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| Author: | Khawar Shah |
| E-mail: | not available |
| Date: | 12/22/2009 3:59:43 AM |
| Subject: | Pak National Anthem-Isa Khel |
| Message: | Most people are unaware that prior to Hafeez Jullundhri’s Persianised lyrics being adopted as the national anthem in the 1950s, Pakistan had a national anthem — commissioned and approved by no less a person than Mohammad Ali Jinnah. The lyricist was the Isa Khel (Mianwali)-born Jagannath Azad, son of the renowned poet Tilok Chand Mahroom (who won accolades for his rendering of naat at mushairas). A few bloggers have made mention of this in the past but I learnt of it recently through an unexpected source — an article on the history of Pakistan’s flag and national anthem in PIA’s monthly Hamsafar magazine (‘Pride of Pakistan’, by Khushboo Aziz, August issue). ‘Quaid-i-Azam, being the visionary that he was, knew an anthem would also be needed, not only to be used in official capacity but [to] inspire patriotism in the nation. Since he was secular-minded, enlightened, and although very patriotic but not in the least petty, Jinnah commissioned a Hindu, Lahore-based writer Jagannath Azad three days before independence to write a national anthem for Pakistan. Jagannath submitted these lyrics: Ae sarzameene paak Zarray teray haen aaj sitaaron se taabnaak Roshan hai kehkashaan se kaheen aaj teri khaak Ae sarzameene paak’ (‘Oh land of Pakistan, the stars themselves illuminate each particle of yours/rainbows brighten your very dust.’) As Jaswant Singh’s recent book on Mr Jinnah created ripples in mid-August, The Kashmir Times, Jammu, published a short piece, ‘A Hindu wrote Pakistan’s first national anthem — How Jinnah got Urdu-knowing Jagannath Azad to write the song’ (Aug 21, 2009). The reproduction of a front-page report by Luv Puri in The Hindu (Jun 19, 2005), it drew on Puri’s interview of Azad in Jammu city days before his death, published in Milli Gazette, New Delhi (Aug 16-31, 2004). Azad told Puri that he was working at a literary newspaper in Lahore ‘when mayhem had struck…. All my relatives had left for India and for me to think of leaving Lahore was painful.... My Muslim friends requested me to stay on and took responsibility [for] my safety.’ On the morning of Aug 9, 1947, he received a message from Pakistan’s first governor-general, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, through a friend working in Radio Lahore ‘who called me to his office. He told me ‘Quaid-i-Azam wants you to write a national anthem for Pakistan’.’ Azad felt it would be difficult to do in five days, but agreed upon his friend’s insistence as the request had come from the Quaid. Why him? Azad thought the answer lay in Jinnah’s speech of Aug 11, 1947, stating that if everyone saw themselves ‘first, second and last a citizen of this state with equal rights, privileges, and obligations … in the course of time, Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state’. ‘Even I was surprised when my colleagues in Radio Pakistan, Lahore approached me,’ recalled Azad. ‘… They confided in me that ‘Quaid-i-Azam wanted the anthem to be written by an Urdu-knowing Hindu’.Source :http://www.siasat.com/english/news/jinnah-wanted-national-anthem-be-written-hindu-‘-sow-seeds-secularism’-pakistan |
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Pak National Anthem-Isa Khel by Khawar Shah at 12/22/2009 3:59:43 AM
Re: Pak National Anthem-Isa Khel by Azhar Hassan 
at 2/12/2010 11:40:46 PM