Before the arrival of the Aga Khan from Persia to British ruled India in the 19th century, Khojas retained many Hindu traditions, including a variation on the belief in the Dashavatara.

[11] The Hindu Lohanas from Sindh were converted to Nizārī Ismāʿīlism by Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Ṣadr al-Dīn belonged to a hereditary lineage of pīrs who served as leaders for the Khoja community as a deputy of the imām in Persia.

[12] At the end of the fifteenth century, the imām in Persia, al-Mustanṣir bi-llāh II, abolished the pīrs as a source of religious authority, and replaced them with a book called Pandiyāt-i jawānmardī, which was then translated into Gujarātī.

[14] In 1845, Ḥasan ʿAlī Shāh aka Āghā Khān I moved to India due to conflict with the Qajar dynasty in Persia.

For centuries the Khojas had been a self governing community with nominal allegiance to a distant Nizārī imām in Persia, but the newly arrived Āghā Khān sought to interfere in their internal affairs.

[12] In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Khojas were under pressure from the Āghā Khāns as well as Muslim and Hindu fundamentalist movements to alter their religion.

By the time of the imām Shāh Karīm al-Ḥusaynī Āghā Khān IV (r. 1957-2025), the Khojas had been integrated into a transnational Ismāʿīlī community with a focus on the Qurʾān and literacy of Islamic concepts.

[16] Khojas who follow Twelver Shia Islam and have large communities in Pakistan, India, East Africa, North America and the United Kingdom.

[17] Traditionally, Khoja men wore a pāghaḍī (loose white turban), chol (double breasted jacket), suthaḷī (trousers) or dhotiyuṁ (dhoti), and pointed shoes.

Khoja women wear a tight blouse or short armed jacket, a ghāghro skirt as a lower garment, and an oḍhaṇī (veil) on the head.