General Shah Nawaz and Shahrukh Khan of the Azadi Indian Army

Before knowing about General Shah Nawaz you should also know:

Shah Rukh Khan is the grandson of General Shah Nawaz, the well-known film star of the Indian film industry. Latif Fatima was the adopted daughter of General Shah Nawaz who was married to Mir Taj Muhammad, a Pakhtun soldier of the Azad India Army, with whom she had an only son known to the world as King Khan.

General Shah Nawaz’s struggle from violence to non-violence

Now coming to the real story, before which it is important to mention that the Azad Hind Army, which had reached 43 thousand, was led by a Punjabi, Pindiwal.

General Shah Nawaz was born on January 24, 1914 in Matur, a village in Tehsil Kahota of Rawalpindi district. His father Captain Sardar Tikka Khan was also in the army.

In 1935, he was commissioned at the Prince Wales Indian Military College, Dera Dun. In the Second World War, the Japanese army captured a large number of British soldiers, including General Shah Nawaz, on the Singapore front.

In 1943, through Subhash Chandra Bose, the soldiers who were forming a government-in-exile at that time and were fighting an armed struggle for India’s independence, and whose views were inspired by General Shah Nawaz, also rebelled and joined the Azad Indian Army. Joined.

A book ‘Subhash Babu Ke Saathi’ published in 1946 by Imdad Sabri which is available on Rekhta has details about General Shah Nawaz on page 108 while his own book ‘INA & Neta Ji’ also mentions Azad Hind. The entire story of the army has been fabricated, according to which he belonged to a military family in Rawalpindi.

His uncle was a member of the Punjab Assembly, Captain Shah Nawaz was posted in the Punjab Regiment on the recommendation of superior officers during the Malaya battle.

After his release from Japanese captivity, he joined the Azad Indian Army of General Mohan Singh. He was assigned the rank of lieutenant colonel and posted in the military training camp school of Azad Hind. Later he was appointed Chief of General Staff.

He used to tell the soldiers under him that the motto of the free army is freedom in which the Japanese are helping us. It is the duty of every Indian to fight to get rid of British rule. No soldier should show cowardice that would expose us to the Japanese.

In India, if a Japanese soldier disrespects a woman or an elderly person in front of you, forbid him, if he does not obey, shoot him too, our fight is for the honor and safety of India and not for the Japanese. ‘

When Subhash Chandra Bose sent his troops to India via Burma, he handed over the command of the army to General Shah Nawaz, saying that it was the best way to pay tribute to General Shah Nawaz’s patriotism and war policies because this General It was Shah Nawaz who trained thousands of ordinary Indians in the independent Indian army.

The war began on 23 October 1943 when the total strength of the Azad Indian Army was 43,000, including 23,000 civilians and 20,000 soldiers, divided into Gandhi Brigade, Nehru Brigade, Azad Brigade, Subhash Brigade and Rani of Jhansi Regiment. I was done.

Subhash Brigade was also led by Major General Mohammad Zaman Kayani, a Pindiwall, while Brigadier Habibur Rahman from Panjiri village of Bhimbar was also included in this army.

In this way, three pothoharis were the Karta dhartas of this army. The army entered the Indian areas bordering Burma, Manipur, Imphal, Kohma fronts in Nagaland became the battlefield.

In the early days of the war, they achieved great success and at two places forced the British army to retreat, but then their advance was halted due to lack of interest on the part of the Japanese, lack of supplies of arms and rations.

General Shah Nawaz writes in his diary that: 15 July 1944 our soldiers are dying of hunger and some people are committing suicide, the Japanese are not helping.

Despite this disorganization, the Azad Indian Army continued to resist for almost two years. At the end of the war, 16 thousand soldiers were captured. On May 13, 1945, General Shah Nawaz was also arrested.

Along with him, Gurbakhsh Singh Dhillon and Prem Singh, who were the top officers of his army, all of them were court-martialled in the Red Fort in which Jawaharlal Nehru was among the lawyers of the Azad India Army.

The British government put an end to atrocities on the common soldiers, they were imprisoned with hard labor, they were given the job of cleaning drains and collectors in Rangoon and were not even allowed to correspond with their relatives.

On this, Jawaharlal Nehru warned the British government and said, ‘About 25,000 Indian soldiers, most of whom were Sikhs and Muslims, joined the Japanese after leaving Singapore and formed the Indian National Army.

‘These people were on the wrong track but they did what they did out of patriotism. It would be a sad tragedy if they were mistreated and executed. The British government should give evidence of broad-mindedness.’

The Congress formed a Defense Committee to defend the independent Indian army. The British set up a military court in the Red Fort, which held open hearings to make the common people hate the atrocities of the Indian Army. However, after two years of trial, all the arrested military officers were released.

One of the reasons for this was Britain’s decision to withdraw from India early and the second reason was the strike by Indian Navy and Air Force personnel to show solidarity with them, which proved so effective that there was a threat of mutiny in the army. Lord Mountbatten took a guarantee from Jawaharlal Nehru only on the condition that none of them would be given a job in the army after independence. Allama Mashkari of the Khaksart movement was also in the forefront of the movement for release.

Why did General Shah Nawaz not come to Pakistan?

It is surprising that the dreamer of independent India was first inspired by Subhash Chandra Bose, rebelled against the British army and joined the Indian Army and when he could not achieve his goal through this means, he joined Gandhi’s army. Non-violence became part of the movement.

In both places the goal was freedom. The important honor also came in this part of the independence movement that after independence, when there was an opportunity to hoist the Indian flag instead of the British flag at the Red Fort, the choice fell on him.

General Shah Nawaz Khan became so close to Gandhi that when Gandhi arrived there to restore peace and order after the bloody riots in Bengal in 1946, he was accompanied by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Shah Nawaz.

Later, on Nehru’s request, Shah Nawaz joined the Congress. Although his wife and children were still in Pakistan, the two sons and his wife later came to him in Delhi.

In the 1952 elections, he was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time from Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. He became a member of the Lok Sabha for four terms, during which he served as Parliamentary Secretary and Minister of various departments.

During the 1965 India-Pakistan war, his son Mehmood participated in the war on behalf of the Pakistan Army, on which the opposition demanded that he be removed from the government, but Lal Bahadur Shastri said that he was the hero of our freedom.

He had left-wing views. He was a supporter of agrarian reforms and fair distribution of land in India. When he demanded a separate personal law for religious minorities living in India, he was defeated in the 1967 elections.

When the Indian National Congress split, he supported Indira Gandhi.

In 1971, he became a Member of Parliament again due to the Poverty Macao Campaign. He lost to the Janata Party in the 1977 elections and never made it to the Lok Sabha again, but he remained the president of his party’s Congress wing ‘Siva Dal’ until his death. .

He died in 1983. His role was played by Kunal Kapoor in the 2017 film ‘Raagdesh’ on Subhash Chandra Bose. General Shah Nawaz Khan had three sons and three daughters.

A daughter was adopted. Mahmood Nawaz, Akbar Nawaz, Ajmal Nawaz among the sons, while Latif Fatima was with him in Delhi, who was the mother of Shah Rukh Khan. The other two daughters were in Pakistan and their marriages took place in Pakistan.

A mistake that needs to be corrected

When Lt. Gen. Zaheerul Islam became DGISI, Pakistan’s well-known defense analyst Ikram Sehgal’s statement was published in Indian newspapers that General Zaheerul Islam was the nephew of General Shah Nawaz Khan.

In this way, Shah Rukh Khan also looks like his uncle. This statement was denied by the ISPR at the time.

When Independent Urdu contacted the prominent politician and former Federal Minister of Muslim League-N, Raja Zafarul Haq, whose father was the cousin of General Shah Nawaz, he said that General Shah Nawaz’s relative, General Not Zaheerul Islam, but Lt. Gen. (Rtd) Khalid Nawaz, who commanded Ten Corps, retired in 2015. He is General Shah Nawaz’s nephew, General Khalid Nawaz’s sister-in-law, General Shah Nawaz’s daughter.

General Shah Nawaz had three sons and two daughters. One son and two daughters got married in Pakistan while two sons moved to Delhi with their mother.

His son Mahmood Nawaz also reached the rank of colonel in the Pakistan Army, whose son and grandson of General Shah Nawaz, Major General Asad Nawaz is a serving officer. General Shah Nawaz Khan’s family is now divided in two countries.

There is a popular saying in Potohar regarding General Shah Nawaz that ‘Maan mooli te piyo piaz, patar jamia Shah Nawaz’ means that a son of ordinary parents can become like Shah Nawaz.

Shah Nawaz belongs to the Janjua Rajput tribe and this tribe was the ruler of Rawalpindi at the time of Alexander the Great’s visit to Taxila. The Bhattis took power from the Janjuas, and then the Ghakhas from the Bhattis and the Sikhs from them.