Summary: | The dissertation seeks to problematize and understand the formation of the Satpanth Ismaili tradition. Through a close analysis of key textual sources, it engages with the discourses that afforded an Indic religious tradition, so synthetic in its worldview, harbouring multiple streams of thought, a bounded Muslim identity and brought about its transition in modern times to what is now understood as the global Ismaili order. Towards this end, the project interrogates and rethinks the role of the much idealized agency of charismatic figures that is widely portrayed as quintessential in the formation of Satpanth doctrine, and restores the voice of other actors who played a far more real, albeit overlooked, part in transforming it into the Indic Ismaili practice. Aspiring to holistically examine the 'archive' of the tradition for the first time, containing a blueprint of its historical formation, the dissertation brings a host of literary works from manuscripts and printed material to bear on understanding the particular vision of Satpanth, along with the associated doctrine and cosmologies, in order to problematize the highly synthetic character of the Satpanth Weltanschauung.
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