From the Miracle-performer to Reformer: Articulating Authority among the Da’udi Bohras of South Asia, 1803-1921

"New Directions” Submission

“What makes a leader in Islam?” is a much debated, and yet inadequately answered question in contemporary scholarship on Islam and Islamic authority. The normative understanding dictates that the religious authority is either based on knowledge (‘ilm) of the sacred texts or agnatic or spiritual descent from Prophet Muhammad (d. 632). Such approaches see the notion of authority exclusively through Arab- and Arabic-centric lenses. However, Islam extends well beyond the Arabian peninsula. My paper underscores the complex and creative ways in which Muslim leadership in a non-Arab context bolsters its power in modern times. Simultaneously, it will contribute to the merging scholarship that foregrounds the role of merchants and petty traders in shaping Islam in the Indian Ocean world, often shadowed by the scholarship that exclusively focuses on the clerics, monarchs, and piety-minded Sufi groups to understand Islamic authority.

In focus are the Da’udi Bohras, a close-knit community of Shi‘i Isma‘ili Muslim merchants led by a lineage of holy men called da‘i al-mutlaq (or da‘i, the summoner). In response to colonial modernity, the Indic caste of Bohras (Gujarati, traders) became a global Isma‘ili community, claiming to be the true heir to the Fatimid-Isma‘ili heritage. This redefinition has also seen the representation of the da‘i shifting from a miracle-performing “perfect-guide” (murshid-i kamil) to a scholarly figure, carefully modeled after the Fatimid da‘i, Mu‘ayyad Shirazi (d. 1078). Such articulations have significant implications for the post-colonial identity of the Bohras and Muslim communities in South Asia. Primarily based on Arabic textual sources written in the Fatimid era (909-1171), contemporary scholarship has lent academic legitimacy to these claims by showing a legal, organizational, ritual, and literary continuity (Fyzee 1961, Misra 1963, Hamdani 1976, Blank 2001, Akkerman 2022). By contrast, my scholarship historicizes such claims and investigates the conditions for such a discourse to have emerged. Using untapped textual sources in South Asian languages—including Gujarati, Urdu, and Lisan al da‘wa, i.e., Arabicized Gujarati, a community-specific language—and colonial archives—such as ethnographies, secret intelligence reports, and court judgments—I have traced how colonial knowledge production reshaped the Bohras’ self-perception, triggering a series of reforms and legal battles that led to realigning the community’s past to a novel source of legitimacy: Fatimid-Isma‘ilism. However, as my research reveals, underneath the Fatimid overlay, the Da’udi leadership continues to tap into the conventional sources of legitimacy—such as claiming a Rajput (martial) lineage and employing idioms and expressions of authority from the royal/Sufi courts—to reinforce its authority.

My research advances our knowledge in three significant ways. Firstly, my paper sheds light on the contrasting views presented by orientalists writing about the Bohras during the first half of the nineteenth century, compared to those in the latter half. While the former sensationalized the Bohras as a forgotten branch of the Persian Nizari Isma‘ilis, ill-famed as the “assassins” among Europeans, the latter—along with the reform-minded Bohras—traced the Egyptian Mustalian Isma‘ili genealogy, with a da‘i as the epitome of hidden knowledge (batini ‘ilm). Secondly, a critical moment of shift in the community’s self-perception was the arrival of the ‘Aga Khan in India in the 1840s. As the colonial court judgment declared the ‘Aga as the rightful manifested imam of the Nizari Isma‘ilis, claimed to be the manifested (hadir) imam not only of the Khojas but of all Isma‘ilis, including the Bohras, jeopardizing the existence of the office of the da‘i. While the response of the Satpanthi Khojas has been explored in academic writings (Shodhan 2001, Green 2011, Purohit 2012), my paper analyzes the Bohra response to these challenges. Thirdly, my paper shows that despite claiming neutrality in matters of religion, the colonial court lent legal legitimacy to the orientalist reinterpretation of the past of the Bohra community, thereby ultimately redefining the nature of the da‘i’s authority and altering the power relations within the community.

             Despite facing a range of challenges both within inside and outside of the community, the da‘i bolstered his authority through a combination of conventional and unconventional methods. This includes seeking recourse to the modern court of law, asserting his power by excommunicating reformers, and making novel claims to be the true heir to the Fatimid-Isma‘ili heritage. For the Bohras, the nineteenth century was a period of anxious contemplation of the nature of religion, rewriting the community’s past, and reconfiguring their identity.