Religious Citizenship: the Case of the globalised Khoja 27 Religious Citizenship: The Case of the Globalised Khoja Iqbal S. Akhtar Department of Religious Studies/Department of Politics and International Relations Florida International University, Florida Abstract The African Khōjā are an Indic Muslim caste, which began migrating from Sindh and Gujarat to East Africa in the late 18th century. During the 19th and 20th centuries, their economic success in an institutionally underdeveloped region coupled with a strong religious impetus allowed them to build communal municipal institutions throughout the region that both mimicked and replaced the absent state. The insecurity of postcolonial East Africa, such as the 1964 revolution in Zanzibar and the 1972 Ugandan Asian exodus, forced the Khōjā to further expand their bureaucratic apparatus towards foreign policy- migration to Western Europe and North America and requisite institutionalization. In the 21st century, the Khōjā coordinate these communal networks from North America and Western Europe to Asia and Africa towards a religious- based economic development in emerging economies. Their primary identity is religious, defined from within and outwith, using the mechanisms of globalization to further communal aims internationally within a framework of religious nationalism insensible to state nationalism. Key Words: The Khōjā, Religious citizenship, Islam, Madagascar, Diaspora, Identity, Imagined Community Résumé Le Khoja africaine sont une caste musulmane Indic, qui a commencé la migration de Sindh et du Gujarat Afrique de l’Est à la fin du 18ème siècle. Au cours des 19e et 20e siècles, leur succès économique dans une région sous-développée sur le plan institutionnel couplé avec une forte impulsion religieuse leur a permis de construire des institutions municipales communales toute la région imité C’est Bothan et substitué à l’Etat absent. L’insécurité de l’Afrique post- coloniale de l’Est, tels que la révolution de 1964 à Zanzibar et 1972 ougandais asiatique exode, a forcé le Khoja à élargir leur appareil bureaucratique de la politique de la migration étrangère à l’Europe occidentale et l’Amérique du Nord et l’institutionnalisation nécessaire. Au 21e siècle, la Khoja coordonner Ces réseaux communautaires d’Amérique du Nord et en Europe occidentale à l’Asie et de l’Afrique vers un développement économique basé sur la religion dans les économies émergentes. Leur identité première est religieuse, définie à partir de l’intérieur et sont sortis, en utilisant les mécanismes de la mondialisation à d’autres objectifs communautaires l’échelle internationale dans le cadre de nationalisme religieux Insensible aux nationalisme d’Etat. 28 AfricAn SociologicAl review vol 18 1 2014 Mots clés: Le Khoja, citoyenneté Religieuse, l’islam, Madagascar, la diaspora, identité, communauté Imaginé Introduction The Khōjā are an Indic Muslim merchant caste whose early modern origins lie in geographic expanse stretching from Sindh to Gujarat. Permanent migration from India to parts of East Africa has been estimated as early as the 12th century, such as in the case of Madagascar. (Campbell, 2008, p. 48) This study is focused on the contemporary community which has its origins beginning in the late 18th century. Until the mid- 19th century, the Khōjā religion was caste specific (khōjāpanth) which employed regional Indic practices and rituals that integrated eclectic Muslim theologies. The mid-19th century was witness to a fundamental transformation in Khōjā religion and caste identity with the arrival of Mahomed Hoosein Hoosanee to the province of Kacch in 1900 V.S. [1844 C.E.] (Nānjiānī, 1892, p. 251). In Bombay, he pursued a series of legal cases to acquire the communal property of the Khōjā caste through the claim of ̣ being their ‘Imam’. In 1866 Aga Khan case (Daya Mahomed, et. al. v. Mahomed Hoosein Hoosanee, et. al.), also known as the ‘The Khojah Case’, was argued in the High Court of Bombay between the elders of the Khōjā caste and supporters of this Persian exile known also as the ‘Aga Khan’; at stake was access to the caste’s extensive trading networks and control over its considerable financial resources. In essence, the plaintiffs argued that Hoosanee’s claim to be the exiled Imam of the Khōjā caste was spurious. Eventually, the case was decided for the defendant, the results of which ultimately fractured the modern caste into three Islamic creeds—Ismāīlī, Ithnā Asharī, and Sunni. (Purohit, 2012) His forceful insertion into the internal affairs of the Khōjā is a nexus point in ʿ ʿ modern Khōjā history, which set into motion a series of events eventually leading to the fracture of the Khōjā caste and resulting in three distinct modern Khōjā reactions to Western modernity. It can be argued that the Khōjā are at the vanguard of modern Indic Islamic identities in our age of globalization.1 The most famous Khōjā in the colonial period was Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. The disaporic communal networks of the Khōjā, utterly disconnected from their ancestral homeland, can be seen as an example par excellence of ‘deterritorialized Islam’. (Roy, 2006, p. 158) The Khōjā believe that they can be purely ‘Muslim’ in religion and culture, ‘Ismāīlī’ for the Āgākhānī Khōjā 1 The term ‘globalization’ as employed in this study references what Held refers to as the ‘transformationalist ʿ perspective’, which “conceives globalisation as being a process whereby various forms of human activity are increasingly traversing the world and connecting people in differing parts of the world more densely and more quickly than in previous times.” (Hudson & Slaughter, 2007, p. 2) From this perspective, there is no single cause or outcome of globalization. For this study, the economic and intellectual effects of liberal economic policies in Tanzania beginning in the 1990s, affordable intercontinental human transportation, and the flow of identity discourses from South Asia and the Near East to East Africa are some of the specific impacts of globalization that have helped to radically transform Khōjā identity in the twentieth century and continue to do so. Religious Citizenship: the Case of the globalised Khoja 29 and ‘Shia’ for Ithnā Asharī Khōjā. This reified and idealized vision of Islam is inherently in conflict with Khōjā identity, for ‘Muslim’ is functionally defined here as Arab and ʿ Persian in form leaving little room for their ancestral Indic heritage. All aspects of Indic culture are measured against this idea of a ‘pure Islam’ and those aspects of culture which do not further this ideological goal are contested and usually discarded. There is no irreconcilable duality of the Prophet as a man of 7th century Arabia and a universalist prophet. The impact of the lack of this duality can be seen in the discourses of Muslim societies in existential turmoil, such as Pakistan. The jamāt of the Āgākhānī and Ithnā Asharī Khōjā function as networks of poleis overlaid modern nation-states facilitating transnational movement and a supranational identity in which loyalty to the sāhēba ʿ jhamāna (‘Imam of the Age’) precedes and outweighs that of the state. The Khōjā, as a bellwether of globalized Islam, provide an important case study of this emergent ‘religious citizenship’. Religious Identities Discourses on the theme of ‘religious citizenship’ are starting to emerge and can be classified in somewhat overlapping categories. For Antiquity, this phrase refers to religious life in the Greek polis and the extent to which this constituted politics. From this perspective, female inclusion in the religious life of the city-state could be a seen as form of political inclusion and thus citizenship. (Borgers, 2008) For the contemporary period, there are two overlapping discourses with regard to religious identity and ethnic minorities in the West. The first focuses on how citizenship is inculcated within religious education and the challenges presented in teaching a secular civic identity within a religious framework. (Miedema, 2006) (Hemming, 2011) Relatedly, the second more extensive body of research focuses on how religious minorities, particularly Muslims, are challenging established notions of citizenship in a pluralistic West. (Kymlicka & Norman, 2000) (Ryder, 2006) (Modood, et al., 2006) (Hudson, 2003) (March, 2009) This article defines ‘religious citizenship’ in a different and narrower context from the existing literature, focusing on the political evolution the African Khōjā. Just as modern Western notions of citizenship are the result of the political evolution of state through distinct junctures from the Greek polis to the modern nation-state, the 19th and 20th century represents a similar nexus for the African Khōjā, from a circumscribed caste to a self-defined transnational nation. It was in this period through the colonial experience, (Mamdani, 2006) that the Khōjā transformed from a caste organization to a liberal welfare state parallel to the nation-state structure to deliver goods, services, or security which the postcolonial state could or would not provide in a political environment in which Asians were politically marginalized. (Olinga, 2010) 30 AfricAn SociologicAl review vol 18 1 2014 The transformation of the jamāt into a modern political body continues, particularly in the Western diaspora. The organization of the early modern Khōjā jñāti (‘caste structure’) was plutocratic, relying almost exclusively on śē hā’ī (‘the authority of the merchant elite’). For the Āgākhānī Khōjā in the early nineteenth century, this changed ṭ with the arrival of Mahomed Hoosein Hoosanee (Aga Khan I) who introduced an autocratic hierarchy which functioned as a constitutional divine monarchy over the Khōjā by the twentieth century, as evidenced by the theological discourses which surrounded his grandson in the dhu’ā (‘central prayer’) and the creation of a law-book in 1905 for the Zanzibar community that evolved into the 1961 constitution. (Anon., Saptēmbar 1905/ Rajab 1323) (Māstar, 1909) (Janmohamed, 2011) Significantly, for the Āgākhānī ̣ Khōjā the ‘Aga Khan’ of the day remains the ultimate spiritual and temporal head of the community within a highly hierarchical transnational power structure. With their official outcasting in 1899, the Ithnā Asharī Khōjā took a radically different approach to democratize their community by creating a constitutional democracy in ʿ which all male men could vote in elections each term. These autonomous communities in Africa are loosely affiliated through the creation of the The Africa Federation of Khoja Shia Ithna Asheri Jamaats of Africa created in 1946 allowed for a bureaucratization of the jamāt structure. (Anon., 1992) For much for Eastern and Central Africa until the mid 20th century, to be Khōjā and Ithnā Asharī was synonomous. The tension of Khōjā identity as both jñāti (‘caste’) and jamāt (‘community’) began to be challenged in the ʿ second half of the twentieth century with the growth of the community as seen in the 1956 case of vakaph (‘religious endowment’) trusteeship of an Ithnā Asharī of Memon ancestry in Zanzibar. (M.D. Kermali, et. al. v. Mussa G. Dhalla, et. al., 1956) Saeed ʿ Akhtar Rizvi’s development of the Bilal Muslim Mission in 1964 (Dārēsalām khōjā śī’ā ithanā’aśarī jamāt, 1969) further blurred the established racial association between the Ithnā Asharī faith and Asiatic peoples. The full realization of this ummatī ideal of religious nationhood manifests itself among the Anglophone African Khōjā diaspora in ʿ Western Europe and North America wherein some new religious centers established by these Khōjā eliminate the term ‘Khōjā’ entirely in their naming and membership requirements. Aside from a shared sense of purpose, religious identities are inherently about inclusion and exclusion (Kabeer, 2006). For both the Āgākhānī and Ithnā Asharī Khōjā, religion allowed for an expansion of ethnic membership on religious terms, being ‘Ismaili’ or ʿ ‘Shia’ respectively. Modern Khōjā communities have had their caste identities subsumed within larger globalized Islamic identity constructs based on Near Eastern authorities, such as pan-Shiism or pan-Ismailism. (Kassam-Remtulla, 1999) Islam has become the exclusive dīn (‘religion’) of the Khōjā. This transformative development has allowed non- Khōjā attendees full membership within a Khōjā-majority jamāt. For this globalized community, each jamāt functions as the sovereign territory of the Khōjā nation in which its own definition of religious citizenship functions as a primary civic identity and Religious Citizenship: the Case of the globalised Khoja 31 demands a loyalty above and beyond the nation-state. To illustrate these points, take the following encounter in Miami with Āgākhānī Khōjā students and visitors in the spring of 2013. Q: How do you primarily identify yourself? Do you consider yourself Khōjā? A: No, not really. I am Khōjā but I think of myself as Ismāīlī. I’m having this issue with my children, trying to explain to them who we are. I ʿ have [Sunni] Muslim friends who don’t consider us Muslim because we don’t go to the mosque or pray and fast like other [Muslims]. What should I tell them? Are we Ismāīlī or Muslim? It’s hard to explain… ʿ Q: In terms of loyalty, is your first loyalty to America or Hazur Imam [Aga Khan IV]? If you had to choose between one and the other, which would you choose? A: Of course, maulā bāpā. We are loyal Americans but if we had to choose it’s him. This nationalistic loyalty as distinct from that of the nation-state is further illustrated in the Preamble (§D) of the 1987 Ismaili constitution which states: The authority of the Imam in the Ismaili Tariqah [‘faith’] is testified by Bay’ah [‘oath of alliance’] by the murid [‘devotee’] to the Imam which is the act of acceptance by the murid of the permanent spiritual bond between the Imam and the murid. This allegiance unites all Ismaili Muslims worldwide in their loyalty, devotion and obedience to the Imam within the Islamic concept of universal brotherhood. It is distinct from the allegiance of the individual murid to his land of abode, (Hasnani, 1987) Citizenship The idea of citizenship is defined by the relationship of the citizen to the polis (Heater 1999) or the state to the globalized citizen. (Sassen 2009) Citizenship invokes languages of social and political rights demanded of the state as well the responsibilities of citizens to it. These constructs are being increasingly challenged by the mobility of citizens, (Beiner 1994) particularly Muslim migrants into Western Europe and North America. (Soysal 1997) Both Heater and Beiner call for call for a ‘world’ or ‘universal’ citizenship respectively based on notions of universal human rights and civics education that broadens the hitherto narrow focus of nationalist agendas towards a global political 32 AfricAn SociologicAl review vol 18 1 2014 identity that is embraces diversity and allows for points of global political convergence, such as the International Court of Justice. The modern notion of citizenship is the evolution of more than 2,000 years of Western political thought whereby the evolution from poleis to the nation-state created modern ideologies which finally bound the identities of peoples through civil religion to the structures of political power in which they resided. The Khōjā had begun to leave the Subcontinent before the nationalist project began in earnest in their ancestral home and by virtue of their position as economic intermediaries were isolated from the nationalist discourses of Africanism in East Africa. The African Khōjā evolved a primary loyalty and identification to their local jamāt, which functioned as a polis and the imāmvādō as agora. While the Khōjā in Africa were becoming alienated by the majority, the Khōjā ̣ who migrated northwards into Western Europe and North America became fully deterritorialized and were forced into a process of an ‘Islamic’ identity formation based on differentiation, relativization, and socialization amongst their minority ethnic neighbors. (Robertson 1992) This new trans-local culture bore an imagined world (Appadurai 1996) that connected the worldwide Khōjā jamāt based on an idealized Near Eastern Shiism through the cultural experience of Africa. As a disaporic community, the African Khōjā leaped from the polis to global citizenship without a firm sense of state nationalism. The use of dual and triple citizenship by many members of the Khōjā community can be understood through Ong’s ‘flexible citizenship’ in an era defined by Soysal as ‘postnationalism’. And yet, the state is not politically irrelevant as people from the Global South do not flow northward quite as freely as do their manufactured goods. (Jacobson 2009) The African Khōjā have been able to maintain the economic advantage of caste kin networks through the jamāt while reimagining their identity to engage the discourses of global Shiism. The national is understood either in relation to the local or the global. It is possible that the Khōjā represent a new facet of Muslim global citizenship through the continuing evolution of the jamāt as an aggregator of the community’s socio-economic resources directed towards local and global religious aspirations. Employed heuristically, the phrase ‘religious citizenship’ endeavors to capture the changing political identity of the Khōjā in the age of globalization as inexorably linked to the transnationalism of global capitalism (Barber & Lem, 2012) yet quite apart from being a ‘rootless cosmopolitan’ or Kantian ‘world citizen’. (Beiner, 1994, p. 17) One could argue that this is not citizenship at all, simply membership in an organization. In the literal sense that is true, the Khōjā cannot construct citizenship as they have no sovereign territory from which to project power within the nation-state system. And yet, they have created a latticed network which overlays the nation-state system by which expertise, money, power, and authority are transferred along these vertical axes, while grounded in North America and Western Europe. Religious Citizenship: the Case of the globalised Khoja 33 In East Africa, the Khōjā community has ability to issue birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, and legal arbitration in matters of personal law. Additionally, in Dar es Salaam, the official Khōjā membership card provides discounts at community institutions such as pharmacies and for the destitute social welfare in the form of monthly payments of rent, utilities, and food. In its most state-like function, the Khōjā conduct foreign affairs directly with heads of state bypassing the nation-state apparatus. The most vivid example of this is seen through the leader of the Āgākhānī Khōjā, Karim al-Husayni, All this has only accentuated the Imamate’s state-like form, given its efforts to standardise Ismaili practices globally as if in a nation- state, claim ambassadorial status for the Imam’s representatives in parts of Asia, Africa and even Europe or North America, and lend the Aga Khan the perquisites of a head of state by having him sign protocols of cooperation with kings, presidents and prime ministers. Indeed the community has its own constitution, flag and even, in the case of the Khojas, an anthem. (Devji, 2009, p. xii) In the same way that the multi-national corporation, such as Coke or Nestlé, have used globalization of the national-state system to set up transnational networks facilitating the flow of goods and services through affiliated companies throughout the world, so too the Khōjā have exported their corporate organization worldwide with independent local franchises (jamāt) linked by confederation. Khōjā ‘religious citizenship’ can thus be envisaged as a possible next iteration of communal citizenship and religious organization in the age of globalization. What is argued here is the ideological impact of a civic identity, how one participates in national and transnational power structures which gives identity and allows participatory inclusion within a group that has real political ramifications across subsystems within the world system. (Balibar & Wallerstein, 2011)When Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) or World Federation (WF) offices in countries function as de facto embassies negotiating directly with a host country for passports and visas for its members or political and economic dispensations, something qualitatively different is occurring beyond the non-governmental organization model. That level of coordination between Africa, Asia, and Europe allows tightly organized Khōjā communities to acquire Western citizenships and traverse global political foundries to fulfill religio-political agendas that are expressed by their respective leaderships. (Steinberg, 2011) Modern ideas of citizenship and nationalism are intimately tied to the evolution of the nation-state, so too is Khōjā nationhood tied to its disaporic reality in the age of globalization. For example, the creation of an ‘Ismāīlī nation’ creates a social contract to those who accede to it requirements of membership, thus providing its ‘citizens’ a ʿ narrative of place in history and purpose of being as well as the full resources of a 34 AfricAn SociologicAl review vol 18 1 2014 developed welfare state apparatus, such as in Tanzania. Herein the boundaries between a secular civil religion and faith are blurred. This transnational political construct goes far beyond other similar communal Muslim development programmes such as the Gülen or Ahmadiyya movements, both in sheer scope and ideology. Whereas those programmes are embedded within particular cultural and national milieus, Turkish and Pakistani respectively, both the Āgākhānī and Ithnā Asharī Khōjā communities aspire to and are inclusive of Muslim communities from around the world who embrace their ʿ religious creed, albeit with some reluctance. It is the synthesis of modern nationalism and political realization of the Islamic ideal of the umma (Kruse, 1971) through particular discourses of pan-Islamism that has its origins in 19th century South Asian literature. (Naeem, 1980) For both the Āgākhānī and Ithnā Asharī Khōjā, the African experience was critical and determinant in the development of their contemporary transnational ʿ ‘religious citizenship’ construct. It is in historicizing these stages of Khōjā institutional development in East Africa that have led to the contemporary transnational political networks with which this article is primarily focused. Constitution In the nineteenth century, the Khōjā caste became more than an ethnic community and voluntary organization. Interaction with the British in India and Zanzibar allowed a gradual transformation of the Khōjā jamāt into a constitutional body. For the Ithnā Asharī Khōjā, the constitution is essential to local polis organization as well for each international organizational body, such as the Africa Federation. Each constitution ʿ lays out rules of membership, bylaws, membership dues, election rules and terms, administrative positions, etc… So internalized has this form of organization been among the Khōjā that mid to late nineteenth century communal religious endowments (vakaph) were bequeathed through trust deeds and corporate wills/probate rather than with the traditional Islamic writ of endowment (vakaphnāmū . ̃) Religious Citizenship: the Case of the globalised Khoja 35 Figure 5: General body minutes/constitutional changes by the Khōjā Kuwwatul Islam jamāt in Zanzibar, 1954 36 AfricAn SociologicAl review vol 18 1 2014 Translation 786 110 Khōjā Shia Ithnā Asharī Kuvvatul Isalām jamāt of Zanzibar Wednesday 26 May 1954 ʿ Special General Body Meeting The Khōjā Shia Ithnā Asharī Kuvvatul Isalām jamāt will have a special general body meeting in the evening at 9.00h on Thurday ʿ 10 June 1954 in the imāmvādō after the majalīs. All community members are invited to attend. ̣ Programme: [A reading] of the minutes from the previous two general body meetings Our jamāt is ready to submit the constitutional bill to be passed by the church. (The [proposed] constitutional bill is attached to this circular printed in English and Gujarati for all to read.) President’s other business Postscript: If all of the proposed business is not completed on Thurday 10 June 1954, then the remaining items will be reviewed at the next meeting on the evening of Saturday 12 June 1954 in the imāmvādō after the majalīs. ̣ Śēra’alī Āhamad Ladhā Hon. Secretary Contemporary Khōjā identity is based upon these institutions and constitutional forms of organization as both immutable and essential to corporate organization. Wherever the Khōjā settle, a jamāt is immediately formed to organize the community and build institutions to support it. The normal offices of President, Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer are present in all Khōjā constitutions each with a limited term and carefully bounded powers. The republican nature of the Ithnā Asharī Khōjā jamāt is critical to their identity and, within the caste, a means of identifying themselves against their Āgākhānī brethren. As ʿ the African Khōjā began to experiment with higher levels of organization, they exported