Indian National Army & Red Fort Trials

The Indian National Army occupies an unusual place in the story of India’s freedom. It never won a major battle against the British. Its largest campaign ended in retreat and disintegration. Yet within three years of its military collapse the same army had become a powerful political symbol that helped convince the British that their hold on the Indian armed forces—and therefore on India itself—was slipping. The public response to the Red Fort trials of 1945–46 transformed a defeated force into a catalyst for the final phase of the nationalist struggle. Understanding this paradox is essential for any serious study of the last years of the Raj.

This article reconstructs the full trajectory of the INA: its origins among prisoners of war in Southeast Asia, the decisive intervention of Subhas Chandra Bose, the military campaigns, the composition and ideology of the force, the drama of the Red Fort trials, and the larger political consequences that followed. The narrative pays equal attention to military events and to the shifting climate of opinion inside India.

The story began with the fall of Singapore in February 1942. Tens of thousands of Indian soldiers of the British Indian Army became prisoners of the Japanese. Captain Mohan Singh, an officer of the 14th Punjab Regiment, emerged as a leader among them. With Japanese encouragement he began organising an Indian volunteer force that would fight for independence rather than remain in captivity. The first INA was born out of a mixture of patriotism, resentment against racial discrimination in the British Indian Army, and the simple desire to escape the harsh conditions of the prison camps.

Early progress was uneven. Relations between Mohan Singh and the Japanese soured. By the end of 1942 the first INA had been largely disbanded. The project might have ended there had Subhas Chandra Bose not arrived in East Asia in May 1943. Bose had left India in January 1941, made his way to Germany, and eventually travelled by German and Japanese submarines to Sumatra. From there he flew to Tokyo and then to Singapore. His reputation as a radical nationalist who had challenged both the British and the Congress leadership preceded him. Within weeks he had revived and expanded the INA, given it a clearer political purpose, and established the Provisional Government of Free India (Azad Hind) in October 1943.

Bose’s leadership changed the character of the enterprise. He insisted that the INA must be an army of free Indians, not a Japanese auxiliary force. He recruited not only from prisoners of war but also from the large Indian civilian population of Southeast Asia—Tamil plantation workers, traders, and professionals in Malaya, Singapore and Burma. Women were organised into the Rani of Jhansi Regiment under Captain Lakshmi Swaminathan (later Lakshmi Sahgal). The army adopted a simple, secular greeting—“Jai Hind”—and a tricolour flag with the springing tiger. Bose’s speeches repeatedly emphasised unity across religious and regional lines. In a force that contained Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs in significant numbers, this emphasis was both idealistic and practical.

In November 1945 the British authorities decided to court-martial three INA officers—Shah Nawaz Khan, Prem Kumar Sahgal and Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon—on charges of treason and waging war against the King-Emperor. The venue chosen was the Red Fort in Delhi, a site heavy with Mughal and British symbolism. The decision proved to be one of the most serious political miscalculations of the late colonial period.

The trials attracted intense public attention. The Congress leadership, despite its earlier differences with Bose, took up the defence of the INA officers. Bhulabhai Desai, Tej Bahadur Sapru, Jawaharlal Nehru and others appeared for the accused. The legal argument centred on the status of the Provisional Government of Free India and the right of Indian soldiers to fight under its banner. The political argument was simpler: these men had fought for the freedom of their country.

Outside the court the trials became a mass cause. Students, workers and ordinary citizens demonstrated in cities across the subcontinent. The three accused—one Hindu, one Muslim, one Sikh—embodied a unity that the prosecution could not easily dismiss. Valuable publicity was given to the INA’s secular character and to Bose’s leadership. Even sections of the British Indian Army watched the proceedings with sympathy. When the three officers were convicted but their sentences were later remitted under public pressure, the moral victory belonged to the defendants and to the nationalist movement.

Further trials followed, yet the political damage had already been done. The British high command began to doubt the reliability of Indian troops in any future confrontation with the nationalist movement. Intelligence reports spoke of growing restlessness within the ranks. The Royal Indian Navy mutiny of February 1946, though not directly organised by former INA men, occurred in an atmosphere shaped by the trials and by the widespread feeling that Indian soldiers and sailors no longer owed automatic loyalty to the Raj.

The INA was never a mass army by the standards of the Second World War. At its peak it numbered around 40,000–45,000 men and women. Its importance lay less in size than in symbolism and in the social experiment it represented. Recruitment cut across the martial-race categories that the British had carefully maintained. The presence of a women’s regiment was radical for its time. Officers and soldiers shared a common mess in many units, an unusual practice in the old Indian Army. Bose’s insistence on discipline was strict, yet he also cultivated a direct, almost personal style of leadership that inspired intense loyalty.

Ideologically the INA combined nationalism with a vague but genuine social radicalism. Bose spoke of a strong, centralised state after independence, of scientific planning, and of the need to eradicate the social evils that had weakened India. The Provisional Government issued its own currency, postage stamps and propaganda. In the territories it briefly administered it attempted to present itself as a functioning government rather than a mere military formation. These efforts were limited by the realities of war, but they left a lasting impression on those who participated.

The INA’s military defeat did not translate into political irrelevance. On the contrary, the story of the army and the drama of the trials accelerated the British realisation that the old instruments of control were failing. The loyalty of the Indian Army had been the ultimate guarantee of British power in India. Once that loyalty appeared uncertain, the cost of remaining in India rose sharply. Officials in London and Delhi began to speak more openly of an early transfer of power.

Within the nationalist movement the INA experience complicated the moral narrative that the Congress had built around non-violence. Bose had chosen a different path—armed struggle with foreign assistance—yet his name and the names of his soldiers became part of the common stock of nationalist heroes. The Congress itself used the trials to mobilise public opinion while carefully maintaining its own preference for negotiated settlement. The result was a broadening of the emotional basis of the freedom struggle at a critical moment.

The INA also left a legacy inside independent India’s military culture. Many former INA officers and men were later absorbed into civilian life or, in some cases, into the new Indian armed forces. The memory of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment contributed to the gradual opening of greater roles for women in the military. Above all, the INA demonstrated that Indian soldiers could fight under an Indian political leadership for an Indian cause—an idea that had been systematically discouraged under British rule.