[4] His family hailed from the famous Hayat Khattar clan of Wah[5] in Attock, and he was the eldest son of Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan (1892–1942), the famous Punjabi statesman and feudal baron, from his first wife Begum Zubaida Khanum, a lady from a prominent Kashmiri family settled in Amritsar, British India.

[6] After his mother's early demise in 1919, the young Shaukat and his siblings were taken care of by their aunt and in due course, he was sent to study at the Aitchison College and the Aligarh Muslim University, briefly, before he was sent, in keeping with family tradition, to join the British Indian Army, upon passing the qualifying examinations.

[11] He thereafter served in Somalia, the Middle East and North Africa from 1940 to 1942, first promoted Captain April - July 1941, after that as a temporary Major until after his father's death in December 1942, when he quit military service to take up his political role in the Punjab.

[13] He played a significant role in eventually winning over the Punjabi Muslims in large numbers, to the cause of the League and of an independent Pakistan.

Between the 1950s and 1970s, in his own words, he was 'an unlucky witness to the gradual destruction of the Quaid's (i.e. Jinnahs) Pakistan',[15] at the hands of greedy and corrupt politicians and the martial law regimes.