Sunni Bohra
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Sunni Bohras or Sunni Vohras are a Sunni Muslim community in Sindh province of Pakistan and Gujarat state of India. Sharing a large number of cultural similarities with the Dawoodi Bohras, they are often confused as Bohras. However, they are different in the fact that they are Sunni following the Hanafi fiqh. The community in Pakistan uses the surname "Vohra" and not Bohra and are commonly known as Sunni Vohras. A very small number of families use the slightly different spelling of "Vora" as their surname. An overwhelming majority of the Gujrati speaking Vohra community of Pakistan, lives in the port city of Karachi. They are well organized and carry out their activities through their own Karachi based Association named "Charotar Muslim Anjuman",( "Charotar" being the name of the region in the Indian state of Gujarat where their ancestors are originally from).
Traditionally, they have been traders and most of them have the suffix 'wala' in their last name to designate either their ancestral trade or their ancestral village. Many Sunni Bohras/Vohras are educated professionals with a large number of bankers, doctors and engineers among them.
Sunni Bohras/Vohras have large communities in the major cities of Gujarat such as Ahmedabad and Surat as well as in smaller towns such as Patan, Himmatnagar, Visnagar, etc. There is a large community also based in Mumbai. After independence, some of the members of the community migrated to Pakistan, and there is a 6,500 strong community in Karachi. Recently, many Sunni Bohras/Vohras from Ahmedabad, Surat, Karachi and Bombay have migrated to the USA, Canada, Australia and the Gulf countries forming small pockets of communities throughout many cities (numbering upwards of 500 people in Chicago, IL).
[edit] Organizations
- Patni Sunnat Jamaat, Surat
- Charotar Muslim Anjuman, Karachi
