Aga Khan - a shoplifter??

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“Relentlessly was I held on the chain” — Aga Khan <p> The strict discipline to which, at the age of eight, the new Imam was subjected was rigid, and even the little free time that he was allowed was subject to invasion by followers who brought him gifts, etc. In return they received thanks, blessings, and benedictions — but as a child he resented the fact that they came during the small amount of free time allowed by the curriculum and never, never during lesson time, records Aga Khan in his Memoirs (p. 12). <p> The young prince grew up feeling a deep frustration with “the typical and unchanging pattern” of his life, and expressed them in these words: <p>“There was no room for a holiday for me, a month, a fortnight, even a week off the chain; at the most a rare day. And relentlessly was I held on the chain.”<br> Narrating an incident in which he and his cousin were caught stealing books from a book shop in Bombay, he writes (p. 20): “But there was one small impediment: my mother allowed me no pocket money.”