Indian National Army Trials: Heroes Not Traitors
The second world war, as the name suggests, was an event that influenced not only the powers that directly took part in it but the entire globe in every which way. The war that was fought on a colossal level was a monstrous event in the history of humankind. However, it played an indirect, but very important role in the liberation of a large number of imperialist colonies. India was one among the many colonies of England. Even though Britain and its allies came out as the victors of the war, the military and monetary loses suffered by the imperialist powers were too heavy to let them enjoy the same master stature in their colonies as they did prior to the war. Being in an extremely vulnerable state, they were too weak to handle any kind of revolt or mass movement in any of their colonies. One such mass movement that took place in India was the INA trials.
Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army was captured by the British after the war. Over 23,000 INA soldiers were taken into custody and charged with treason. The army comprised the Indian war prisoners in the German jails. The soldiers were found guilty of “waging war against the King-Emperor”. For the British government these were the traitors who could not be left without being persecuted. However, for the masses of the Indian state, they came across as the real heroes and slogans like “Chaalis crore-on ki awaaz!
Sehgal-Dhillon-Shah Nawaz!” (The population of India was 40 crore i.e. 400 million at that time) became prevalent.
In November 1945, the trails began. Another unique aspect of these trials was that, they did not take place in a court but The Red Fort. The Red Fort that was regarded as the centre of political dominance as that was where the power of a number of thrones commenced and ended. Thus, the imperialists chose The Red Fort to showcase their political and power superiority. Three soldiers namely, Prem Kumar Sehgal (a Hindu), Shah Nawaz Khan (a Muslim) and Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon (a Sikh) were arraigned for the show trial. This choice of representatives, though with an intention to instil a sense of fear and imperialist dominance over all the Indians, stimulated the feeling of nationalism among all Indian and made people from all the religions stand in solidarity for one divine cause of freedom from bondage and shackles of imperialist rule.
The soldiers were defended by the members of Congress in the court. The defence committee was headed by Bulabhai Desai. Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru was one of the defence lawyers and made frequent appearances at the historic trials that took place at Red Fort.
The results were preordained and thus the three ‘traitors’ were pronounced guilty of the charges that they were held for. However, their sentences were later commuted and all of them were released due to the relentless efforts and intelligence of Indian Army’s Commander-in-Chief Auchinleck.
The soldiers came out of the courts, not as traitors, but as heroes that the country needed the most at that time. This monumental event was soon followed by another monumental event and that was the Independence of India.
After so many years of Independence maybe the state demands another such movement of solidarity where all Indians stand with and not against each other and break free from the shackles of regionalism, communalism and all such evils.
