Tag Archives: Shakeel Badayuni

In 1962 Mohammed Rafi cheered troops on China border

Mumbai, MAHARASHTRA /ALL INDIA :

Mohammad Rafi and Dilip Kumar
Mohammad Rafi and Dilip Kumar

Contrary to the popular notion that wars are fought by the armies alone, the whole nation including Bollywood personalities and leading artists get involved in the national efforts to fight the enemy.

The Chinese invasion in October 1962 was a shocking moment for India. Traditionally, India had supported China at every international forum for at least half a century. The invasion was the least expected from China and India was not at all prepared for it. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru urged the nation to stand united in that hour of emergency and in response Indians donated generously to the National Defence Fund.

The film industry did not lag. Film Industry’s war efforts were led by legendary filmmaker Mehboob, singer Mohammed Rafi and music composer Mohammed Zahur Khayyam Hashmi (Khayyam).

In less than a week they collaborated to produce two music videos, which were to be played in film theaters, on the radio, and on the roadsides to raise funds for the war.

One of those two songs, “Awaz do hum ek hain…”, by Jaan Nisar Akhtar is now a popular political slogan in India. On Nehru’s call to the nation, Jaan Nissar Akhtar wrote the song to which music was given by Khayyam and the voice by Mohammad Rafi. The song is an invocation to Indians to unite in the face of an invader became a national passion and remains so till today.

The song starts with:

ek hai apni zameen, ek hai apna gagan

ek hai apna jahaan, ek hai apna watan

apne sabhi sukh ek hai, apne sabhi gham ek hai

Aawaz do ham ek hai

(We have a common earth, we have a common sky

We have a common world, we have a common motherland

All our joys are common, all our sorrows are common

Say it aloud that we are one!)

The powerful lyrics were turned into a national rage by the soulful singing of Rafi. Jago watan khatre me hai, sara chaman khatre me hai (wake up our motherland is under threat, whole garden is under siege) and dushman se nafrat farz hau, ghar ki hifazat farz hai (hating your enemy is a duty, to guard your home is a duty), aroused patriotic emotions among millions of Indians. The song asks the youth to join the army and fight the aggressor.

The song was picturized on Rajendra Kumar, Sunil Dutt, Raj Kumar, and Kamal Jeet.

Another song produced along with this was written by Sahir Ludhianvi, “watan ki abroo khatre main hai…” (dignity of the nation is under threat). It was also produced by Mehboob and sung by Mohammed Rafi. The song specifically points to the Panchsheel pact and other friendly gestures made by India towards China. It says,

Wo jinko saadgi mein hamne

Aankhon par bithhaaya thha

Wo jinko bhai kehkar

Hamne seene se lagaaya thha

Wo jinki gardanon mein haar

Baahon ka pehnaaya thha

Ab unki gardanon ke waaste

Talwaar ho jaao

(The people we honoured because of our innocence

The people we embraced and called brothers

The people we received with love

Now, do become swords for their throats)

The song also points toward the internal threats at the time of war.

Khabar rakhna koi gaddaar

Saazish kar nahin paaye ae

Nazar rakhna koi zaalim

Tijori bhar nahin paaye ae

(Be vigilant that no traitor conspires against the nation

Be vigilant that nobody makes money out of our war efforts)

The song was picturized on Dilip Kumar, Rajendra Kumar, Raj Kumar, and Kamal Jeet in a video produced by Mehboob.

Lorries with speakers would roam around playing these songs and prompting people to donate generously. It is said that when one such procession reached the house of Shammi Kapoor his wife actor Geeta Bali started crying. She rushed inside her house and told Shammi that she needed to do something for the nation. Geeta took all her jewelry, even the pieces she wore, and gave it away for war.

Rafi felt that singing in the safety of Mumbai was a disgrace in the line of his national duty. He discussed with Dilip Kumar and urged PM Nehru to send them to the border. What would they do there? Rafi felt that his songs could boost the morale of Indian soldiers and the presence of Dilip Kumar would assure the troops that the whole nation is standing behind them.

It was a dangerous mission. It was unprecedented for the artists to perform at the war front. In the cold, Rafi and Dilip reached the war frontier. He sang songs, interacted with soldiers, and boosted their morale. Dilip Kumar later recalled, “needless to say he was the star attraction with the jawans and the young newly commissioned officers”.

After the war ended with a ceasefire the collected funds were used to recover the economy and modernizing the Army.

On 27 January 1963, Mehboob organized an event in Delhi where he invited.all the prominent film stars to perform in the presence of President S Radhakrishnan and PM Jawaharlal Nehru. The event is often remembered for the rendition of “Aey mere watan ke logo…” by Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammad Rafi sang two songs. One was written by Shakeel Badayuni and its music was composed by Naushad, “Apni azadi ko hum hargiz mita sakte nahi.” The song was later adapted into the film Leader and the other was “Kar chale hum fida….” written by Kaifi Azmi and composed by Madan Mohan, which was later adopted in Haqeeqat, a movie based on the India-China war.

The fact that Rafi went to the war frontier and stayed there for a few days to play what turned out to be a big morale booster for the troops remains an unprecedented manifestation of one’s sense of responsibility towards his country.

source: http://www.awazthevoice.in / Awaz, The Voice / Home> Culture / by Saquib Salim / December 24th, 2022

Lyricist Shakeel Badayuni’s Death Anniversary

Badayun, UTTAR PRADESH / Mumbai, MAHARASHTRA :

Today is Lyricist Shakeel Badayuni’s death anniversary. Though he did not have poetry background like the other poets, Shakeel Sahab’s inspiration was his distant relative Zia-ul-Qasiri Badayuni, a religious poet. Honored by the Indian government as Geetkar-e-Azam (great lyricist), he penned several beautiful songs for about 89 Bollywood movies.

Bollywood and Lyricist Shakeel Badayuni’s Death Anniversary:

Some of my favorite Bollywood songs he penned in the 1940s and 1950s are:

Afsana likh rahi hoon… Dard (1947)

Suhani raat dhal chuki… Dulari (1949)

Milte hi ankhen dil hua deewana kisika… Babul (1950)

Akeli mat jaiyo Radhe Jamuna ke teer… Baiju Bawra (1952)

Door koi gaye dhun yeh sunaye… Baiju Bawra (1952)

Bachpan ki mohobbat ko… Baiju Bawra (1952)

Man tarapat Hari darshan ko aaj… Baiju Bawra (1952)

O duniya ke Rakhwale… Baiju Bawra (1952)

Zindagi denewale sun… Dil-e-Nadaan (1953)

Insaaf ka mandir hai yeh Bhagwan ka ghar hai… Amar (1954)

O door ke musafir humko bhi saath lele… Uran Khatola (1955)

source: http://www.lemonwire.com / Lemon Wire / Home> Bollywood / by Gayatri Rao / April 19th, 2019

Indra on Wajid Ali Shah’s throne!

The city of etiquette -Bada Imambara complex of Lucknow / Photo: Rajeev Bhatt
The city of etiquette -Bada Imambara complex of Lucknow / Photo: Rajeev Bhatt

“The Other Lucknow” captures the syncretic traditions of the city

Guru Dutt’s immensely popular film Chaudhvin Ka Chand opens with a Shakeel Budayuni song sung by Mohammad Rafi and composed by Ravi. The song  Ye Lakhnau Ki Sarzameen sums up Lucknow and the essence of its famed cultural heritage. Perhaps, no other city in the sprawling Hindi-speaking region evokes such nostalgia, romance, devotion and attachment as Banaras and Lucknow do.

So far, for nearly a century, we used to go back to Abdul Halim Sharar’s classic “Guzishta Lakhnau” that vividly describes the city’s cultural and social life, customs, traditions and history in great detail. This was serialised in the form of articles between 1913 and 1920 in Urdu literary journal “Dilgudaz” that Sharar had launched in 1887. Later, the articles were brought out as a book with a rather longish title “Hindustan mein mashriqi tamaddun ka akhiri namoona: Lakhnau” (Lucknow: The last example of Oriental culture in India). However, the world knows it simply as “Guzishta Lakhnau” (The Lucknow of the Old). National Book Trust published a Hindi translation in 1971 titled “Purana Lakhnau” (The Old Lucknow) with a scholarly introduction written by eminent Urdu critic Mohammad Hasan.

Born in 1860, Abdul Halim went to Matiaburz when he was nine years old. Matiaburz was the place near Calcutta (now Kolkata) where the deposed Nawab of Lucknow, Wajid Ali Shah, had shifted in 1856. How close his family was with the Nawab can be gauged from the fact that his maternal grandfather had gone to London to present Wajid Ali Shah’s case before Queen Victoria.

When still in his teens, Abdul Halim started writing and adopted the nom de plume ‘Sharar’ (spark). His book is a treasure trove of information about the history and culture of Lucknow which was a truly unique city representing the famed Ganga-Jamuni culture.

Wajid Ali Shah, the last Nawab, was an accomplished poet, musician, dancer, actor and dramatist. Urdu drama owes its beginning to him and dance-dramas like “Inder Sabha”, which he commissioned, where Indra, the king of Hindu gods, would sit on a throne wearing a dress that resembled that of the Nawab himself and fairies would sing thumris in Braj bhasha while conversing in chaste Urdu. What better picture of a syncretic culture can we find elsewhere?

Sharar divided the book into three parts and devoted the first two parts to the history of Awadh and Lucknow and that of the nawabs of Awadh. The third and the last part is the one that introduces us to the way people of Lucknow dressed, talked, ate, sang and danced, set new standards of cultured behaviour and etiquette, gathered to celebrate religious and social festivals at fairs, and offered an example of harmonious communal living. It was also a great centre of the Shias.

TheOtherLucknowMPOs16jul2016

Now, Vani Prakashan, which is essentially a publishing house of Hindi books, has come out with a book on Lucknow in English in collaboration with the Ayodhya Research Institute, an autonomous organisation of the Uttar Pradesh government. Titled “The Other Lucknow: An Ethnographic Portrait of a City of Undying Memories and Nostalgia”, it is the outcome of a research project headed by social anthropologist Professor Nadeem Hasnain, who has put the book together.

NadeemHasnainMPOs17jul2016

The book appropriately opens with a poem that the Jnanpith award winning poet Kunwar Narain, who spent most of his creative life in the city, has written on Lucknow. It has been reproduced in Hindi which lends a special flavour to the book as the rest of it is a collection of articles, reports and analysis written in English. It is a sort of counterfoil to Sharar’s book as it brings the story of Lucknow in its fullness up to the present times.

“The Other Lucknow” is in a class of its own as it can equally serve a tourist as a guide book and an intellectual who wants to know and understand the history, culture, politics, arts and crafts, business and trade, literature, music and dance, architecture and religion – both past and present.

The book opens with a scholarly article “A Short Cultural History” by noted scholar Sandria Freitag followed by an excellent survey of the city’s social fabric underling its diversity. The survey is based on field research and informs us that Kashmiri Pandits, Bengalis, Punjabis, Sindhis, Malayalis, Oriyas, Maharashtrians and Assamese have also become an integral part of Lucknow’s population. It also offers a detailed description of the religious and caste communities residing in the city. In addition to paying close attention to the mohallas, mandis, bastis, landmarks, arts and craft, music and dance, religious places, Ram Leela, qawwalis and danstangoi, the book brings out the city’s Bollywood connection.

It concludes with an article on Dalit imaginations, laying bare the story of the mega monuments and parks created by former Chief Minister Mayawati to commemorate Dalit icons.

One is not surprised to read, as quoted by Nadeem Hasnain to begin his introduction, what William Russel, correspondent of The Times, London wrote in 1858 about Lucknow: “Not Rome, not Athens, nor Constantinople, not any city I have ever seen appears to me so striking and so beautiful as this.”

The writer is a senior literary critic

Corrections & Clarifications:

This article has been edited for a factual error.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Metroplus / by Kuldeep Kumar / July 09th, 2016