The ideas of his liberal-minded tutor Ernest Barker, a meeting with Sarojini Naidu and the patronage of Maulana Mohammad Ali, who visited London during his stay in England, played a role in shaping his ideas.

At the call of Mohammad Ali, he returned to India to teach at Jamia Millia Islamia but apparently never became a regular member of its staff.

When the non-co-operation movement was called off in 1922, he accepted an appointment as a Reader, and almost immediately afterwards as Professor, at the newly chartered Aligarh Muslim University.

He admired Jawaharlal Nehru and donated a considerable part of his income to the Congress Party.

In the forties, his interest in Marxism heightened and in 1952 he presented, in a remarkable piece, his introduction to a reprint of volume II of Elliot and Dowson's The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians, which was an interpretation of early medieval India deeply influenced by Marxist ideas.

He visited Paris to represent his country at the UN General Assembly, followed by a trip to Peking (now Beijing) in 1952 on the first goodwill mission from India to the People's Republic of China.