Two Monumental Red Fort Trials - Bahadur Shah Zafar To INA

Though the two trials took place almost nine decades apart, they draw historical interest both for their commonalities and contrasts. Both were designed to be show trials aimed at humiliating the Indian spirit as much as the accused; both trials were on charges of treason, and both arose in the backdrop of military failures that inspired spontaneous political movements.

Starting in March 1857, the First War of Indian Independence, began in Meerut and Barrackpore and raged through Lucknow, Kanpur, and Agra, until it was finally snuffed out in Delhi. Its end came in September of the same year with the surrender of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the symbolic figurehead of the revolt. At the age of 82, the emperor was feeble, commanded no power, and wielded authority limited only to the precincts of his crumbling palace. Yet, the mutineers found it fit to anoint the weakest emperor of a faded empire as their rallying emblem.

Bahadur Shah Zafar's Trial (ref. 1)

The proceedings in Bahadur Shah's case were really an inquisition that masqueraded as a trial. The emperor was charged with treason, to which he pleaded 'not guilty.' In the staged affair that followed, from 27 January 1858 till 9 March 1858, the prosecution made no attempt at fairness. In fact, it was declared at the very start of the trial that settled rules of evidence would not be followed and that documents would be tendered without authentication. The prosecutor cautioned that the evidence “may not strictly bear on the charges” and “technicalities” ought not to get in the way. The proceedings were conducted before a jury of military officers, who neither formed a court, nor a commission of inquiry, nor a military tribunal. At the end of the trial, there was no reasoned judgment pronounced, save for a verdict that found the 'titular Majesty of Delhi' guilty of 'all and every part of the charges.' The emperor's life was spared based on an understanding reached with Major William Hodson, who negotiated his surrender. No other sentence was passed, only his guilt was proclaimed.

Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal Emperor, dodged the gallows even before the trial began, but was stripped of his dignity. His plea for the life of some of his kin was rejected. Following the surrender, his young princes were arrested from Humayun's Tomb and were ferried across Delhi in a bullock cart, with Major Hodson trailing them on horseback. The streets were lined with mobs on either side. Close to Lal Darwaza, Hodson trotted ahead of the cart and shot the princes dead. Lal Darwaza has since come to be known as Khooni Darwaza. Bahadur Shah himself was exiled by the British Crown to far-off Burma, where he died in anonymity four years later. The path Zafar rode on his last journey out of his beloved Dilli is today appropriately named Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg.

Noted lawyer A.G. Noorani, in his book Indian Political Trials, points out that the proceedings against Bahadur Shah Zafar were vitiated by a fundamental legal flaw. Noorani argues, “Bahadur Shah was himself a sovereign.” Titular or not, he was the 'Majesty of Delhi' – an Emperor! He could not have been treated like a British subject and be subjected to the fiat of a British Court. Though this argument went largely untested in this 1858 Red Fort trial, its loose ends were picked up some 87 years later by a formidable legal team led by Bhulabhai Desai, who put up a gallant defense for the INA heroes in yet another trial at the Red Fort.

The INA Trial (ref. 1)

The unmistakable contrast in the defense of the INA trialists, when compared with that of Bahadur Shah Zafar, is the unapologetic defiance with which the charges were met, even though the outcome was believed to be pre-determined. The Mughal Emperor's defense was pleaded in part by Ghulam Abbas, who himself was called as a witness for the prosecution. In the INA trial, however, the officers were represented by doyens of the bar, with Bhulabhai Desai leading a team that included the likes of Tej Bahadur Sapru, Dr. Kailashnath Katju, and Asaf Ali. The Congress had picked up the cause and formed a Defense Committee that had Jawaharlal Nehru in its ranks, though he himself attended the trial on only two days. Asaf Ali, who had played a notable role in Bhagat Singh's trial a decade and a half earlier, was the convenor of the Defense Committee.

The INA officers facing court martial were Capt. Shah Nawaz Khan, Capt. P.K. Sahgal, and Lieutenant G.S. Dhillon. By coincidence or design, the officers in the dock happened to be a Muslim, a Hindu, and a Sikh, respectively. Like Bahadur Shah, they were charged with the Indian Penal Code's variant of treason – waging war against the King Emperor.

The trial witnessed Bhulabhai Desai's mastery over military and international law and his forensic eloquence at its highest. His foundational argument was that the Provisional Azad Hind Government was an organized 'State' with an international personality. The accused were distinguished officers of the Azad Hind Army, engaged in declared war between two independent sovereign states. Therefore, anything they did as military officers in the prosecution of war for their country under the Azad Hind Government was beyond the pale of British municipal law. In other words, they could not be tried by British judges or officers, be it in a British court or court martial.

Lt. D.C. Nag of the Legal Department of the INA was presented as a prosecution witness. In cross-examination, Desai had Lt. Nag depose in detail about the Azad Hind Bank, the Azad Hind Dal (which was in charge of civil administration), and quizzed him on the ceding of the Andaman & Nicobar Islands to the Provisional Government and the recognition that the Azad Hind Government in exile had received from Japan, Germany, Croatia, Italy, Thailand, the Philippines, and Burma. All of this to demonstrate that the INA was the army of the Azad Hind Government and that, like Britain, Germany, or Japan, it too had all the attributes of a 'State' with sovereign existence. Undoubtedly, these were compelling arguments that the last Mughal Emperor would have hoped to make.

The INA trial ended on the last day of 1945. Like Bahadur Shah, the lives of all three INA officers were spared, but this time with due civility and dignity. The reason for this transformed treatment was not colonial magnanimity but the overwhelming influence of the trial and the outpouring of support that the trialists received from beyond the walls of the Red Fort. In 1946, Nehru wrote of the trial, saying that no trial in India had attracted so much public attention or dealt with issues of such fundamental national importance as the INA trials. He noted that the legal issues were important, no doubt, “but behind the law there was something deeper and more vital, something that stirred the subconscious depths of the Indian mind. Those three officers and the Indian National Army became symbols of India fighting for her independence.” (ref. 2)

A legacy of revolt

In 1943, Subhash Chandra Bose is paid a visit to Bahadur Shah Zafar's grave in Burma. Reportedly, later at an INA parade in Rangoon, Netaji declared, “This parade is the first occasion when India's new revolutionary army is paying homage to the spirit of the supreme commander of India's first revolutionary army.” It was here that he gave the INA's rallying call: 'Dilli chalo!'

The trials of Bahadur Shah Zafar and the INA heroes, separated by nearly a century, embody two critical moments in India's long struggle for freedom. While the British sought to use these trials as instruments of humiliation and control, they ultimately fueled the very spirit of resistance they aimed to extinguish.

Unfortunately, in independent India neither Zafar nor the INA received their due. One of the couplets of the poet-emperor read “kitna hai bad-naseeb zafar dafn ke liye, do gaz zameen bhi na mili ku-e-yaar mein” which roughly translates to - how unlucky is Zafar! He does not have even two yards of land for his grave, in the land of the beloved. A plea to bring back Bahadur Shah Zafar's remains to India had been made to the office of the then President, Pranab Mukherjee. In a 2010 interview, Capt. Lakshmi Sahgal, the commander of INA's Rani Jhansi Regiment lamented the Nehru government's refusal to induct the INA soldiers into the Indian Army (ref. 3).

Nevertheless, these two Red-Fort trials not only marked the end of two distinct chapters in Indian history but also signaled the beginning of a new era. The legacy of these trials serves as enduring symbols that sowed the first seeds of our modern nationhood. It is only fitting that the venue of these trials is where the tricolour is unfurled every year on 15 August.

(The author is an advocate practicing in the High Court of Karnataka and Supreme Court of India. Views are personal.

References:

1. Indian Political Trials 1775 - 1947, AG Noorani, Oxford India Paperbacks, 2007

2. Foreword to Moti Ram, Two Historic Trials in Red Fort, Roxy Printing Press, New Delhi, 1946

3. Revisiting History with Captain Lakshmi, Aditya Chatterjee, Nazeef Mollah, The Colloquium (March 2010)