An Essay by Ashraf Aziz

 

Noor Jahan

Portrait of a Female Indo-Pakistani Artist

 

 

Geet suna mat aye diwane

Patthar ki deewaron ko

Soye huye ghamkharon ko

Ye shab na khatm hogi

Shama bhuja ke so ja...

Ja apni hasraton pe

Ansoo baha ke so ja...

 

- Munir Niyazi/Noor Jahan (Susral, 1962)

 

The past is not dead. It is not even past.

- William Faulkner

 

We have the gift of language, the gift of making memories in words and pictures. …The bodies are gone, but by making these memories, we, to an extent, resurrect them. This is the antidote to death.

 

- Ashraf Aziz

 

 

n the numerous eulogies of chanteuse/actress/star Noor Jahan who passed away on December 23, 2000 in Karachi, Pakistan, she was repeatedly identified as a “Pakistani” artist. This designation, although technically correct, attenuates her revolutionary contributions to the growth of the popular arts throughout the Indian subcontinent (including Sri Lanka), and the application of these for national awakening. Indeed, before she chose to move to Pakistan in 1947, she was, by birth, a colonized “British” Indian artist: she remained so for twenty tumultuous years during which she participated, as an artist, in propelling India towards Independence and dismemberment. Beginning with songs of Sheila/Pind di Kurhi (Punjabi) in 1935 up to Jugnu (1947) and beyond – including her early songs in the newly created Pakistan during the 1949-1952 period – we find in her songs the ecstasy and the agony of the cataclysmic historical changes associated with Independence and Partition of India. During this period Noor Jahan played a significant role in the evolution of the cinema and non-cinema popular Indian song. Any discussion of the evolution of the Hindustani/Hindi/Urdu and the Punjabi film song (and non-film popular songs) is incomplete and flawed without the assessment of Noor Jahan’s seminal contributions to the maturation of the recorded popular song and its application in the struggle for freedom in South Asia.

 

The popular arts are the mirror containing the frozen images of their time; they embody and reflect, among other things, the aspirations of the masses. Even though the popular Hindustani film was a fiction constructed in the highly-controlled studio setting, truth seeped through its fictional facade like the Freudian slip. Given the censorship applied by the Colonial Office, often truth could only be told through fictional means, including songs and other covert media. Contrary to the conventional view, the popular Indo-Pakistan-Bangladesh cinema contains very valuable documentary information regarding South Asian history beginning with 1931 – the year when the first talkie was released in Bombay.

 

The Hindustani film song and its associated melodramatic singing-dancing masala genre film deeply influenced the social organization of South Asian society. The movie and its peculiar soundtrack joined the railway, the telegraph, the radio, shipping and aerial transport, to unify Southern Asia in ways not previously achieved. Despite several fissions, South Asia is united in its appreciation of the masala Indian film – especially its songs. So ubiquitous is the Hindustani film song (and associated popular music) that it has become a signature of the geographical region; to deprive South Asians of their cinema song would cause them auditory asphyxiation. More recently, the young visionary composer A. R. Rahman has succeeded in removing the “Dravidian divide” to create a unified musical culture in India itself. A comprehensive assessment of South Asian reality is impossible without analysis of its masala movie and its associated soundtrack. Noor Jahan is an important part of the story of the Indian musical picture.

 

An evaluation of Noor Jahan’s songs is critical for understanding a significant phase of Indian history – the phase during which the current shape of South Asia was decided. Similarly, analysis of her post-Independence songs also bears testimony to the checkered story of democracy in Pakistan – especially the erosion of women’s rights concomitantly with the rise of the Islamic Right. However, such analysis must first place Noor Jahan’s songs in the context of the history of the sound cinema in India.

 

The first talking film, Alam Ara, was in production when Mahatma Gandhi was marching from Sabarmati to Dandi (1930) to protest the institution of the excessive Salt Tax by the British colonial government. It may be argued that the unique talking, singing, dancing Indian popular film was the artistic manifestation of the Indian struggle for liberation. Human actions had become supercharged, taking on operatic, i.e., hyperkinetic dimensions. The arrival of the “talkie” in India coincided with the revved up movement towards freedom. The “talkie” spoke in dialogue-song-dance about the necessity for liberation. At the core of cinema was romantic love, which was in actuality denied by the tradition hinging on arranged marriage. The depiction of dating and heterosexual relationships based on love made the Indian talkie a subversive work of art. Romantic relations assumed the exercise of free choice – a   prerequisite of democracy. Therefore, it can be contended that the melodramatic masala film of “Bombay” is the true national film of India.

 

From 1931 to 1935, when P. C. Barua’s Devdas was released, the unique Indian musical film took shape. Amongst the earliest visionaries of this artistically synthetic (masala) creation was the actor/writer/director Debaki Bose who conceived the semi-operatic/ balletic structure of the popular Indian film. He believed that songs and dances integrated with the film narrative were necessary to appeal to the Indian people. He also believed that such a film was in keeping with the synthetic/aesthetical mores of Indian culture. Clearly, Debaki Bose saw the popular Hindustani film as part of the vernacular culture. Thus, the cinematographed song, dance and dialogues were to be the building blocks of the Indian movie made to appeal to the masses, including those lakhs who were swelling the major Indian cities during the Depression. Cinema songs and dances based on folk melodies were also deemed necessary to capture the attention of the (overwhelmingly) non-literate masses reared in the preliterate oral tradition; these songs connected the village with the city. Besides, the raag, taal  and lyrics of cinema songs contained symbols drawn from the vernacular mythic culture (Hindu, Muslim and Sikh), which helped to give emotional depth to the visual narrative. The plots of many Indian films were derived directly or by analogy from the sacred texts (Mahabharata, Ramayana, etc.), biographies of singer poets or mythic love legends of traditional/folk India, and from the nascent Hindi/Urdu/ Bengali literature. The movies depicted certain archetypes derived from the vernacular culture.

The early Hindustani film songs, which were recorded on primitive recording instruments with a limited capacity for amplification, involved rather strained, formal and stilted vocalization; this type of singing was derived from the traditional oral culture of the masses. It was also the style adopted by the classical vocalists also reared in the oral gharana tradition. It was in the songs by the legendary singer-actor K.L. Saigal – again in P.C. Barua’s Devdas (1935) – that a naturalistic rendition (i.e., crooning style) of the film song made its first appearance. With better recording instruments Saigal could sing in a relaxed, naturalistic, conversational, intimate style; his songs were essentially dialogues in the melodic form. The creators of Devdas’ songs were the pioneers of the Indian film music, Raichand Boral, Pankaj Mullick and Timir Baran (who was the composer of the Hindustani version of Devdas). Their songs were mostly derived from Nazrulgeet, Rabindrageet and older rural Bengali folk songs. The reason for this was the fact that many of their films told Bengali stories in Hindustani language. In their songs, the voice was accompanied by the traditional instruments such as the sitar, bansuri, sarod, sarangi and tablas augmented by Western instruments such as the violin, harmonium, saxophone, flute, etc. This was the synthetic Indian orchestra in its nascent form. Orchestration permitted the introduction of harmony (chords) and additional coloring devices in the popular Indian song. Orchestration and arrangement also necessitated notation; thus, with orchestration, composers began to score/arrange Indian popular music. For the first time Indian vernacular music began to be constructed on a studied, rational basis. The cinema song/music made the vernacular music incrementally literate (notated). It also urbanized it. Indeed, many of the songs of the thirties and the forties connected the rural (lyrics, melody and percussion) with the urban (orchestration).

 

It is instructive to analyze the extraordinary duet Urhan khatole pe ur jaoon (Anmol Gharhi; Shamshad and Zohrabai) recorded just prior to Independence. This is a folk melody dressed up by composer Naushad in the urban garb of an orchestra of Indian and Western instruments. It is a folk song speeding towards the modern city. Its percussion suggests a person running (the past) while the interlude music creates the sounds of revolving wheels [the motor car (the future) and manually operated wheel – the poor boy’s vehicle].

Naushad gives us the sound of running feet and their extrapolation as manually and mechanically operated wheels. The increasing musical sophistication of the song shows the speedy movement of the folk melody towards the city. The song contains rural and urban sounds. In its movement we also experience the rapid unfolding of history.

 

The songs of the earliest two decades of the Indian sound film engage in covert protest against colonial repression and sometimes show open agitation. They also envision an egalitarian, democratic social order engendered by greater productivity in the industrialised urban centers. In form and content they chart a journey from the rural past towards an urban future. The songs link the memory with the dream. However, a study of the pioneering Indian cinema songs also shows that the melody-driven, Bengal-oriented Hindustani film songs (1931-1935) were a bit too staid and relaxed – even anemic – to accurately capture the gathering fury of the economic, political, and historical changes occurring in India and elsewhere at that time. Because they lacked rhythmic/percussive assertiveness, they failed to record time and the gathering tempo of British and Indian history. That was yet to come.

 

Europe was experiencing the Depression (which had spread to its colonies) and preparing for yet another major war while in India Hindu-Muslim relations were incrementally strained. Civil strife was also initiated within the Indian Muslim community: between those against (Maulana Abul Kalam Azad) and those for (Muhammad Ali Jinnah) the creation of two nations. Indeed, the idea of a Pakistan had already been proposed by Chaudhry Rehmat Ali in Cambridge (England) in the year of the making of Alam Ara  (1930) – the year of Gandhiji’s Salt March. The New Theater’s (Calcutta) musical pioneers (Boral-Mullick-Baran) had the libretto and melody but lacked the emphatic rhythm and percussion with which to capture the gathering fury of these unfolding historical events. The blueprint of the recorded popular song was as yet only a sketch.

 

Ironically, Noor Jahan – then a child – was taken to Calcutta (recently renamed Kolkata) by the theater owner Diwan Sardari Lal in the early 30’s – just when the earliest New Theater’s film songs were being composed. She was employed by music director Ghulam Haider (“Masterji”) to sing for K.D. Mehra’s Punjabi movie called Sheila/Pind di Kuri  (1935) which was actually shot in Calcutta (it is quite possible that Noor Jahan sang in pictures earlier than Sheila). Her name was changed from Allah Rakhi/Wasai to ‘Baby’ Noor Jahan and she acted and sang with her older sisters Eiden Bai and Haider Bandi – they were a musical trio. The fact that Allah Rakhi was singled out for a screen name – Noor Jahan (Illumination of the World, or, more broadly, Light of the Universe) – indicated that something in her was more equal than her sisters.

 

The movie Pind Di Kuri included the Punjabi song Langh aja patan jhanaaN da O yaar which became her earliest hit. Another one of her popular songs from that period is from Dalsukh Pancholi’s Punjabi film Gul Bakawli (1937): Shala jawaniyan maney. Time has not blurred the exceptional vocal energy – the quicksilver vocal quality – of these introductory Noor Jahan songs. Even today they leap out of the scratchy 78 rpm records and reach for one’s heart. In Shala jawaniyan she asks her lover to grab the cup of Life and drink lustily because its pleasures are fleet-footed. In these Punjabi melodies Ghulam Haider began to give definitive shape and feel and a new dynamism to the popular Indian song. With his songs the 78 rpm disc started to spin.

 

Noor Jehan with the great Bade Ghulam Ali sahib

 

From left: Ustad Barkat Ali Khan, Noor Jehan, Munawar Ali Khan (son of Bade Ghulam Ali Khan sahib), Bade Ghulam Ali Khan sahib, Karamat Ali Khan (Khan sahib's eldest son), Khadim Hussain (Khan sahib's cousin, father-in-law of Munawar Bhai and a great cricketer). Probably the picture was taken in the late 1950s after Munawar's wedding in Karachi. 

Photographer unknown

 

 

In his later Hindustani hit films Khazanchi (Treasurer, 1941) and Khandan  (Family, 1942), he – in the voices of Shamshad Begum (also Ghulam Haider’s gift ) and Noor Jahan, respectively – revolutionised the rhythmic and percussive components of the film song. Whereas earlier songs were constructed around the melody, Ghulam Haider based his songs on rhythm and percussion. This is illustrated by one of his earliest Hindustani songs – Tu kaunsi badli mein mere chand hai aja (Noor Jahan; Khandan, 1942). This is a nocturnal melody sung on a lonely night. Another composer may have dispensed with percussion altogether in order to create the picture of quiet and loneliness, but Ghulam Haider used the tabla beats to ring against the nocturnal quiet such that they deepen the sense of tranquility and forlornness. The night became dense and dreadful and spoke in the tabla beats. Whereas the Calcutta songs had movement, the Lahore ones had velocity, i.e., speed and direction. Ghulam Haider put the clock in the popular Indian song. It appeared that the Hindustani film song was being born all over again. Certainly he made the popular song actually sing. Ghulam Haider succeeded in binding together melody, lyrics and percussion into a connected, fluid whole. The popular song began to sound a unified vocal product.

 

Whereas in the New Theaters song the melody dominated over rhythm and percussion, Ghulam Haider democratized the popular song by putting melody, rhythm and percussion on equal footing. This arrangement crystallized the hope of a democratic and egalitarian political order during and after the struggle for Indian Freedom. His preferred instrument of percussion was the Punjabi dholak, which sounded like the metronome (i.e., a musical clock) in the song. The dholak, the Punjabi folk drum, is easier to play than the more subtle tabla which, for mastery, required arduous tutelage in Indian classical music. By employing the dholak, Ghulam Haider also implicitly championed the use of folk music as the basis of Indian cinema/ popular music. This single drum, which is often played at a brisk pace, brought a sparkling fluidity to the song. It gave it a warm glow. Certainly, the dholak-driven, bubbly popular song documented the gathering pace of Indian history better.

 

Thus, although Ghulam Haider did not create the earliest Indian cinema songs, he revolutionized their conceptual basis completely and earned a spot amongst the pioneers of cinema/popular music in South Asia. According to the conventional view the Thirties and Forties decades are the “Golden Age of Melody” in Indian cinema music; however, more careful consideration leads to the conclusion that this description is best applied to the thirties’ songs. The songs of the forties constitute the “Age of Melody, Rhythm and Percussion”. This age was authored by Ghulam Haider.

 

To suggest that Ghulam Haider gave a complete form to the Indian cinema song would be an exaggeration. What he did do was to give this song its rhythmic grounding – a very important forward step. Following this quantum change, other composers like Anil Biswas, Khemchand Prakash, Mir Sahib, Naushad and C. Ramchandra added novel melodic, harmonic and percussive ingredients to complete the musical blueprint of the popular song. (To this were also added innovations in lyric construction of these songs). Nevertheless, Ghulam Haider is credited with negotiating a critical impediment in the construction of the popular Indian song. He also discovered the unique quality of Noor Jahan’s (and Shamshad Begum’s) vocal style and envisioned its application as an instrument of national agitation.

 

Noor Jahan employed the art of ragi singing derived from the rural oral tradition. This style is – when necessary – loud, earthy and declamatory. In ragi it is the objective of the singer to project the voice as far as possible because the older tradition did not employ electronic amplifying instruments. The song was a speech delivered in melody and rhythm. Thus the singer often strained in order to reach the farthest ear. In addition to possessing a formidable voice, Noor Jahan translated vocalization into overt action. Whether in the upper or the lower frequency, she filled her voice with action. The key to Noor Jahan’s approach to the song was movement. Thus, necessity for activity can be detected even in a song such as Baithi hoon teri yaad ka (Gaon ki gori, 1944).  It is a song of the lover’s vigil and yet it moves, in melody and percussion, with deliberate hurry – as if to appeal to her lover to return with dispatch. Noor Jahan always attempted to “act out”, i.e., dramatize the meanings of the lyrics in the manner of the opera singer (there are similarities between her and Maria Callas). Added to these ‘lyrics-in-action’ was the fact that, from the beginning, Noor Jahan was an actress. She was trained to connect the song with the narrative – the pictorial and verbal description of human action – of the film. Noor Jahan created vivid images pointing to the actions in the narrative.

 

The wide range of color in her voice also helped to ‘give voice’ to a great variety of emotions evoked by the lyrics. For example, the inflected play with the word ‘badnam’ in the famous Badnam mohabhat kaun kare gives it multiple meanings (Dost, 1944). Noor Jahan had an uncanny ability to get under the skin of the lyrics and ferret out hidden meanings. She was also a supreme stylist who possessed unique phrasing abilities, which interpreted the lyrics in unique ways. Like K.L. Saigal before her, her unique vocal interpretation of songs made her, at the least, the co-author of those songs. The great Indo-Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz recognised this and gave away his famous poem Mujh se pehli si muhabbat to her on account of her unique vocal interpretation of the lyrics. She gave it meaning which even he did not know his poem possessed.

 

She was never afraid to extract the emotional message within the lyrics and imbue the song with feeling. This could be risky because the song could have become maudlin, i.e., a vehicle of cheap sentimentality. However, she had such command over her craft that the song illustrated the emotions rather than suffocate in them. Thus, in the songs of Anmol Gharhi she modulated her voice with uncanny ease: she is sunny in Jawan hai muhabbat and desolate in Kya mil gaya bhagwan.  In her songs the voice quality/timbre itself was an important vehicle of information.

 

Noor Jahan employed her voice as a musical instrument such that it is often difficult to separate the voice from the instrumental part of the song. For instance in Dost her voice closely tracks the sound of the saxophones/trombones while in the tragic Zeenat solos she reproduced the tones of the Veena, the dominant melodic instrument. She endeavored to unify the song into a seamless musical whole. Thus, the song, which flew from her lips, was a vehicle of powerful messages – a call for action.

 

Noor Jahan implicitly understood the true challenge of singing the cinema song. She respected its brevity (3 min. duration on 78 rpm disc) and the necessity to compress maximum information using the briefest means. She recognized, like the fabled painters of the Indian miniature painting, that information had to be compressed into a very limited space. Therefore, she used the most dense and compact vocal tools to get the message across. She employed vocal metaphors to achieve her goal. Her training in classical music allowed her to understand and domesticate the notes, such that she succeeded in embellishing the folk-derived popular song with a rich musical vocabulary. With the briefest taan and its sudden inflection she could interpret the deeper levels of the lyrics even as she pointed towards the action being portrayed on screen.

Even when not singing overtly political lyrics, her declamatory and articulate vocalisation became a defiant cry for freedom; she was certainly a provocative singer. In the oppressive colonial setting, her muscular songs (as those by Shamshad Begum) constituted protest and covert political action. No singer of the pre-Independence era, singer-actor period – not even K.L. Saigal – sang as provocatively as Noor Jahan. In keeping with the essence of Punjabi folk music, she employed rhythmic and percussive vocal techniques. Thus the song became animated and urgent. The linkage of rhythmic vocal with the Punjabi, dholak-driven percussion injected militancy to the popular song of the Forties. Noor Jahan emerged in these times as the first diva of Indian cinema music.

 

To listen to her songs is to hear the following: the footsteps of the freedom fighters; the rat-a tat of gunfire on the various fronts where Indian soldiers served; the protest against the subjugation of all Indians, men and women; the protest against the oppression of women in the feudal Indian society. With the introduction of the percussion-driven song, Ghulam Haider/Noor Jahan began the true musical countdown to Freedom. Their songs are the essential soundtracks of the Forties.

 

In 1939 the Second World War broke in Europe; in 1940 the Pakistan Resolution was passed in Lahore by the Muslim League; in 1940 Gandhi started his satyagraha campaign against the War; in 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and forced the entry of the U.S.A. in the War; in 1942 Col. Hunt surrendered 6000 ‘British’ Indian soldiers to Japan (later the Japanese would hand those defeated soldiers over to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose to form his Indian National Army); in 1942 Gandhi initiated the Quit India campaign; in 1943 Bengal endured a  devastating famine; between 1939 and 1943 the ‘British’ Indian Army swelled from 175,000 to two million soldiers.1 Many, many would be injured and/or die at home and abroad. It is this fury, which –in libretto, melody, rhythm and percussion – was captured with urgency by Ghulam Haider and other Punjabi composers such as Shyam Sunder, Khurshid Anwar, Feroz Nizami, Pandit Amarnath, and Hafiz Khan. This was the historical backdrop of Noor Jahan’s songs. Given her vocal prowess, it is not surprising that the passionate Noor Jahan was the preferred voice of her era.

 

Forty seven years after she left India, the Gramophone Company of India (Calcutta) released a set of four audiocassettes featuring fifty-five film songs of Noor Jahan, covering the period 1939-1947.2 A study of these songs reveals the following in the lyrics: separation; abandonment; confinement; joy; hope; hopelessness; loneliness; betrayal...When we hear her Zeenat (1945) solo Bulbulo mat ro yahan ansoo bahana hai mana, we get connected with the repeated imprisonment of the freedom fighters; the sacrifices of Indian soldiers during the War; and the denial of free speech in India. Then again, her Zeenat solos repeatedly speak about the despoiled garden (India). For those who regarded Allama Iqbal’s poem:

 

Sarey Jahan se achchha

Hindostan hamara

Hum bulbulen hain iski

Yeh gulsitan hamara...

 

as a national anthem, the extraordinary songs of Zeenat  leave the decided impression that they speak about a larger reality.

 

Similarly, it is instructive to listen to the historic all-female qawwali (Muslim gospel-type choral song) from Zeenat (The Glow, 1945; lyrics by Nakshab and music by Hafiz Khan) to appreciate Noor Jahan’s vocal skill: Aahen na bharin, shikwe na kiye, kuchh bhi na zaban se kam liya. In this bitter critique of and protest against the subjugation of women in traditional, pre-Independence India, Noor Jahan is teamed with the contralto Zohrabai Ambalawali, Rajkumari and Kalyani. Noor Jahan appropriates the song by the sheer force of her vocal virtuosity. She lifts her voice from deep contralto to high soprano with bewildering ease – in between she employs dazzling coloratura (taans). Thus the song rises from despair to defiance and, with vocal dexterity, is transported around and about obstacles. To this day it remains the national anthem of Women’s Liberation in South Asia largely due to Noor Jahan’s vigorous rendition. The qawwali – the traditional domain just of male singers – became a weapon of female protest under Noor Jahan’s leadership. She reversed the direction of the qawwali – the instrument of male domination and expression – and pointed it at men. The medium and the message became one.

 

It is odd that this qawwali  is not featured amongst Indian patriotic songs. But then again, the compilers of Indian patriotic songs are men – who seeing their own oppressive selves in it – would not wish to promote it. What is not realized is that this song protests colonial oppression in general as well. The exclusion of the Zeenat qawwali from the canon of Indian patriotic music indicates the continued discrimination against women in South Asia. It is a deliberate effort to erase their role in the struggle for Independence. Of course, this is in keeping with the fact that two years after the creation of the song, in 1947, Independence arrived unequally for men and women on both sides of the Indo-Pakistani border.

 

The ‘controlled chaos’ produced by Noor Jahan’s vocalization also pointed towards the steady loss of control over the historical forces which the Indian freedom fighters had unleashed. After all, it was precisely during the age of the Bombay Talkie (1930-1947) that Indian leaders – even as they struggled for freedom – failed to arrive at a power-sharing formula, which was necessary for the Independence of a United Greater India. The songs of Anmol Gharhi  (The Priceless Moment; 1946) and Jugnu (The Firefly, 1947) capture, in Noor Jahan’s voice, the hope as well as the loss connected with Independence and its associated failures.

Thus, Noor Jahan’s songs of the 1940s contain the emotional record of the approach of the Midnight Hour – they document that era. Noor Jahan and Ghulam Haider (and other Punjabi composers, e.g., Shyam Sunder, Hafiz Khan, Khurshid Anwar, Feroze Nizami, Rafiq Ghaznavi, G.A. Chishti) began to create songs of protest and defiance against colonial repression and the anticipatory songs of the joy of approaching liberation. It seemed that the dholak-led, fast-paced percussion propelled, not just the melody, but History itself. Noor Jahan, the Indian warrior woman, became a voice of the freedom fighters; she was also the voice of the hopes of those women who marched along with men.

 

Fortunately or otherwise – depending upon one’s political leaning – she is also symbolic of the partition of ‘British’ India. Thus the singer who epitomised protest against domination and oppression of all Indians under British rule also awakens the memory of India’s bloody fragmentation. As late as 1946, she sang the patriotic Yeh desh hamara pyara Hindustan (in Humjoli) – and yet would abandon the land she extolled in this song. In the year of Independence/Partition (1947), two of her films – Jugnu and Mirza Sahiban – were hits in the partitioned independent India!

 

The songs of Anmol Gharhi (1946), Jugnu (1947) and Mirza Sahiban (1947) paint a haunting, heartbreaking picture of the blood-stained Indo-Pakistani freedom. In a song which captures the confusion of the days leading to Independence and the shattering of India, we hear her singing the extraordinary Umangen dil ki machleen (Jugnu, 1947). This song is cleverly perched between movement and its truncation – of the need to act and the need to stop and reflect upon the consequences of movement. Midway, she breaks into broken taans – each break punctuated by the tabla beats, trembling mid-movement. The lyrics move from hope to nostalgia – the remembrance of a squandered moment of possibility. In her earlier duet (with Surendra) in Anmol Gharhi (Awaz de kahan hai), there is mention of the passage of stars from the sky and the gathering of darkness. In Jugnu, she asks us and herself to forget about the passed times of togetherness (Tum bhi bhula do, hum bhi bhula den); and yet this song – even today – powerfully forces us to remember, in depth, those very times. Amongst her last songs recorded in India is the Jugnu solo Hamen to sham-i-gham main katni hai zindagi apni; it is sung with barely perceptible percussion. This signifies near cessation of movement/time. She sings haltingly and coughs periodically. It creates an aural picture of asphyxiation.

Obviously, Noor Jahan, unlike millions of Indian Muslims who committed themselves to Gandhi/Nehru’s dream of a united, secular India, had no confidence in the continuation of its promised secularity; in the midst of a bloodbath she left India. Therefore, it is logical that for all Punjabis (Indo-Pakistani) and for all Indians (Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs) Noor Jahan’s voice produces pleasure and pain – simultaneously. Her songs tie us in emotional knots. Her songs document the hope of freedom and its bloody wages. We relive troubled times.

 

However, when we listen carefully to her songs in Anmol Gharhi and Jugnu we get evidence of the torment she endured in making the fateful decision to leave India. Obviously, at some catastrophic moment she must have felt ‘safer’ on the other side. Obviously, too, she must have dreamed of greater freedom and democracy in Pakistan. Did she achieve these? Did she even work for them? Were her fears for the Muslim minority in an independent India justified? What does the unfolded history of post-Independence India and Pakistan say about her fateful decision of 1947?

 

She herself never spoke about the actual reasons for leaving India. Meanwhile, Noor Jahan’s fifty-four years in Pakistan are summarised in two of her tragic songs – Mujh se peheli si muhabbat mere mehboob na mang (Qatil, 1962) and Ja apni hasraton pe ansoo baha ke so ja (Susral, 1962).  These songs indicate her exhaustion and defeat in Pakistan.

 

Following the Independence of Pakistan, she witnessed: ethnic cleansing (of Hindus and Sikhs); abrogation of democracy; the reduction of the minorities (the remaining Hindus, Sikhs and Christians) to second class citizenship; the assassination of two prime ministers (one was actually hanged); the oppression of Bengali Muslims by Muslims of West Pakistan; the bloody dismemberment of Pakistan associated with the creation of Bangladesh (1971); the rise of militarism and Islamic fundamentalism (and its associated abrogation of the rights of Muslim women based on a narrow interpretation of the Sharia); several futile wars with India; the creation of the so-called “Islamic” nuclear bomb following, of course, the earlier detonation of the Indian (‘Hindu’?) bomb.

 

 Noor Jahan joined most Pakistanis in their journey into despair. Her voice failed to bring about the sort of liberation that Pakistani (secular) Muslims hoped for. Noor Jahan, who did much for the liberation of men and women in pre-Partition India, was compelled by her husband Ejaz to abandon action (i.e., movies) and restrict herself to playback singing. Thus, Noor Jahan, a pioneering singing actress who propelled India (and Pakistan) towards Independence and was amongst those artists who laid the foundation of film making in Pakistan – even directing the Punjabi film Chanway (1951) – was ordered about by a young husband of negligible artistic merit.

 

Meanwhile, what legacy did she leave behind in India? First and foremost, it is futile to deny her contribution to freedom in India. She also left behind two artistic gems: composer Sajjad Hussain and the singer Mohammand Rafi. The mandolin wizard Sajjad was recommended by her to the director, Shaukat Hussain Rizvi, to compose the music of Dost (The Friend, 1944). Although a commercial failure throughout his career, Sajjad created unique melodies – amongst the most intriguing in the canon of Indian film music.

Singer Mohammand Rafi was not discovered by Noor Jahan (the credit goes to Shyam Sunder who first used him in the Punjabi film Gul Baloch), yet he credited her for infusing confidence in him during the numerous rehearsals of the famous duet for Jugnu (1947): Yahan badla wafa ka. This duet was his first
hit song.

 

In a way, even after Noor Jahan left she did not quite leave India. In the songs of Lahore (1949) and Bazaar (1949) – under the guidance of Shyam Sunder – the young Lata Mangeshkar reproduced Noor Jahan’s songs. Indeed, the template of female cinema singing was, to a great extent, created by her.

 

Ghulam Haider hung on in India until 1949. After introducing Lata in a major way in Majboor (1948) and after composing rousing nationalistic Indian songs in Shaheed (1948), he too followed Noor Jahan across the border. He too left without leaving. Although many Indian music critics would get busy in their attempts to erase his (and Noor Jahan’s) contributions to the development of popular Indian music, Ghulam Haider (and others who crossed the border) refused to be altogether ‘cleansed’ away. Soon O.P. Nayyar, Madan Mohan, S. Mohinder and others would pick up the baton and create rousing songs based on Ghulam Haider’s musical ideas. Indeed, most Indian popular songs – including the internationally popular Euro-bhangra – contain the indelible vestiges of Ghulam Haider’s contributions. And Lata Mangeshkar – essentially his discovery – would carry the torch to dizzying heights in songs composed by Khemchand Prakash, Anil Biswas, Naushad, C. Ramchandra, Shankar Jaikishan, Madan Mohan, Roshan, Ghulam Mohammed, Khayyam and others. But Lata received the baton from Noor Jahan.

 

Following Independence in 1947 – on both sides of the Indo-Pak border – two great female vocalists, Noor Jahan and  Lata Mangeshkar, would sing of the broken promise of greater freedom for women (and most men) in their respective countries. In Pakistan Noor Jahan was singing Jigar ki aag mein is dil ko jalta dekhte jao (Dupatta, 1955) while in India Lata Mangeshkar asked Ab mera kaun sahaara? (Barsat, 1949).

In 1982, thirty-five years after crossing the Indo-Pak border, Noor Jahan recrossed it to attend ceremonies commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the sound film (and the film song) in India. Now she was coming from there to here...the “there” which thirty-five years ago, was “here”. She was greeted with such affection by the Indian fans that it hardly felt she was coming from “bitter shores”. No one was more surprised than she at the warmth she received in India. Of course, there was much curiosity by young post-Independence Indians regarding this icon of popular Indian music. Equally, those who had experienced the Independence struggle knew they were meeting an artist freedom fighter and a pioneer of the South Asian popular song. Noor Jahan, the Indian who became a Pakistani returned to India as an Indo-Pakistani. On the stage she sang an Indian song (Awaz de kahan hai), a Pakistani Ghazal (Mujh se pehli si muhabat mere mehboob) and a Punjabi song – the language which is the common heritage of India and Pakistan, and also the language in which her career began in or around 1935.

 

Especially noteworthy is that during her visit to India she insisted on singing Awaz de kahan hai as a solo. Thus she sang the following lines originally rendered by Surendra in 1946:

 

Qismat pe chha rahi

Kyun raat ki siyahi?

 

This was a premonition of the darkening prospects in South Asia. Economically, socially and politically Pakistan would experience eroding possibilities. Religious fundamentalism would gain greater currency leading to decreasing cultural tolerance. Meanwhile, India witnessed the near collapse of the secular political culture of Gandhi-Nehru-Azad. Hysterical mobs tore down the Babri Mosque and the culture of Gandhi-Nehru-Azad, and thousands of Muslims were murdered in the bloody riots which follwed the tawdry, violent attempt to re-establish the fabled “Ayodhya”. Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in coalition with several parties, including the openly fascist Shiv Sena party. The Indian Cabinet includes several members who actually participated in the destruction of Babri Masjid. Both India and Pakistan continue to lurch towards religious and political intolerance. The bloody war in Kashmir claims victims daily. Former US President Bill Clinton declared South Asia amongst the most perilous geographical regions of the world. Few objective observers would argue the truth of this sober assessment. Noor Jahan’s voice could no longer rise above the noisy political Indo-Pak mutual recriminations. In the eighties she was diagnosed to have coronary heart disease. She only had enough breath to keep herself alive. Time was speeding on ahead, South Asia was beyond reason. The great Indo-Pakistani sufi qawwal, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, hollered and screamed in protest in the great musical halls of the world. Just before his death, he invited Noor Jahan to record a duet with him and she obliged. Her voice was colored in faded sepia tone. The sun was slowly but surely dying on the horizon.

 

Noor Jahan’s personal life (marriages, love affairs, greed) has been the source of much gossip and innuendo. Those who wag their tongues/pens conveniently forget that Noor Jahan ventured forth as a professional artist in a male-dominated world of colonized, feudal India, in 1930’s and 1940’s. For all practical purposes it regarded women as property. This was an unforgiving universe. The world of music, theater and the cinema – especially as regards women – was seen as the domain of the ill repute, the sphere of the Devil. It was not for “decent women” (i.e., women of free will). In her struggle to find a footing in the world controlled by men she did not have an easy time. But she succeeded (along with other women artists) in opening the door of the popular arts for other women. As the movement towards Independence progressed and women like Sarojini Naidu, Aruna Asaf Ali and others marched alongside men to struggle for freedom, the weighty voiced warrior women singers such as Zohrabai Ambalawali, Khurshid, Amirbai Karnataki, Shamshad Begum joined Rajkumari, Umadevi, Suraiya in singing India’s Freedom Song.

 

In this context, it is instructive to mention the extraordinary Ghulam Haider composition Sawan ke naare aye (Shamshad Begum and chorus; Khazanchi, 1941). A group of young Indian women sing the song as they ride their bicycles. They are in charge of their fates and they choose to collectively ride away from oppression toward freedom.

 

Ghulam Haider

 

It is a fact, though, that events did not leave Noor Jahan untainted. The most regrettable action by Noor Jahan (and her first husband, Shaukat Hussain Rizvi) was to accept the keys to the ethnically cleansed Shorey Studios (Lahore) after she arrived in Pakistan following the Partition. It is not easy to understand their action – especially in the light of the fact that Noor Jahan was nurtured by Kajjan Bai, Dewan Sardari Lal (who also directed the first Pakistani film, Teri Yaad, 1948), K.D. Mehra, and Dalsukh Pancholi. Her career was propelled by music directors Shyam Sunder, Datta Korgaonkar, Pandit Amarnath and others. They were fellow artists – they only prayed to different God (s).  Many were forced to leave Pakistan against their wishes (as, of course, were many Muslims on the Indian side). Even though ethnic cleansing was a mutual, equal opportunity Indo-Pakistani crime (indeed, it still continues), it does not behove anyone to live off another’s misfortune – especially artists who, in matters of ethnicity/religion, were liberal people. Thus, Noor Jahan’s personal affairs remain just that, personal; yet her public occupation of Shorey Studios (renamed Shah Noor Studios) is the single egregious, unkind act of her life. One wishes that – as a tribute to her Hindu mentors and fellow artists – indeed friends – she had chosen to reject the offer to occupy Shorey Studios. More importantly, had she campaigned to preserve the destroyed film studios (in that form) of pre-Partition Lahore, she would have contributed to keeping alive on record an important legacy of South Asian history in Pakistan. The charred remains of those studios would have memorialized Lahore’s vital contribution to the development of a unique art form – the Hindustani film and its extraordinary music. She would have left behind a foundation of truth upon which to rebuild Indo-Pakistani amity. But then, Noor Jahan never claimed to be an angel – she was as fallible as the next person.

 

Meanwhile Noor Jahan’s (and Ghulam Haider’s) songs perhaps remain the best memorials to hope and its loss in South Asia. They may yet inspire us to find what we have lost. That is, when we care or decide to recover squandered possibilities.

 

References

1. S. Wolpert (1997). A New History of India. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

2. RPG/HMV (1994). Hindi Film Hits of Noor Jahan. Calcutta: The Gramophone Company of India, Ltd.

 

·

Acknowledgements

I am especially grateful to Vijaylaxmi Desaram of the Voice of America, Washington, DC, for allowing me to listen to several interviews with Noor Jahan prior to her death. The information in these interviews helped clarify several important issues. I am also thankful to her for encouraging me to write about Noor Jahan. ·

 

 

About the author

Ashraf Aziz was born in1940 in Tangra Tanzania. His ancestral place is Sialkot Punjab. His grandfather was among the first Punjabi workers who went to East Africa in 1895 to build railways there. Aziz did his PhD in zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1974. Now he is professor in Howard University College of Medicine Washington DC.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2010/04/20/GA2010042003040.html

 

[Reproduced from Light of the Universe, Essays on Hindustani Film Music, Ashraf Aziz, 2003, pp 127, Rs 160 pb with the kind permission of Three Essays Collective publishers Gurgaon India.
Email Asad Zaidi: threeessays@gmail.com or info@threeessays.com]