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Aga Khan III Gave Speeches in Calcutta and Bombay - 1904-03-30

Posted March 17th, 2009 by heritage
in
Date: 
Wednesday, 1904, March 30
Location: 

March 30, 1904 - Sir Sultan Mohamed Shah, Aga Khan III gave a Budget Speech in the Council of the Governor General in Calcutta, where in He mentioned India to be alert and to be prepared and he also mentioned the importance of instituting an Imperial Cadet Corps.
He said '..On the contrary, I am certain that the loyal and patriotic Princes who assembled last year at Delhi would be only too eager to adopt such a proposal. The whole scheme of Imperial Service troops was originally an experiment. If the experiment has been successful, why should it not be extended? The so-called armies of the Chiefs would be replaced by men who would add to the glory of their rulers and who would be worthy of fighting by the side of the flower of the British Army...'(Aziz; 216)

Sir Sultan Mohamed Shah, Aga Khan III also gave a speech at the Muslim Educational Conference in Bombay. After welcoming the delegates, he mentioned the significance of the conference and among other topics, he also mentioned the pessimism in the Muslim world.

He said, 'Another reason why we require a Central University where our individuality may not be lost for the sake of turning out a mechanical imitation of a European is absound; we have a religious past so full of heroic figures that direct contact and communion with them could not but improve and give our youth early in life that sense of the necessity for the self-sacrifice, for truthfulness, and for independence of character without which instruction and knowledge are, from the national point of view, worthless'

Mowlana Sultan Mohamed Shah also mentioned the importance of the Muslim history and said, ' Yet Muslim history is so full of heroic characters or men, who lived and moved very much as the Muslims of today in their home life do, that contact with them could not but ennoble. Muavia and Walid are as statesmen not eclipsed either by Caesar or Augustus; and where can you find in the annals of any dynasty, whether European or Asiatic, a more saintly sovereign than Omar Ibn Abdul Azia or a more exemplary Emperor than Hisham Ibn Abdul Malik? Direct contact with such great characters could not but strengthen the character of our youth and thus the character of our people...' (Dumasia; 184-188)

person_place_reference: 
H.H. Sir Sultan Mohamed Shah, Aga Khan III
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Speech

The True Purpose of Education - Speech at the Muslim Educational Conference 1904-03-30

Posted February 13th, 2022 by librarian-hd
in
Sir Sultam Muhammad Shah Aga Khan III K.C.B.E
Source: 
iis.ac.uk

The assembly to his mind represented all that was best in the Muslims of India. It expressed that awakening sense of their
fallen position after a glorious past; it expressed dissatisfaction with their present intellectual, moral and social position; and it expressed the longing desire to regain the intellectual freedom which Muslims enjoyed during the first two centuries of their era. Pessimism was not the force, said the Aga Khan, that had drawn them there that day. Pessimism in the Muslim world was nothing new:

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