Song 102:
Asha Bhosle, contrary to popular belief sang many solemn and serious songs. She could charm with pristine innocence as in this song, her voice befitting a child. This song is a wonderful alternate rendition of the enduring patriotic poem of the Urdu language. Written for children in the ghazal style of Urdu poetry by poet Muhammad Iqbal, the poem was published in the weekly journal Ittehad on 16 August 1904.
Recited by Iqbal the following year at Government College, Lahore, it quickly became an anthem of opposition to the British rule in India. The song, an ode to Hindustan—the land comprising present-day Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan—both celebrated and cherished the land even as it lamented its age-old anguish. As Tarana-e-Hindi, it was later published in 1924 in the Urdu book Bang-i-Dara.
Asha Bhosle, contrary to popular belief sang many solemn and serious songs. She could charm with pristine innocence as in this song, her voice befitting a child. This song is a wonderful alternate rendition of the enduring patriotic poem of the Urdu language. Written for children in the ghazal style of Urdu poetry by poet Muhammad Iqbal, the poem was published in the weekly journal Ittehad on 16 August 1904.
Recited by Iqbal the following year at Government College, Lahore, it quickly became an anthem of opposition to the British rule in India. The song, an ode to Hindustan—the land comprising present-day Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan—both celebrated and cherished the land even as it lamented its age-old anguish. As Tarana-e-Hindi, it was later published in 1924 in the Urdu book Bang-i-Dara.
Iqbal was a lecturer at the Government College, Lahore at
that time, and was invited by student Lala Har Dayal to preside over a
function. Instead of delivering a speech, Iqbal sang Saare Jahan Se Achcha. The
song, in addition to embodying yearning and attachment to the land of
Hindustan, expressed "cultural memory" and had an elegiac quality. In
1905, the 27-year-old Iqbal viewed the future society of the subcontinent as
both a pluralistic and composite Hindu-Muslim culture. Later that year he left for Europe for a three-year sojourn
that was to transform him into an Islamic philosopher and a visionary of a
future Islamic society, which in fact was his prerogative.
In spite of its creator's disavowal of it in his later years, Saare Jahan Se
Achcha has remained popular in India for over a century. Mahatma Gandhi is said
to have sung it over a hundred times when he was imprisoned at Yerawada Jail in
Pune in the 1930s.The poem was set to music in the 1950s by sitarist Ravi
Shankar and recorded by singer Lata Mangeshkar. Stanzas1, 3, 4, and 6 of the
song became an unofficial national song in India, and were also turned into the
official quick march of the Indian Armed Forces. Rakesh Sharma, the first
Indian cosmonaut, employed the first line of the song in 1984 to describe to
then prime minister Indira Gandhi how India appeared from outer space. Saare
Jahan se Achcha, indeed! And somehow I find this gentle Asha Bhosle version so much better than the many other more military versions.
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