Aga Khan Palace

Aga Khan Palace Review

As you enter Pune from Aurangabad (northeast of the city), on the Ahmednagar Road—on the outskirts of the city, before the Mula River—the belching trucks and rushing traffic may distract you from noticing a tranquil patch of greenery on the right side of the road. This is the Aga Khan Palace, also known as the Gandhi National Memorial Society. During India's freedom movement, Mahatma Gandhi, his wife Kasturba Gandhi, the poet and patriot Sarojini Naidu, and Mira Ben spent periods of captivity here. Gandhi was imprisoned here from 1942 to 1944. The palace, which is both French and Muslim in design, once belonged to Prince Aga Khan, who donated it and seven of the 19 acres that surround it, to the government. Today it's a low-key national museum. You may wander through the palace and view the tiny rooms hung with photographs where these leaders were interred, or simply admire the pleasant gardens. Also on display are the few personal belongings of the Gandhis. You can even purchase some roughly woven cotton (khadi) cloth—khadi was a symbol of the independence movement; leaders donned the simple homespun garments to show they were shunning Western ways and to protest the taxes they had to pay for Indian cotton garments. A samadhi or cenotaph honors the Mahatma's wife, who died here during her imprisonment in 1944. The Aga Khan palace is a bit far from the city center—you need to make a special side trip, by car, to view this memorial.