Devotional Empowerment: Women Pilgrims, Saints and Shrines in a South Asian Muslim Sect

The religious life of the Daudi Bohras, an Ismaili Shia sect of South Asian Muslims, comprises a rich pattern of devotional rituals. This paper focuses on domestic pilgrimage, which constitutes an expression of devotion at the shrines of their spiritual leaders and other holy men. It describes the Bohra sect, their sacred geography, the nature and ways of the women pilgrims, the character of the devotional ritual, the motives that bring the faithful to the shrines and the outcomes of such pilgrimages. The analytical section deals with the significance of shrines in women's lives, the inter-linkages between the sacred and secular journeys and sources of empowerment within the traditional framework. Besides secondary data, participant observation and unstructured interviews were used in collecting data. The main conclusions relate to the centrality of the pilgrimage ritual in the lives of women. This form of devotion simultaneously opens avenues for independence and agency for women and affirms their traditional roles and identities. Women's hegemony in the sect's devotional practices is a strategy they use to stake a claim for concessions at the level of the family and the sect.