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Sultan Muhammad Shah, better known as Aga Khan III, succeeded his father upon his death in 1885. He was raised not only as the leader of the Ismaili Islam sect, but also as a child of the world, indoctrinated into European practices by his Persian mother. This duality, historian ST Lokhanwala notes in Islamic Law and the Ismaili Community (1967), shaped his persona. A charismatic socialite, Aga Khan III moved with ease through circles of royalty, intellectuals, and the global elite. At lavish gatherings, he was often seen sipping wine. When asked if he was allowed to do so under Muslim Law, the “Aga Khan would tell his guests, ‘I am so Holy, when I drink wine it turns to water,” Lokhanwala writes.
The third Aga Khan’s leadership unfolded during a pivotal era in Indian history. He came to power just a decade after the 1857 Revolt and remained a significant figure well into India’s post-independence years. As journalist Naoroji Dumasia recalls in The Aga Khan and His Ancestors (2008), Aga Khan III belonged to no person or nation. His grandson and successor, Aga Khan IV was similarly a transnational figure, jet setting across the globe until his death earlier this year.
“First and foremost, he is an Indian patriot, whose services to his homeland are unquestioned,” writes Dumasia. Although the Aga Khan was born and raised in India (primarily in Bombay, Poona and Mahabaleshwar), his upbringing and later life was shaped by British cultural norms.
Dumasia argues, the Aga Khan was a world icon, a transnational figure whose end goal was neither the liberation of India nor the promulgation of the British Empire. What he wanted, more than anything else, was his own security in standing, and that of his Ismaili Muslim following.
The Aga Khan family’s relationship with Britain began in the turbulent backdrop of 19th-century Afghanistan, where their ambitions and British imperial interests converged. As Farhad Daftary recounts in The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (2021), the British conferred the title of Aga Khan upon Aga Khan I, underscoring the strategic partnership that followed.
Fleeing Persia, Aga Khan I aligned himself with the British in Afghanistan, offering to seize Herat on their behalf. Though this plan was thwarted by the Afghan uprising of 1842, he remained useful to the British cause.
His loyalty did not go unnoticed. When the Persian government sought his extradition from British India, London refused, instead relocating him to Calcutta. By the time he settled in Bombay, his relationship with the British had been solidified. As a New York Times article from 1923 notes, “The Aga Family in Bombay became the most useful and loyal ally of the British Government, and one of its bulwarks at the time of the terrible Sepoy mutiny and Hindu insurrection of 1857.”
This bond became hereditary. Aga Khan II maintained the alliance, as did his son Aga Khan III and grandson Aga Khan IV.
Aga Khan III was raised in an Anglicised environment, educated in the finest British institutions, and moving with ease through the social circles of the Empire. From his earliest years, his upbringing reflected the deep ties his family had cultivated with British authority, shaping the man he would become.
Born in Karachi in 1877 and installed as the Nizari Imam at the age of eight, he grew up in a world that blended Indian grandeur with British influence. “I was petted and spoiled,” he later recalled in The Memoirs of Aga Khan, treated as the “petit prince chéri” in the vast family estate that spanned entire sections of Bombay, an enclosed world of palaces, gardens, fountains, and even a small zoo. His father, deeply entrenched in British social life, entertained the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) with accounts of tiger hunts and kept an extensive stable of horses, a passion Aga Khan III would inherit.
His education was unmistakably European in orientation. He had no Hindi tutors, only those for English (one Englishman, two Irishmen), French, Persian, and Arabic. He was taught tennis and horse riding, pastimes associated with the British gentry. “It was inevitable that during my minority the British Raj and its representatives in Bombay should take a close interest in my welfare and my upbringing,” he wrote in The Memoirs of Aga Khan (1945), noting that he grew up at a time when British paternalism in India was at its peak.
This closeness extended beyond mere administration. The Duke and Duchess of Connaught took a personal interest in Aga Khan III, visiting him frequently for tea and inviting him to their home.
Yet the Aga Khan was also aware of how British-Indian relations were shifting. “Had social life and relations between British and Indians continued to be as they were in the eighties, I greatly doubt whether political bitterness would have developed to the extent it did,” he observed, lamenting the growing distance between the two communities in the 1890s. What had once been “cordial and confident” relationships gave way to “frigidity,” sowing the seeds of later tensions.
Still, Aga Khan III remained deeply immersed in the British world. He studied at Eton and Cambridge, moved through elite London circles, and was personally nominated to the Marlborough Club by King Edward VII.
This British affinity was not just personal but political. His relationship with the Crown brought immense benefits to his followers under British rule in India and Africa. He dined with Queen Victoria at Windsor, attended the coronation of Edward VII in 1902 as a personal guest, and was honoured as a Knight Commander of the British Empire and a Knight of the Grand Cross. During World War I, he travelled to Europe to offer his services to the British and urged his followers to do the same. By 1916, he was granted the status of a first-class ruling prince, despite lacking a territorial principality.
His view of the British Empire remained largely benevolent. In 1908, he declared: “British rule—not only titular supremacy but a vigorous force permeating every branch of administration—is an absolute necessity… Great Britain’s mission in the East is not and never has been one of force, but of peace and liberty.”
By the time World War II erupted, Aga Khan III was in Switzerland, once again calling on his followers to support the British cause. For a man who had been raised in an Anglicised manner and who had been embraced by British aristocracy, such loyalty was, perhaps, inevitable. As Professor Gita Dharampal of Gandhi Research Foundation tells indianexpress.com in an interview, “He was anglicised, but when you’re in a minority you have to find ways to survive and establish yourself to the benefit of your community.”
Aga Khan III stood at the intersection of faith, politics and empire. As Dumasia observed, the Aga Khan was a “direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad and spiritual head of millions of Ismailians, political leader of eighty millions of Indian Muslims, statesman with an international reputation, prince of men, prince of sportsmen, and prince by hereditary right.” His profound stature in the Muslim world was both inherited and earned, “grounded on the position held by His Highness as the acknowledged leader of an illustrious race and on his character as a man.”
But Aga Khan III was also a pragmatist, a leader who, like many Indian princes, recognised that a close relationship with the British could be leveraged for the benefit of his followers. He sought to challenge colonial perceptions of Muslims as “narrow-minded fanatics,” an image that had hardened after the Rebellion of 1857. By cultivating his ties with the Raj, he positioned himself as a mediator, one who could advocate for Muslim political and social interests within the imperial structure.
According to Dharampal, Aga Khan III was “using politics also to strengthen his own community of the Israelis, but also to get them integrated into the Muslim fold.”
His early life had instilled in him a belief in the possibility of Hindu-Muslim unity. “For my early environment was one of the widest tolerance,” he recalled in his memoirs. Yet his first real political test came in 1893 — during the communal riots in Bombay. At just sixteen, he was called upon to quell the violence, issuing strict orders to his followers to stay out of the conflict. The response was immediate, helping to restore calm in the city. Both British officials and Indian leaders thanked him for his intervention. It was the first time he exercised his influence on a large scale, and it foreshadowed the role he would play in later decades.
In a 1910 interview, he described Hindus and Muslims as “two arms of a nation,” whose cooperation was necessary for India’s future under the British Crown. “It was the sacred duty of both sides,” he argued, “to work whole-heartedly, and with single devotion, for promoting measures that would secure the lasting welfare of the country.”
His friendship with Gopal Krishna Gokhale reinforced his belief in reform, but it also exposed him to Congress’ growing majoritarianism. “Gokhale and I struck up a friendship which ended only with his death,” he wrote. “His influence on my thoughts and outlook was probably considerable.” But as Congress radicalised, he became disillusioned, finding it increasingly unwilling to accommodate Muslim demands. “The pressure of Hindu extremism was too strong,” he wrote in his memoir.
By 1906, Aga Khan III had come to the conclusion that Muslims needed an independent political voice. He was instrumental in founding the All-India Muslim League, arguing that Muslims should be recognised as “a nation within a nation” with statutory guarantees for their rights. The Morley-Minto reforms of 1909 granted Muslims separate electorates — an achievement that solidified their political identity but also deepened communal divisions.
In his 1931 meeting with Mahatma Gandhi at the Ritz Hotel, he made an emotional appeal: “Were he now to show himself a real father to India’s Muslims, they would respond by helping him, to the utmost of their ability, in his struggle for India’s independence.” Gandhi’s response was cold: “I cannot in truth say that I have any feelings of paternal love for Muslims,” the memoir states. Aga Khan III was stunned. “This was a cold douche at the outset; and the chilly effect of it pervaded the rest of our conversation.”
By the 1930s, he had abandoned any hope that Congress could represent Muslims fairly. The demand for separate Muslim representation had already been enshrined in British policy, but now, it was clear that the future of Indian Muslims would not be determined within Congress’ vision of a united India.
Aga Khan III’s political instincts had always been shaped by the desire to balance Muslim interests within the imperial order. His relationship with the British was strategic, aimed at securing protections for his community. His rejection of Congress, however, was driven by something deeper, a conviction that Indian Muslims needed political autonomy, not just as a minority, but as a distinct nation.
Aga Khan III’s views on Indian nationalism were shaped by the unique position he occupied, both as a Muslim leader deeply embedded in the British imperial structure and as a pragmatist who sought to safeguard the interests of his followers in an era of seismic political change.
His early political engagements had been shaped by the moderate nationalism of figures like Sir Pheroze Shah Mehta and Badruddin Tyabji. “From 1892… I took the standpoint of moderate Indian nationalism of that time,” he recalled. But his nationalism was never in conflict with his loyalty to the British Crown, which he saw as a stabilising force. The British recognised his value, granting him in 1916 the rank and precedence of a First-Class Ruling Prince of the Bombay Presidency.
His support for the British extended beyond formal titles. During World War I, he personally visited Indian troops in the Middle East, rallying them to the imperial cause. “I exhorted them to do their duty, to fight loyally for the King-Emperor, the Sovereign to whose service they were bound by oath,” he wrote. But while his allegiance to the Raj was steadfast, his vision for India’s future was not that of the centralised democracy that Congress envisioned.
At the first Round Table Conference in 1930, he was elected chairman of the British-Indian section, representing all Indian delegates except the ruling princes. He saw the fundamental Hindu-Muslim divide as irreconcilable within the Congress-led push for a unified India. He believed that a federated India, rather than a unitary one, was the only way to ensure Muslim political security.
The sticking point remained Congress, which refused to accept the compromise.
By the second Round Table Conference in 1931, the ideological chasm had only widened. “They held stubbornly to their one-nation theory, which we knew to be historically insupportable,” he wrote. He argued that “before the coming of the British Raj, the various regions of the Indian subcontinent had never been one country,” and that when the Raj ended, “that unity could not be preserved.” The Hindu delegates, however, refused to accept this position.
His final major political intervention came in 1934, when he helped draft the Joint Memorandum, a landmark document that, for the first time, united India’s various communities behind a single demand for self-government. It proposed transferring nearly all powers to Indian hands, except for certain final sanctions reserved for the British. But Congress disowned the memorandum, and with that, the British government rejected it as well. The resulting Government of India Act of 1935, he believed, was fatally flawed. “Its grossest failing was that it offered no foundation on which to build.” This failure marked his departure from Indian politics.
His detachment from Congress-aligned nationalist movements was also shaped by a deep strategic concern: unlike other Muslim leaders, he lacked a territorial base. The collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1922 only reinforced this insecurity, severing the last link to a centralised Muslim authority. Given his personal connections with British leaders, he likely felt that imperial rule provided the best protection for his community.
The Aga Khan Palace, a sprawling estate in Pune, serves as a metaphor for his duality. Initially built for social purposes, it functioned as a hub for local charity, employing community members for its upkeep. “People from the local communities would come and work there,” notes Dharampal, emphasising its role as “a place of employment” rather than a personal residence for Aga Khan III.
During the 1942 Quit India Movement, the palace’s purpose shifted starkly. With British consent it became a jail for freedom fighters, including Gandhi and Sarojini Naidu. “The British probably felt that, given their amicable relations with him, this out-of-the-way location was ideal,” Dharampal observes, adding that the detention “must have been with his compliance; I don’t think he was against his will”.
The palace thus mirrors his legacy, a space of charity co-opted for political containment, much like Aga Khan III himself: a bridge between worlds who could not escape their contradictions.
Aga Khan III’s nationalism was not one of defiance but of negotiation, not of revolution but of adaptation. His vision for India was one of Muslim autonomy within a federal framework under the British Crown. That vision was never realized. By the time of independence, his political relevance in India had faded. But his legacy endured, not as a firebrand nationalist, but as an imperial statesman who sought, in his own way, to shape the course of history.
