ABSTRACT
In this chapter I investigate the role of education within a larger project of “material and spiritual development” as articulated by the Isma‘ili Muslim inhabitants of the Hunza Valley in Pakistan's mountainous northern Gilgit-Baltistan region. 1 Central to the vision of development articulated by the Imam, or spiritual leader of the global Isma‘ili community, is the cultivation of knowledge, technical expertise, and ethical discernment through formal education. Many among Hunza's majority-Isma‘ili population 2 embrace this vision, with results that are readily apparent on the geographical and social landscape. During a preliminary period of research in the valley in 2000, I often heard education spoken of as a panacea for all the ills of the present, both those arising from what is characterized as the oppressive ignorance of the past and from the hectic materialism of the present. On everyone's lips at that time was a recent decree by the Imam prioritizing the education of girls even over that of boys, understood locally as yet another index of the modern and progressive character of their religion. By 2006, when I began more sustained fieldwork, university degrees were becoming more common among young women as well as men, and private schools of many sizes and pedagogical leanings had sprung up to meet a demand for quality education that the government and Isma‘ili educational systems could not fulfill.
