David Strohl, University of Virginia – Dissertation to focus on Mumbai’s Ismaili Khoja community

During the 2007-2008 year I conducted fieldwork for my dissertation in Mumbai (Bombay), India. My dissertation focuses on Mumbai’s Ismaili Khoja community, a largely prosperous community of merchants who follow the Ismaili branch of Shi‘a Islam. The Khojas are uniquely positioned in Mumbai, because on the one hand, as Muslims they are the subjects of discourses that demonize all Muslims as anti-national. On the other hand, as members of an Ismaili minority within the already minority Muslim population in India, they are subject to “reformist” discourses that question their commitment to Islam. I examine how Khojas negotiate these discourses by encouraging social practices that “represent the self” in ways that obscure controversial information or reveal facets of their social life that demonstrates their commitment to Islamic principles and to the values of the nation-state.

http://www.virginia.edu/mesa/faculty_south_strohl.html