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There have been Ismaili Muslims in East Africa since the sixteenth century. However, it was under the leadership of Aga Khan III (1885-1957) in the nineteenth century that the majority left the regions of Kutch, Sindh, Katiawar and Gujarat in Northwest India (Kanji 1990: 11). These Ismailis are known as Khojahs and their ancestors were originally Hindus that had been converted by Ismaili pirs (missionaries) from Persia in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries (Asani 1987: 32; Morris 1968: 68). In the late 1800s, many Ismailis left India on the advice and encouragement of their religious leader Aga Khan III. In India, the Ismailis had been farmers, laborers and merchants (Asani 1994: 17-18) and had left in search of better economic opportunities as traders and merchants in East Africa. It seems that they also left for many other reasons including famine, unemployment, religious persecution, and political instability (Walji 1974: 21). The first Ismailis arrived in Zanzibar (Salvadori 1989: 225) and were encouraged to stay by the Sultan of Oman who ruled over the island at the time, and later by European colonialists that wanted to "stimulate economic development" (Asani 1994: 18). Many Asian settlers in East Africa worked for the Arabs, and later the British in different capacities, and their migration to Africa was linked to colonial political economies.
In nineteenth century Zanzibar, Ismailis comprised the largest Indian community (cf. Gundara 1981), reflecting perhaps their adherence to the early advice of Aga Khan III to seek prosperity in East Africa. The Ismailis established themselves as the pioneering Asian group in East Africa, and made efforts to assert their distinctiveness from other Asian communities. They pushed for separate burial grounds, and later established Ismaili schools and health facilities. All this was made possible through the leadership of Aga Khan III. He was committed to protecting his followers and was well-versed in Western modes of negotiation, and was thus effective in persuading the British colonial government to recognize the uniqueness of the Ismaili community on many occasions by granting them separate licenses and permission. This caused resentment by other Asian groups pushing for similar rights. Historian of East Africa, H.S. Morris states that by organizing themselves into a "corporate" community, the Ugandan Ismailis: acted as a kind of `pace-making' group in the growth of other caste and sectarian communities. The process eventually undermined all the pretensions of the Central Council of Indian Associations for Uganda to represent one united Indian community. It also made it virtually impossible for anybody to establish united Muslim or Hindu organisations, because every sect or caste was anxious to obtain for itself advantages similar to those of the Ismailis. Once `communal crystallisation' began, the process soon influenced almost all relationships with the [British] administration and of one community with another (1968: 34).
Later on, several attempts were made by various Asians to unite different sectors of their population. This was difficult because of the status and economic hierarchies that had emerged between communities, which prevented the formation of pan-Indian or pan-Muslim/pan-Hindu organizations. To this day, Ismailis have limited ties to other Asians and Africans in East Africa, although small overtures have been made to Asian and non-Asian Muslims. The Ismaili "corporate" structure has been a crucial mode of community organization, and has been replicated in Ismaili communities worldwide.
The Ismailis had been moving inland since their arrival in East Africa, and by the mid-1960s most had left Zanzibar and settled on the mainland, particularly in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. In the 1970s due to rising political tension and uncertainty, especially after the Asian expulsion in Uganda, many Ismailis began migrating to Europe and North America. Again the Ismailis, because of the power of their leader Aga Khan IV (grandson of Aga Khan III) and upon his advice, left East Africa in search of better economic and social opportunities. Although demographic numbers are not available, based on informal conversations I had with Asians in Kenya, it is my understanding that the secondary migration patterns of Ismailis differed from those of other East African Asians.
Many Ismailis moved to the United Kingdom, fewer to the United States, and still fewer moved to South Asia. The majority settled in Canada, partly because Aga Khan IV was friends with then Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and was able to gain quick naturalization for his followers. It seems that other groups, especially the Hindus and Sikhs that left East Africa either returned to India/Pakistan or went to Britain on British passports that they still held from before Independence. The difference in immigration patterns can also be explained by the fact that after East African Independence, Ismailis had been urged by Aga Khan IV to take up local citizenship, which was not the case for most other East African Asians. This assimilation was aimed at decreasing these immigrants' threat, as foreign nationals, to the nation-states of East Africa. The Ismailis had begun a process of Westernization, including changes in language and dress, and an emphasis on education and women's rights, instituted by Aga Khan III, and were thus less likely to go back to South Asia, and likely to migrate to the West. Parvin Walji (1980: 132), who conducted fieldwork among different Asian groups in Nairobi, found that in her sample, East African citizenship among the groups varied. The two Hindu groups had 32% and 38% East African citizenship, and of the two Muslim groups approximately 91% and 85% were East African citizens. The large majority of the remaining informants held British passports. These results indicate that certain communities placed a greater emphasis on taking up local nationality, and that this may have played a role in secondary immigration patterns, in that more Hindus than Muslims settled in the United Kingdom because of their larger percentage of British passports.
In colonial East Africa, however, the Ismailis found themselves in a new political structure, where they did share one thing with other Indian communities: a precarious middle position between the colonial European rulers and the indigenous Africans. Their situation in Africa, because of their status as a politically powerless and economically powerful community, contributed to their vulnerable status. Aga Khan III recognized this delicate situation and felt that social and economic changes were necessary to maintain the viability of his community in East Africa. The reforms of Aga Khan III and his successor, Aga Khan IV are discussed in Chapter Four.
The significance of the Imam in the affairs of the Ismailis was a factor in their success, and highlights his role in creating change, which becomes more clear in the discussion of Islamic revival in Chapter Four. The unique Ismaili status and sectarian identity helps to explain the inward-looking nature of the community, and its lack of engagement with other Asian groups. The Ismailis also consider many of the other Asian groups in East Africa to be simple and traditional, and this disassociation is related to the larger East African Ismaili separation from South Asia in general as discussed in Chapter Three. It thus becomes clear that the history of the Ismaili community is important to understanding their current position in East Africa and their further dispersal over the last thirty years.
Diasporas: (Re)definitions and Current Debates
During my interviews with Ismailis in Nairobi, I realized that the connections to South Asia that I was asking about were not necessarily those which my informants found important. My assumption about the connection to South Asia as a homeland for the Khojahs of East Africa was incorrect. I have started to analyze the Ismaili disengagement from South Asia and based on my interviews, would like to explore some interesting ways to think about the Ismaili community, as well as ways in which this scholarship can contribute to the general debate around the terms diaspora and nation. The Ismaili case is fairly unique in: (a) the diversity of the community including Khojahs from all over as well as Ismailis from the Middle East and Central Asia, (b) the lack of both a physical space or homeland, and no apparent desire for creating one which decreases the Ismaili threat to the nation-state, (c) the religious nature of Ismailism and the concept of diasporas of religion, and (d) the emphasis on lateral connections because of the lack of a "center," and the promotions of such ties by the powerful Ismaili Imam.
The term "diaspora" comes out of a specific historical experience. It derives from the Greek, meaning dispersion through sowing or scattering, and referred initially to the "exile of the Jews from their historic homeland and their dispersion throughout many lands, signifying as well the oppression and moral degradation implied by that dispersion" (Safran 1991: 83). This definition, while it has certainly been expanded and reworked, has often held the Jewish experience and the idea of exile and oppression as prototypical. It is this paradigm which allows William Safran -whose widely read survey essay in the debut issue of Diaspora journal perpetuated the narrow definition of diaspora - to claim that "we may legitimately speak of the Armenian, Maghrebi, Turkish, Palestinian, Cuban, Greek and perhaps Chinese diasporas at present...although none of them fully conforms to the 'ideal type' of the Jewish Diaspora" (1991: 84). This narrow definition is not only problematic in terms of its adherence to the Jewish model, but also does not provide useful ways in which to think about other dispersed communities, or to think about the heterogeneity within the groups Safran identifies as legitimate. Clifford (1994: 305) warns of placing too much emphasis on the Jewish diaspora, and irrespective of whether this is self-defined or imposed, the Jewish diaspora status as `ideal' is not necessarily a desirable site of privilege for Jews (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1994: 340).
It is hard to speak about diaspora without implicating the concept of homeland. This term is intricately tied up with notions of loss, memory, nostalgia, roots and displacement, and is particularly salient for groups that traveled large distances or were forcibly removed or coerced to leave their place of origin such as Jews, Blacks and indentured Asians. For many of these displaced people the homeland, whether physical or psychic, serves as a powerful unifying symbol (Gupta and Ferguson 1992: 11), a place that can only be imagined and is partly invented (Appadurai 1996: 49), but forever a mythical space to which people have allegiances and yearning. For many, a physical return was impossible, and this often intensified the feelings towards a homeland. As with the Ismailis, not all communities have a homeland of which to speak.
Diasporic communities often look to the homeland as sites of authenticity and tradition (Brah 1996: 190), which is likely due to a combination of a homeward orientation and a response to marginalization in the new place. While it is simplistic to set up "here" and "there" as distinct, the concept of diaspora often emphasizes homeland because of the significance given to origins. Some scholars have come to question this inherent and assumed link between the homeland and diasporics (Ghosh 1989: 76). Traditionally, the concept emphasized the connections that each dispersed community had to the homeland, and created a cartography of trajectories from the place of origin. That is slowly changing as much recent scholarship speaks of African (cf. Gilroy 1993), South Asian (cf. Veer 1995; Clarke et al., 1990) or Chinese (cf. Pan, 1990; Tu, 1994; Ong and Nonini, 1997) diasporas. These dispersions are inextricably linked to the histories of imperialism and colonialism, and speaking of these communities in general ways points to their shared movements. While it is important to trace the ways in which, for example Blacks in the United States are linked to Africans in the Caribbean, it is equally important to examine and interrogate the "local."
Recent media, communications and other technologies have become so extensive that another level of human interaction has been achieved (Appadurai 1996: 3-5; Gupta and Ferguson 1992: 9) characterized by the internet (cf. Rai 1995), film (cf. Srinivasan 1997), telecommunications (cf. Rouse 1991) and television (cf. Naficy 1993). Although diasporic communities have never been truly isolated, and pathways for capital, knowledge and people have always existed, the technology of the post-electronic era, as Appadurai calls it, has allowed certain displaced people to reconnect with the homeland in significant ways. This has had far-reaching effects on diasporic communities, and has fundamentally changed the ways in which they imagine "home" and reconstitute their identities. Another feature of the diaspora which is tied to the notion of a homeland, and which has been challenged by recent scholarship, is the idea about the "myth of return." Again, it seems that this idea can be traced to the Jewish experience, and to other communities that were exiled and thus had a long-standing desire to return to the homeland. As Safran points out, and as my discussion of Ismailis in Chapter Three makes clear, many people in the diaspora have no desire to return "home" (1991: 91), and some may not even have a place to which they can return.
Diaspora tends to privilege the transnational and overlooks the interactions that diasporic people have with others in their new environment. Brah, in thinking through her work on South Asians in Britain, has coined the term "diaspora space," which attempts to look at diasporics in relation to the place they now inhabit, as well as to move discussion from a majority/minority axis to look at interactions among minorities and at the intersections of diasporas (1996: 186, 208-210). In addition, Mankekar speaks of political bifocality which she claims "will subvert the binaries of homeland and diaspora" (1994: 64). Post-colonial times have brought with them even greater movements of people, and theories of diaspora and their intersections are critical in understanding and promoting interaction across the margins (Brah 1996: 209-10), and are particularly relevant to the descendants of first generation immigrants.
Further analysis points to the ways in which the discourse within diasporic Black, South Asian or Chinese communities is mediated through the homeland or (former) colonial powers (Ghosh 1989: 74). The unity of these groups is weighted in the connections these communities have to their "roots," and masks the lateral interactions of diasporics with each other. This is something which must be fleshed out in greater detail, and which is particularly relevant to the transnational Ismaili community which has no homeland nor a common point of origin for all Ismailis.
In her study of bhangra music, Gayatri Gopinath shows how the music:
In this way, the homeland is re-configured as one of the multiple sites within the diaspora. Removing the homeland from a position of centrality and prominence, allows diasporic culture and identity to gain legitimacy, instead of being peripheral and considered fabricated or bastardized. Clifford emphasizes that "transnational connections linking diasporas need not be articulated primarily through a real or symbolic homeland" and that connections between dispersed communities are equal in importance to those "formed around a teleology of origin/return" (1994: 36). This can already be seen, for example, in the effect of the US Black Power and Black Muslim movements of the 1960s on Afro-Caribbean Muslim revitalization and independence movements (Khan 1995: 105), and on British Blacks.
De-centering the homeland affects our idea about the nature of the nation-state. By inscribing the homeland as a site within the diaspora, the boundaries between nation and diaspora begin to blur. Although not every homeland is a nation, the majority that are not, still hinge on a physical space such as Palestine, Kurdistan or Khalistan. Are the terms "diaspora" and "homeland" mutually exclusive and/or oppositional? This is a question without a simple answer. At times the rhetoric of the nation incorporates the diaspora, and at other times it is defined in opposition to it. It seems to be a question of where one draws the boundaries of the nation - is it congruous with the borders of the nation-state, or does it include certain/all diasporic groups. Certain scholars have valorized diaspora for its ability to critique the nation-state (Clifford 1994: 307), claiming that the term diaspora operates outside, across and through the nation. It is also important not to homogenize diasporic identifications or experiences, and as stated above, be sensitive to the influences of local experiences with the understanding that the local is always already permeated by the translocal.
However, one must complicate the notion that diaspora poses an innate challenge to the nation (Dhaliwal 1994: 17), for so often it is directly invested in the nation or the push for one, such as the Palestinian and Sikh diasporas. When looking at the case of the Jews, the (re)creation of the homeland did not eliminate the diaspora because for so many reasons not all Jews were able/willing to return to Israel (Safran 1991: 91,94). The Ismailis, on advice from their leader, pose little threat to the hegemony of the nation-state, as they are told to become loyal citizens of the place where they live. Furthermore, because of the religious nature of this diaspora, and processes of conversion and relinquishing of the religion, identification with Israel is extraordinarily complex. The further complexities of diasporas with a religious component, and the possibility of theorizing religious diasporas are issues I address later in this chapter.
Of many recent diaspora theories, Paul Gilroy's notion of the Black Atlantic has been provocative and influential in re-thinking the concept of diaspora. He speaks of a transnational, multiply-centered Atlantic culture extending to Blacks in Britain, Africa, America and the Caribbean. He focuses on the specificity of historical movements of people, labor and knowledge. What seems to be one of Gilroy's most important interventions in the current diaspora debate is that he explicitly challenges an Afro-centric basis to the Black Atlantic, and rejects "`Africa' as a privileged source (a kind of Holy Land) while retaining its changing contribution to a counterculture of modernity" (Clifford 1994: 321). Despite its shortcomings (Clifford 1994: 320; Gopinath 1995: 306; Helmreich 1993: 245, 247; cf. Mercer 1990), Gilroy's work has been useful in helping me to theorize an Ismaili community model, particularly because of his emphasis on a break with the African homeland, for which a direct connection is both "escapist and ahistorical" (Clifford 1994: 318). Since the Ismailis are not originally from one geographical area, they cannot trace their ethnic roots to a single physical place. Neither can they look to a single, dominant religious center, because of the complex histories of conversion and Ismaili displacement. In a similar yet distinct way, Blacks do not have a specific homeland or nation. Thus, Gilroy's notion of the Black Atlantic which moves away from an Afro-centric model of diaspora, resonates with my ideas about the Ismaili community.
The Question of "Homeland"
As I detail in Chapter Three, the Ismailis in Kenya are fairly disconnected from India and think of it as a backward and undesirable place to live - somewhere they would not consider returning to. My research supports claims made by several other scholars of Ismailism (Fisher 1980: 38; Fenton 1988: 195; Sumra 1990: 5; Kaiser 1996: 99). I feel the identification with Kenya which was expressed by many Ismailis was based more on economic success and security, than loyalty. Before I reached this conclusion, I was considering a diasporic model where East Africa was the new Ismaili homeland. Since the Africanization policies in East Africa following Independence, a significant majority of Ismailis had left for Canada, United Kingdom and United States. Because of this migration, I thought it possible that they looked to East Africa as a homeland - a place to which they could return. However, it seemed that the connection to East Africa, like the one to India, was not substantial.
It was because the Ismailis were "de-Indianized" and Westernized (Asani 1987:36) by Aga Khan III that they were unable to think of India as a homeland. Even though their ancestors had come from India, this alone was not enough to create a feeling of a homeland. What seems to get obscured in the current discussion of diaspora is that the place of origin is not equally accessible to all people who have left that place. India, for example, is increasingly being presented as a monolithic, Hindu nation. This hegemonic discourse "fails to grapple with those, such as Sikhs and Muslims, who, by virtue of India's unmistakable Brahminic-Hindu undergirdings, are already outside India even though they may appear to be within it" and that India is "imaged as 'secular', but [is] subtextually Hindu" (Dhaliwal 1994: 19). Sikh nationalism, for example, could be viewed as a resistance to hegemonic notions of India as Hindu.
I would contend that the Sikhs are one case of many diasporic communities that feel marginalized and isolated from the Indian nation-state because of this projected Hindu identity (Kassam-Remtulla 1997b: 5). This might also be the case with Ismailis, in that it was difficult for them to hark back to India when in many ways India, the Hindu nation, has been defined in opposition to Pakistan, the Muslim nation. A couple of my informants mentioned Pakistan as their place of origin, as did some Muslim Indo-Trinidadians interviewed by Aisha Khan (1995: 96), when these people had ancestors that had come from a South Asia that pre-dated Pakistan. There are other examples of how the partitioning of India affected people in the diaspora, and recent Hindu nationalism has made it even more difficult for certain minority groups, especially Muslims, to be able to identify with India. Thus, the notion of an Indian homeland is not a simple one, and calls into question our dominant notions of diaspora. Even Israel, a supposed homeland for all Jews, is ambivalent about the return of American and Soviet Jews (Safran 1991: 94). The mere existence of a physical place is not necessarily enough to constitute a homeland, and that the connection of the homeland to a diaspora should not be over-determined.
My research points to the lack of a homeland for my informants since they felt unconnected to India, and sometimes felt threatened and uncomfortable in East Africa. They were aware that living in the West was not ideal either, and some mentioned the intense racism in the West that they had heard about through kin or friends, or experienced first-hand while traveling or studying abroad. Among Khojah Ismailis there seems to be movement and even settlement between the Western nations, East Africa and South Asia - the idea of a homeland is somehow less important than the lateral connections between these places, both personal and institutional (via Aga Khan IV and the numerous transnational organizations serving the needs of Ismailis). However, there are hierarchies between these places, which are clear from people's immigration patterns. At the top of the hierarchy is the West, with East Africa below that, and South Asia below that. Immigrants generally move up in the hierarchy, and flow primarily from South Asia to East Africa and the West, and from East Africa to the West. Few people move to South Asia from other locations, and few move from the West once they are there.
The majority of these people migrate for economic reasons. Many middle/upper class and educated people move to the West, where they can make more money and provide safe and nurturing environments for their children. Some lower class immigrants also follow this trajectory, often with men going abroad as sojourners to make money and remitting to family in South Asia or East Africa. Increasingly middle class Ismailis in Nairobi are leaving East Africa because of political and safety reasons, and the lack of quality universities and opportunities for their children. Given these net patterns, there are always people going in directions opposite to the bulk of immigrants. In recent years many Western Ismailis, especially those that have been less successful, have moved back to East Africa because of business opportunities, especially in Uganda which has been welcoming back Asians expelled during the terror of Idi Amin. For some people, living in East Africa is ideal if they are wealthy, since they have ayahs (servants), good weather and a tight-knit community. For others who are less wealthy, Kenya is difficult because good education is expensive, the university is poor quality, and there is constant physical danger. However, they do not necessarily have the financial resources to migrate nor the skills to be marketable, and in Nairobi at least they receive assistance from Ismaili social services. I hope this provides some insight into the ways in which class inflects peoples abilities and desires to migrate.
The Central Asian Ismailis: A Pan-Ismaili Identity
The Ismailis are concerned primarily with the welfare of their own community. Most of my informants identify as Ismailis, and claim to be willing to help all Ismailis regardless of race. What has been occurring over the past few decades is the forging of a pan-Ismaili identity to connect the dispersed Khojah Ismaili communities with racially different indigenous Ismailis from the Middle East and Central Asia, as will be discussed in Chapter Four. With the fall of the Soviet Union, Ismailis in many former Soviet republics have been able to practice their religion publicly including those in the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan. There are also pockets of Ismailis in Afghanistan, Iran, China, Syria and Yemen, some of whom have been emigrating to
the West where there are almost exclusively Khojah jamats (congregations).8 I assert that the Islamization reforms being instituted by Aga Khan IV are in part a response to this opening up of jamats, and a way to provide a common basis for all Ismailis to interact. For example, many of the reforms have targeted traditions which are unique to Khojah Ismailis such as the photos, takht (symbolic throne) and Gujarati du'a (main prayer). By removing influences considered to be either Hindu or Indian from the practices of Khojah Ismailis, the environment can be made more familiar and inviting for immigrants who come from non-Khojah backgrounds.
Most of the Ismailis that have left Central Asia and the Middle East have moved to Canada, where there are almost exclusively Khojahs, a majority of which are East African and a minority of direct South Asian Ismailis. Canada is ideal since there are large Khojah jamats that can assist the Central Asians in settling in their new country, and there is a strong governmental social system to assist new immigrants. Few of these people have come to Nairobi, although several people mentioned to me an Iranian family that was very active in jamati affairs. Even though most people in Nairobi have had no interaction with these Ismailis, they were very aware of them. One of the most important ways that their presence was felt was through the singing of qasidas (Afghani and Persian devotional praise poetry) in jamatkhana. No one in the Nairobi jamat speaks Afghani, yet these qasidas have been introduced. My informant Tasneem, a middle class young woman says that, "[ we] learn from different cultures - learn what they used to do and practice it ourselves." Middle-aged and upper class Shera adds that: "At the moment in jamatkhana, started qasidas at night classes...then we have a translation to help us understand." The qasidas were taught to children in religious education classes and then they were encouraged to sing them in jamatkhana. This was the most visible way in which these Nairobi Ismailis were becoming linked to Central Asians in the global Ismaili community. Even though they were not physically present in Nairobi, Afghani traditions were being incorporated into daily Khojah Ismaili practice.
While I was in Nairobi I never heard a qasida sung in jamatkhana. Several people mentioned their increasing presence, and one of my informants, Imran, said that he went to a religious education camp where he had learned three or four qasidas. Like most of the other young Ismailis I interviewed, Imran seemed to be very comfortable with the recent changes in Ismaili practice, especially with the increased association of Ismailis with other Muslim communities, and the integration of Khojah Ismailis with others from Central Asia. Imran told me about several recent initiatives by the local Council including a dinner put on by the Ismaili Youth Association, at which there was a speech by Dr. Bakari, a professor at the University of Nairobi professor. He said the Council is making strong attempts to "bridge the gap between us," and by "us" Imran is referring to Muslim youth. He explains that previously the Youth Association would only have invited Ismailis to such a dinner, but it seems now they are reaching out to all Muslim young people regardless of denomination. Imran felt it was "positive to become closer to other communities." "United we stand, divided we fall" he explained, smiling broadly.
I first met Imran at a mini golf course in Nairobi. I had come to play with a friend of mine, and we bumped into Navroz, another informant of mine, and Imran. Since I already knew Navroz, the four of us decided to play as a group, and while I lost miserably (this was my first ever game of mini golf), I did get to know Navroz and Imran. Both of them were first years at different colleges in the United States, and I took the opportunity of a long and slow game of mini golf to begin asking questions. Imran was at a small university in the mid-West. He was quite tall and broad, and was wearing tight black jeans and a science fiction tee-shirt. I was told that tight jeans were the fashion in Kenya, but for me they conjured up images of computer geeks and people whose fashion sense had stalled in the 1970s. Imran's college was far from any jamatkhana. In fact, in the year he had been gone, he had not gone to jamatkhana once. Since he was a devout Ismaili, this had been difficult for him, and so he was glad to be back at home so that he could go to jamatkhana twice every day. Imran was very competitive in our golf game, and this conversation was cut short. However, I had the chance to engage him more fully when I formally interviewed him at his home.
Since Imran lived only one street over from where I was staying with my aunt, I decided to walk to his house. In the residential neighborhoods of Nairobi there were no sidewalks, just trails in the ochre dirt on the sides of the pot-holed roads. I had seen Imran's house before when we dropped him off after the golf game, so I was confident that I would be able to find it, despite the lack of street signs and house numbers. As I did every time I left the house except when going to jamatkhana, I removed all my valuables including my rings, wallet and watch, and hid a 500 shilling note in the small pocket of my jeans in case of an emergency. To get to Imran's house I had to walk along an unpaved street. The path, which was more like a hiking trail, was in such disrepair that I was surprised that cars could safely drive on it. Along both sides of the path there were small shacks where people sold live chickens, eggs and produce. The shacks were made from corrugated iron, with peeling paint, and handwritten signs displaying the products for sale. This was a middle class neighborhood and I wasn't sure why all these small shacks were permitted. As throughout suburban Nairobi, small mounds of garbage were burning on the sides of roads and near shacks. Since there was no city-wide garbage collection system, the cheapest way to get rid of waste was to burn it. All the people selling, buying and walking around me were working class Africans, and I tried not to look anyone in the eye. I hurried along, squelching in the mud caused by the recent rain, and trying to avoid deep puddles in the rough terrain.
It was with relief that I reached the compound where Imran lived, where all the houses were owned by Ismailis. The askari let me in without looking twice, or asking me who I was there to visit. My race and class marked me as a visitor and not an intruder. In Nairobi every compound, building, and many houses had askaris and I always wondered how they knew who to let in. I realized that if you were Asian, they would let you in with little hassle, but would be much more cautious if you were African. Imran lived in a modest house. His mother answered the door and led me to the living room. Even though it was late morning, the family was just finishing breakfast since they had gone to sleep after coming back from the morning jamatkhana service which ended around 6 am. They continued to offer me food, and despite my having just eaten, I was persuaded to accept a snack and a drink. While Imran finished his meal, I looked around the house and chatted with his father. What caught my eye was the huge photograph of Hazar Imam on the dining room wall. This portrait was unusually large for a house, and although I didn't ask, it must have been one of the photos that had been removed from the jamatkhanas as part of the effort to remove physical representations of the Imam from the prayer hall.9
When he was finished his breakfast, Imran and I sat in the living room. We talked about many things, and again we came back to the issue of college. At school in the United States midwest, Imran was involved with the Muslim Students Association which had about forty or fifty members. They often had Friday afternoon prayers together, and I was a bit surprised that he participated. As an Ismaili, I was never taught the salaat, the prayer said five times daily by most Muslims. The Ismaili prayer, known as the du'a, is different and said only three times daily. He explained that in Kenya religious education in the schools were compulsory, and he had learned the salaat in this class. Imran explained that of course he would rather have gone to a Friday evening jamatkhana service, but since there was no jamatkhana in the small town where he studied, saying prayers with other Muslims gave him comfort and a place for him to communicate with Allah (God). Since non-Ismaili Muslims are not allowed into jamatkhanas, I had never thought about the possibility of going to a mosque. In Calgary I had never heard of Ismailis going to other Muslim places of worship, but I suppose that if one was not able to go to jamatkhana regularly, a mosque would be a good alternative.
Imran talked not only of the importance of identifying with other Muslims, but of the increased connections with Ismailis in Central Asia. He said he had recently watched a video of Aga Khan IV's 1994 padhramni (official visit) to the United Kingdom, where he had seen Tajiks and Afghanis sharing their dances with Khojah Ismailis. Imran insisted that he would marry an Ismaili and went onto say that it, "wouldn't matter if East African or not, or Afghani or not." I asked Imran what connection he saw to the Central Asian Ismailis given that they were racially, culturally and linguistically distinct from Khojahs. He pointed to a 1990 firman (advice) in which Aga Khan IV emphasized the importance of accepting different traditions, and explained that no matter "how different they may be, [they are] also Ismailis." For Imran, the religious connection and the advice of Aga Khan IV were enough to convince him to learn qasidas, to accept the Central Asian Ismailis as his spiritual brothers and sisters, and to be open to marriage with an Afghani women even though he did not personally know any Central Asian Ismailis in Nairobi. In contrast, he said he would not marry a Black African or non-Ismaili Asian - women from cultural groups he had grown up with.
Many of the people I spoke to expressed that their connections to these Ismailis were not personal, but that it was their shared beliefs and the Imam that brought them together:
Hazar Imam says there is strength in diversity, it's not a liability. Whether you recite a ginan or a qasida, the belief in Allah, Mohammed and Ali is international. (Firoz, male, elderly, upper class)
What brings us together is religion. They get together because they are the same religion. Say du'a three times a day -only thing that holds [us together]. [They] believe in Hazar Imam's firmans the same way I do. (Rizwan, male, youth, lower class)
We don't have much interaction out there. Our identification with [other] Muslims brings us closer to them than anything else. Practice might be different - ginan, qasidas, but the same du'a. (Bashir, male, middle age, upper class)
What these quotes highlight is not only the common religious beliefs, but also rhetoric such as "strength in diversity" and "try and integrate." This suggests that these Khojahs think of themselves as connected to the Central Asians as a community, and shows the ways in which Aga Khan IV has presented these newly "discovered" Ismailis as needy spiritual kin.10
The Central Asian Ismailis are relative newcomers to the Ismaili community. As Gulshan, a lower class woman explained, "the last time Hazar Imam went there, did we know there were people staying on that side of the world? Through Hazar Imam we have come to know." Despite this and the fact that few Central Asian Ismailis have come to East Africa, my informants were very conscious of the role they should be playing to help these people:
Good idea [to help], because Hazar Imam says you are in a better position; the kind of person who would go there is a professor, missionary, doctor, engineer - not an ordinary person... We have to help them. We know we are superior. They've had a tough life. We are interested in their ways of living. Ismailis who are broad-minded, liberal, have something to offer, are sympathetic. (Aziz, male, middle age, middle class)
The idea of helping these Ismailis was explained by Ismail, an elderly lower class man, as "just like [how] East Germans adapted to West German life - from communism to capitalism." Again the Khojah Ismailis in Kenya felt that they had a duty to help these people who they did not know at all, but who had the same beliefs as them. I think Ismail's analogy to Germany is interesting, particularly because he draws a parallel between Ismailis and a nation, which is a model I interrogate in Chapter Five.