Place · Gandhi detention palace · India
Aga Khan Palace, Pune
Also known as 1944), Aga Khan Palace, Aga Khan Palace — Pune, Gandhi's internment (1942, Gandhi's internment (1942-1944), Pune
The 1892 Aga Khan Palace at Yerwada, Pune, Maharashtra — the Italianate palace built by Sultan Aga Khan III (ruled 1877-1957) as a famine-relief employment project for Pune's residents during the 1890s drought. The palace was Mahatma Gandhi's detention site from 9 August 1942 to 6 May 1944 during the Quit India Movement, when the British government interned Gandhi, his wife Kasturba, his secretary Mahadev Desai and other Congress leaders. Kasturba Gandhi died in detention at the palace on 22 February 1944 after a heart attack and asthma complications; Mahadev Desai died on 15 August 1942, six days after their arrival. Their samadhis are in the palace grounds. The 1969 Aga Khan Palace National Monument designation preserved the complex. The palace is now the Gandhi National Memorial. ASI protection since 1969.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 18.553, 73.901
Connections (3)
- Samadhi atMohandās Karamchand Gandhi
Gandhi, Kasturba, Mahadev Desai and Sarojini Naidu were interned in the Aga Khan Palace from August 1942. Desai, his secretary of twenty-five years, died within a week; Kasturba died there in February 1944 after forty-two years of marriage, with Gandhi refusing the penicillin the doctors wanted to inject because he distrusted it — a decision he defended and was tormented by. Both are buried in the grounds.
- Site withinPune
Aga Khan Palace, Pune sits inside Pune and forms one piece of its layered sacred, royal or civic landscape. The city carries this entry as one of the sites that make its urban fabric legible — a shrine, monument, institution or craft tradition specifically anchored at this location — and the city's broader history reads better when the stop is seen in its context rather than in isolation. The surrounding streets, markets and other heritage ensembles around it belong to the same single city.
- Site withinPune/ Poona
The Aga Khan Palace at Yerwada sits within Pune, Maharashtra, 7 kilometres from the Pune city centre. The 1892 Italianate palace was Gandhi's detention site from 9 August 1942 to 6 May 1944 during the Quit India Movement, where Kasturba Gandhi died on 22 February 1944 and Mahadev Desai died on 15 August 1942. The 1969 National Monument designation ties the palace to Pune's broader colonial-era civic heritage.
On these journeys
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi — Porbandar to Rajghat (1869–1948)
- The mass movements — Champaran to Quit India
Sources
Wikipedia, “Aga Khan Palace”. M.K. Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa; The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Publications Division).
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