Khojas of Hyderabad, an insight in contemporar y Nizari Isma’ili interreligious realities

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to explore the way in which a local Nizari Isma’ili community, the Khojas of Hyderabad, translate the articulated ideals of their spiritual leader the Aga Khan on topics of religious identity and interreligious interaction into their daily contexts. By understanding the local community not as a monolithic minority, but rather as a minority consisting of various social layers, data gathered from the Khoja community about topics of memory, normative values and practices, and geographical contextualization are shown to vary among the community members. These differences, in turn, influence the way these community members translate the Aga Khan’s ideals into the local context.