Paper short abstract:

In this paper I explore the challenge posed by the anticolonial movement in India to the discourse and practice of international law in the Indian National Army trial in 1945.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I explore the challenge posed by the anticolonial movement in India to the discourse and practice of international law in the Indian National Army trial in 1945. Occurring at the end of the Second World War, two months after the start of the Nuremberg trials and six months before the Tokyo trials, the Indian National Army trial, in which three officers of Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army were tried on charges of treason for waging an anticolonial war against British imperial government in India, was one of the most significant events in the domain of international law in the twentieth century. In the course of the long history of colonialism, the discourse of international law had come to be anchored in the idea and institution of empire. I contend that Indian lawyers defending the accused in this trial used it as an occasion to make a claim for a sovereign Indian nation state by repudiating the Empire's claim to be the sole ground of the discourse of international law. Challenging the dominant narrative of the expansion of international law to the colonized world as an imperial gesture of sovereignty and benevolence, this paper examines the role of anticolonial movements in contesting the universalist claims of international law and empire.