Poem of protest: author once distanced himself from anthem
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In 1920, Bismil Azimabadi, an Urdu poet from Patna, India, wrote the ghazal “Sarfaroshi ki tamanna” following the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
Azimabadi, born into a landowning family, was inspired by a culturally rich environment and a growing spirit of opposition to British rule. He first recited the poem at a Congress Session in Calcutta and it was soon published in a Delhi journal. British authorities quickly deemed the poem’s anti-imperial message offensive and confiscated the publication.
Despite the crackdown, the poem circulated widely, gaining popularity after the freedom fighter Ram Prasad ‘Bismil’ began reciting it at gatherings. Concerned for his safety, Azimabadi asked his mentor to revise the poem, lessening its revolutionary tone, and he avoided publicly claiming authorship. For decades, many people believed Ram Prasad ‘Bismil’ had written the poem because he used “Bismil” as a pen name and popularized it through his recitations, even while walking to his execution in 1927.
Azimabadi finally claimed authorship in his 1957 autobiography, lamenting that his work had been wrongly attributed to another. His remaining poetry was compiled in 1980 with help from the Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library in Patna, and the poem continues to appear in protests and has featured in several Bollywood films.
