Migration and Islamic reform in a port town of western India

Abstract

This article explores some of the social consequences of migration for a port town in western India. The town has a long history of immigration and emigration, and in the first part of this article it is suggested that the origins of migrants arriving in the town in ancient times have formed the basis for ordering social hierarchy among local Muslims. In modern times the town's fleet takes a large number of men overseas each year to the ports of the Gulf. The second part of the article is concerned with looking at the ways in which the fruits of such migrations are integrated into local society when the ships return during the monsoon. Exchanges of gifts, ideas, and social and religious practices are described as ways of articulating a profound conflict between the ancient immigrants and the new returning emigrants. While this conflict is most obviously between rival versions of Islamic orthodoxy, I argue that such orthodoxies are primarily expressions of the types of migration, travel and economy that form and sustain them.