Liminality and Erasure: Hindutva Violence Towards Imam Shah Bawa Dargah and the Shifting Boundaries of Religious Identity in Colonial and Postcolonial India

Abstract

The 700-year-old Imam Shah Bawa Dargah, in Ahmedabad, has been subjected to Hindutva violence and last year, according to the police, the structures built on the graves of Imam Shah and his family members were razed by Hindu sect trustees.  In March 2022, Prime Minister Modi attended the All India Representatives Assembly of RSS at the controversial shrine of Nishkalanki Narayan Tirthdham. Imam Shah Bawa Dargah, due to its Shia Ismaili background, unlike some of the famous Sunni dargahs of India (e.g. Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah), the historical experience of missionary work has been more complex and adventurous, which has led to the emergence of religious dissimulation (taqiyya).  This custom of hiding sectarian identities because of threats made it more difficult to interview.  Few researchers have studied the dargah and the Ismailis since 1936.  As a religious heritage researcher, I visited the Dargah last year and was able to feel the mystique and fascination that Zawahir Moir (1999) describes. Dominique-Sila Khan (2018) argues that the unique Ismaili nature of the shrine allows for “liminality” in religious identity.  Compared to “transition” (W. Ivanow, 1936), this threshold, intermediary location does not involve conversion and the “endpoint” of a single religious identity. In this paper, I will use this case to discuss how Islamisation and Hinduisation movements in the 19th and 20th centuries have eliminated the ambiguity of religious identity and to trace the historical process of Hindutva’s formation to reflect on its violence today.