Shah Nawaz Khan

Shah Nawaz Khan led Indian National Army forces into Kohima and Imphal, then stood trial for treason at the Red Fort. A death sentence, commuted at the last stage, cleared the way for a long career in Parliament instead.

Must Know

• Shah Nawaz Khan was born on 24 January 1914, in Matore village, Rawalpindi district, now in Pakistan.
• He trained at the Prince of Wales Royal Indian Military College, and was commissioned into the 14th Punjab Regiment of the British Indian Army.
• Japanese forces captured him as a prisoner of war after the fall of Singapore in 1942.
• He joined the Indian National Army in 1943, after hearing Subhas Chandra Bose’s speeches to Indian prisoners of war.
• He led INA forces into North-Eastern India, briefly seizing Kohima and Imphal alongside Japanese forces.
• In December 1944, he was appointed commander of the INA’s 1st Division at Mandalay.
• After the war, the British tried him, along with Prem Sahgal and Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon, at the Red Fort. The trial began on 5 November 1945, on charges of “waging war against the King Emperor.”
• He was sentenced to death. The Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army later commuted this to cashiering, meaning dismissal from service.

Good to Know

• His defence team at the Red Fort Trial included Bhulabhai Desai, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru. They argued the accused were legitimate soldiers of a recognised government, not traitors.
• During the trial, Khan testified about discrimination in the British Indian Army. No Indian officer had ever commanded a full division, he said, and only one had commanded a brigade.
• After the trial, Khan declared he would follow Mahatma Gandhi’s path of non-violence, and joined the Indian National Congress.
• In 1946, he accompanied Gandhi and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan to Noakhali, to help restore peace after communal riots.
• He was elected to the Lok Sabha from Meerut four times: in 1951, 1957, 1962, and 1971.
• In 1956, the government set up the Shah Nawaz Committee, chaired by Khan, to investigate the circumstances of Subhas Chandra Bose’s disappearance and reported death.
• He died on 9 December 1983, in Delhi. He was buried with full state honours near the Red Fort, the same site where he had once stood trial.

Test Yourself

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1. Shah Nawaz Khan was tried at the Red Fort in 1945-46 alongside which two other INA officers?

Bagha Jatin and Barindra Kumar Ghosh

Prem Sahgal and Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon

Prafulla Chaki and Khudiram Bose

Rajendra Lahiri and Roshan Singh

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Great to Know

• Khan’s trial deliberately paired one Muslim, one Hindu, and one Sikh defendant. The British hoped this would divide public opinion by community, but it had the opposite effect.
• His journey from “traitor” to elected Member of Parliament took just a few years. It mirrors the wider collapse of British authority that the Red Fort Trials helped trigger.
• His family has a well-known modern connection: his cousin’s son is the actor Shah Rukh Khan.
• Khan’s later work chairing the Shah Nawaz Committee shows how the INA’s own veterans went on to shape how independent India recorded its own history.