60 – New Perspectives in the Study of Isma’ilism in South Asia: Institutions, Economies, and Ethics

October 3, 2025
3:45 pm
Triplex 1017
Isma‘ili Muslims in South Asia are guided by tightly-knit transnational institutions that represent diverse communities spread across urban, rural, and mountainous reagions. Under the leadership of their living preceptors, the ‘Aga Khan and the Da‘i al-Mutlaq, Isma‘ilis are mercantile communities that boast distinctive cultural and rich literary heritage and sacred and economic institutions that promote ethical standards for living. The immediacy of present concerns, from economic prosperity to the morality of living among secular and religious others, dominates the kinds of questions that Isma‘ilis’ preceptors offer answers. Scholars have made significant strides in exploring the history, sacerdotal institutions, and literature of Isma‘ilis, with far-reaching implications for the study of Muslim communities and the religious history of South Asia. However, Isma‘ilis continued to be on the margins of the scholarship on Islam in South Asia, mainly dominated by a focus on the Khoja caste. Primarily divided into two camps, scholars have highlighted the continuity of a unified Isma‘ili Tradition vis-à-vis historical changes, while others have presented Isma‘ilism as a local tradition, composite tradition, or an institution without territory. Building on previous scholarship, this panel offers new perspectives on the study of Isma‘ilism in South Asia, including a wide range of themes. These include the epistemological redefinition of the Imamate as a divine institution, the character of Isma‘ili commercial institutions, legal genealogies of authority, the entangled histories of migration and literary tradition, and the lived character of ethical pluralism.

Convenors

Dr. Vineet Gupta
Dr. Tim Cooper

Presentations

Banking, Ismaili Law, and Islamic Finance in the Daudi Bohra Jama’at, 1900-1970
OSullivan Michael - University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States
Constructing Ismaili Subjectivities: Religious Formation and Institutions among the Nizari Ismailis of South Asia and Beyond
Momin Wafi - -
‘Islamic Research Association’ in colonial Bombay and the making of modern Isma’ilism
Khan Danish - Brasenose College, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
Diaspora and Identity in the Indian Ocean: The Fatimid Legacy among the Bohras of India.
Hamdani Sumaiya - George Mason University, George Mason University, Fairfax VA, United States
The Lord in the Court of Law: Reform, Property, and the Community, 1917-1948
Gupta Vineet - Graduate Department of Religion, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, United States
The Diversity of Figures of Authority: Religious Imaginaries and Social Change in a valley of the Karakoram Mountains, Pakistan
Fontanari Thibault - University of Louvain, University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Imamat in Stone: Theologies of the Present in Northern Pakistan
Cooper Timothy - Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Karim Aga Khan and the Ismaili Shia imamate:Involving academic research to redefine the authority of the living imam
Boivin Michel - Centre for the Study of South Asia and the Himalayas, CNRS-EHESS, aubervilliers, France