Sri Lanka, becomes

a critical tool in the community’s cultural production. This flow of cultural media

images alludes to what Gayatri Spivak describes as the “discourse of cultural

specificity and difference, packaged for transnational consumption” particularly

thorough the medium of “microelectronic transnationalism”. 262

The film depicts children of the community carrying the Sri Lankan flag, while

others carry placards reading ‘Ya-Ali’, ‘Ya-Hussain’ and ‘Long Live Dr Syedna

Mohammed Burhanuddin’ in a procession to celebrate the arrival of the Dai in

Colombo, creating the greatest ambivalences in terms of how one should understand
261
Ashara Mubaraka 1428H (Colombo, Sri Lanka), DVD (Colombo: Dawat-e-Hadiyah Trust, 2007).
262
Gayatri Spivak ‘Who Claims Alterity?’ in Barbara Kruger and Phil Mariani (eds.), Remaking
History (Seattle: Bay, 1989), p.276.
128
the Bohras, because, as Appadurai and Breckenridge comment, “in the electronic

media in particular, the politics of desire and imagination are always in contestation

with the politics of heritage and nostalgia”. 263 As such the viewing potential of the

DVD and every individual Bohra’s feeling of a sense of ‘Bohra-ness’ and belonging

is not restricted to just those who were able to attend Ashura in Colombo, but is

extended (i.e., electronically) even to those who were unable to attend. In this way,

the transnationalisation of the community that the Bohra clergy was concerned about

two decades ago seems to have been displaced into a transnational network that is

consolidated with the aid of media technologies that implicitly emphasise allegiance

to specific countries of residence, but also seeks to reinforce loyalty to the Dai’s

spiritual leadership and authority through visual narratives and discourse.

Electronic ‘Pastiche’: www.malumaat.com

This transnational network is further consolidated with the use of the Internet.

Although the Dawat endorses only two websites as presenting the ‘official’ stance on

community matters, namely, www.mumineen.org and www.malumaat.com, I have

chosen to focus only on the latter’s coverage of the 2007 Ashura commemorations in

Colombo. 264 The first story the reader encounters once she/he has entered the

‘archives’ page of www.malumaat.com (which is systematically sorted by year and

month) is a headline: Aqa Maula TUS meets with Sri Lankan President Mahinda

Rajapaksa at Temple Trees, followed by three to four photographs of the meeting.

Thereafter, the reader discovers ten links, each leading to more photographs of the

daily waaz proceedings, with a special section for the Ashura day proceedings,

263
Arjun Appadurai and Carol Beckenridge, ‘On Moving Targets’, Public Culture, 2 (1989), p. iii.
264
Malumaat.com. ‘Ashara Mubaraka 1428: Colombo, Sri Lanka’, Malumaat.com,
http://malumaat.com/akhbar1428/shahar/moharram.html (accessed October 1, 2007). In what is to
follow, all the observations are based on the above webpage.
129
containing not just images of the Dai and multitudes of Bohras, but also short audio-

visual clips of various murashiyas (hymns) and munajaats (poetry) on the martyrdom

of Hussain.

The above observation may not be unique in terms of various religious and cultural

communities mobilising across the Internet. But what is most discerning is how the

Bohra experience of ‘virtuality’ is driven in terms of a layout, which lacks ‘textual

narrative’ except for short captions provided alongside the hundreds of photographs

that document Ashura 2007. Addressed through their reflection of a larger practice

within the dominant discourse of Bohra identity formation, which centres on the

martyrdom of Hussain, the lack of accompanying textual narrative alludes to how the

ten days of Muharram and Ashura unfold through a steady stream of images which at

once bring together the activities of the Dai-al-mutlaq with the larger narrative of

Imam Hussain’s martyrdom that each and every Bohra seeks to identify with. 265

As a result, Imam Hussain’s martyrdom is re-produced as an unspoken assumption

and as a lived reality of the Dai and every Bohra. This is constantly re-worked every

year, with every new city and every new photograph. As the scape may register a

shift, Hussain’s martyrdom (channelled through the Dai), however, remains the basic

conceptual social reality, which is constantly invoked to encourage a sense of

belonging to a community in five continents. Such a constant cycle of ‘re-

signification’ is located within the photographic narratives as they are ‘uploaded’ and

made available to Bohras across the world.

265
Even beyond the commemoration of Ashura, for instance, any majlis (in Bohra terminology, any
gathering less formal than a waaz) ends with the narration of Hussain’s maryrdom– be it a marriage
ceremony or the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed or urus of one of the previous fifty-one Dais.

130
This almost ‘artistic pastiche’ in representing religiosity raises more questions than

this thesis can seek to answer. However, what is pertinent is how the Internet as a

medium becomes crucial for the late-modern institutional framework instituted by

Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin. Firstly, as the various jamaats remain

transnationally spread, they are still connected through the World Wide Web; and

secondly, the external boundaries of the network are open such that new nodes and

new links can always be added as Bohras continue to migrate to different parts of the

world. Given such an incremental and ‘fluid’ accessibility, the Bohras seem to have

managed to harness the potential of new media technologies in fostering religious

membership and belonging by articulating discourses and organising movements (in

this case, of Ashura) aimed at invoking and then preserving a global religious

consciousness as a crucial element of their identity mix.

The central issue is that a reconfiguration or reconceptualisation has taken place over

the 20th century. With the Reformist voices successfully quelled, the community has

consolidated itself across diverse contexts. For transnational convergences such as

Ashura, with every new cityscape that witnesses the convergence of Bohras, what

had been an annual mourning of the martyrdom of Hussain and mediation between

heaven and earth around a largely immobile spiritual centre, has now become a

ritualistic deedar (‘witnessing’). Every individual seeker is blessed with seeing and

being seen by the Dai-al-mutlaq, both in physical and virtual manners, enacting the

ever-contracting hierarchical distance between the Dai-al-mutlaq and the seeking

Bohra. This also reinforces the understanding that with the love for the Dai,

everything else, including salvation, follows. The deedar of the Dai is then cast into

131
and draws upon the religious networks that sustain the convergence of Muharram

both in material and electronic forms. Dedicated websites enable the proliferation of

real-time images of the Dai's movements, and while this may appear to suggest a

form of democratisation or depersonalisation that often is equated with scripturalism

or access to texts (in this case, the Internet), we may posit that each and every Bohra

who witnesses the steady flow of images is plugged into and participates in a process

of sustaining the community which is centred on devotion to the ‘intercessionary

saint’ by emphasising love to the Dai, or as Arthur Buehler notes in the case of the

20th century Punjabi Sufi pir Jama't Ali, “The goal itself became love”. 266

266
Buehler, ‘Currents of Sufism in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Indo-Pakistan’, p. 300.
132
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