Maan jaa O maan jaa
Posted by: Atul on: February 23, 2025
This article is written by Arunkumar Deshmukh, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in other sites without the knowledge and consent of the web administrator of atulsongaday.me, then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.
|
Blog Day : |
6064 | Post No. : | 18849 |
Today’s song is from a Hindi film made in Madras – Chandirani-1953.
This usual costume film was made by Bharani productions, a banner owned by the film’s director P.Bhanumathi and her producer husband Ramkrishna. Music was by the pair C.R.Subbaraman and his assistant Vishwanathan. The cast of the film included P.Bhanumathi, N.T.Rama Rao (aka NTR), S.V.Ranga Rao, Agha, Amarnath (Bharadwaj), A.Nageshwar Rao (ANR), Miss Tulsi, Hemalatha and others. The film was made in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu simultaneously.
The year was 1948. A developing and fast growing southern film studio was making an ambitious Tamil film on a very big scale. The producer Director was very ambitious and he wanted his film to be All India famous. The only way to make it happen was to make this film in Hindi too, so that the All India market can be captured. His thought was final and thus began the historical thrust of south made Hindi films into the Hindi market of all India with S.S.Vasan’s giant film venture ” Chandralekha” in Tamil and Hindi languages. The film had taken 5 years to be made.
The film’s 603 prints were sent all over India and its release was synchronised for 9th April 1948. In the south it was released in 44 cities and towns. The success of this south film in Hindi inspired other south filmmakers and it started a flow of south made Hindi films during the period 1949 to 1960. This was a period when maximum Hindi films from south were shown all over India. My rough estimate is, these must be around over 100 films – multilingual, remakes and dubbed ones, all included. After Chandralekha, in 1949 to 1954 itself the following are some of the south made Hindi films – Nishan-49, Mangala-50, Bahar-51, Ek tha Raja-51, Sansar-51, Krishna kanhaiya-52, Mr. Sampat-52, Patal Bhairavi-52, Rani-52, Shamsheer-53, Chandirani, 53, Ladki-53, Bahut din hue-54, Manohar-54 etc etc.
The point is first it was Calcutta that made Hindi films and later it was Madras which was after grabbing the All India Hindi market. In this process, almost all major artists of south acted in Hindi films, like N.T.Rama Rao, A.Nageshwar Rao, M.G.Ramchandran, Sivaji Ganeshan, Gemini Ganeshan, Savitri, Rajkumari, Pandharibai, Bhanumathi, Pushpavalli, S.V.Ranga Rao, Relangi etc. etc. Calcutta stopped making Hindi films from the 60’s, whereas the south onslaught continued till about the 80’s. Nowadays, ofcourse, films are remade at Mumbai, based on Hit southern films, but still some dubbed films keep coming to the Hindi belt. Dubbing is the cheapest way to market southern films in other languages.
Today’s film Chandirani-1953 was also one of the trilingual films made in the south. It was made by Bharani productions, floated by Bhanumathi and her husband P.S.Ramkrishna Rao. The company was started in 1947 with the film Ratnamala and after 10 films, ended in 1964 with the film Vivah Bandhanam. Film Chandirani was the Debut film for Bhanumathi as a Director. Later on she directed yet another Hindi film Itni Jaldi kya hai–86. She acted in 8 Hindi films – Nishan-49, Mangala-50, Rani-52, Shamsheer-53, Chandirani-53, Hamen bhi jeene do-62, Nai Roshani-67 and Itni jaldi kya hai-86. She sang 12 songs in 4 Hindi films.
Bhanumathi did a double role in this film. She wrote the story and husband Ramkrishna scripted the film. Music was by C. R. Subburaman originally, but after recording just one song, he died suddenly. His 2 assistants, M.S.Vishwanathan and Ram Murthy managed the balance songs. With this film this pair-Vishwanathan and Ram Murthy started working as a pair of composers and played havoc in the southern film industry, by giving hit music to 90% of their films.
The decade of the 50s was a period when there was a lot of exchange of films between Bombay and the South. Some Hit and Popular films of South were remade in Hindi like Nishan-49, Bahar-51, Miss Mary-57 etc. In the mid 50s, the trend of dubbing southern films picked up speed and some popular films of major stars like MGR, NTR, ANR, Sivaji Ganesan, Gemini Ganesan etc were dubbed in Hindi. It was not a one way traffic though. In 1960, the famous “Mughal E Azam” was dubbed in Tamil and released with a different Title, “Akbar “-61.
In those days, most popular actors of the south were known by their initials like MGR, NTR etc. The simple reason was that the south Indian names were usually very long- like Marudhar Gopalan Ramchandran or Nandmuri Tarakrama Rama Rao or Akkineni Nageshwar Rao or even Vettaithidal Chinnaiah Pillai Ganesan ( that is Sivaji Ganesan). You cannot write such long names all the time, so their fans shortened their names with their initials and these actors began to get described by their initials. The female actors fortunately kept simpler names like P.Bhanumathy or Vasundhara etc.
In Bombay the names of actors were short and mostly one or two part names like Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Karan Dewan or Shaikh Mukhtar, Ajit etc. No actor was known by his initials. Nowadays, however, I find that the trend of addressing Hindi actors by their initials has started and we now find actors called AB or SRK etc.
All the major and popular actors of South secretly nursed ambitions of gaining fame in the Hindi belt too. But no one was ready to shift to Bombay to achieve their aim. On the other hand, female actors of the south were more outgoing and they reaped the rewards as we can see from the success of names like Vyjayantimala, Waheeda, Padmini and Hema Malini, to name a few !
As a via-media, the hit films of south actors were dubbed in Hindi but such methods did not bring the desired results for the male actors of the south. During this period many films were made in Hindi, which were remakes of Hit South films. It was then realised that Remakes were more popular. In fact the dubbed versions were rejected by other regions. The reasons were many.One, the southern actors were unknown in other regions, two the style of acting in southern movies was exaggerated or melodramatic, which was considered artificial-not natural and thirdly, the southern heroines were comparatively bulky. All these points were taken care of in making Remakes, with local stars and accepted styles of acting. Slowly dubbing stopped and Remakes prospered.
These days many ( read most) Hit Hindi films have been remakes of Hit south movies. For example, Hera Pheri ( Malayalam-Ramjirao speaking), No Entry (Tamil-Charlie Chaplin), Bhool Bhulaiya (Original Malayalam film made into kannada,Tamil and even Bangla), Ghajini ( Tamil- Gajhini, original Hollywood film Momento) and many others like, Wanted, Housefull, Ready, Bodyguard, Singham, Force, Rowdy Rathore, Son of Sardar, Kick etc etc.
The history of remakes and dubbed films is interesting. Before 1947, films were mainly made in different cities like, Poona, Mumbai, Kolhapur, Calcutta, Madras, Lahore etc. After 1947, polarisation took place and Hindi films were made in Bombay and Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam films at Madras and Calcutta made Bangla and eatsern Indian language films. However, the lure of Bombay was such that starting with Chandralekha-1948, Southern producers started dubbing and remake their Hit films in Hindi to avail of the vast Hindi belt markets. Bengal was already into making Bilingual Hindi films, but after the eclipse of New Theatres, Madras became a strong Hindi film maker. Despite the Anti-Hindi agitation wave in the 50’s and the 60’s in Madras, the Madras producers, professionals as they were, kept Politics and film making separate. They continued dubbing and remaking southern films into Hindi to make money.
Remaking one’s own or other’s films is a very old process. Even Dadasaheb Phalke had remade his first film ” Raja Harishchandra”-1913 again in 1917 (as per Britannica Encyclopaedia of Hindi films). Here is an extract from an article in Free Press Journal dated 7-12-2020, by Bobby Singh ji……
” Hindi remakes of the regional-language films (with a major influence of Bengali Cinema) began in the initial decades itself in the form of bilinguals and complete recreations made by filmmakers such as P. C. Barua, Nitin Bose, Bimal Roy, V. Shantaram and others. But a major change was seen when southern influence made a stronger impact post the late 1940s with Chandralekha (1948) and mega projects coming in from reputed production studios like Gemini, Prasad Pictures and AVM. The 1950s thus witnessed a big number of remakes of South hits such as Bahar, Sharada, Miss Mary, Chhoti Behen, Bhai Bhai, Amardeep, Bhabhi, Insaniyat, Azaad, Payal and many more.
The trend of remaking the regional-language hits (of both South and Bengali cinema) continued in the next two decades prominently and even if only a few names are mentioned here, they are surely going to surprise many young readers because the original film was almost never mentioned in the opening or end-credits in that era.
In 1960s we had major movies as remakes like Barkha, Hum Hindustani, Prem Patra, Dil Ek Mandir, Dil Tera Diwana, Doli, Gharana, Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, Mera Saaya, Nazrana, Farz, Milan, Mamta, Majhli Didi, Mehrbaan, Aadmi, Teen Bahuraniyan, Khandan, Do Dooni Chaar, Padosan, Pyar Kiye Ja, Saathi, Sadhu Aur Shaitan, Ram Aur Shyam, Main Sunder Hoon and more.
1970s witnessed remakes as Gopi, Pyar Ki Kahani, Do Phool, Lakhon Mein Ek, Safar, Jeevan Mrityu, Khamoshi, Dharti, Mere Apne, Naya Zamana, Aaina, Sanjog, Prem Nagar, Apna Desh, Humjoli, Chhoti Bahu, Lal Pathhar, Bawarchi, Naya Din Nayi Raat, Piya Ka Ghar, Amar Prem, Balika Badhu, Charitraheen, Chupke Chupke, Kora Kagaz, Khilona, Julie, Khushboo, Lok Parlok, Sargam, Bombay To Goa, Aap Ki Kasam and more.
The trend reached its peak in 1980s when many already established directors in south joined in creating Hindi remakes of their hit regional-language movies. As a result, there was a remake releasing regularly featuring stars of Hindi cinema, such as Jeetendra, Dharmendra, Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan, along with stars from the south as Kamal Hasan, Rajinikanth, Sridevi, Jaya Prada and more. The key remakes releasing in this decade were Sau Din Saas Ke, Ek Duje Ke Liye, Sadma, Zara Si Zindagi, Bemisal, Red Rose, Hum Paanch, Angoor, Meri Aawaz Suno, Woh Saat Din, Anubhav, Aaj Ka Daur, Ghazab, Kaamchor, Tohfa, Eeshwar, Hatya, New Delhi, Pataal Bhairavi, Saheb, Mahaan, Inquilaab, Aaj Ka MLA Ram Avtar, Aakhiri Raasta, Andha Kanoon, Dayavan, Satyamev Jayate and many more. On the other end, remakes of hit Hindi films also started being made in the South featuring names like Kamal Hassan and Rajinikanth.
In 1990s the pattern continued with young known stars of Hindi films as well as from South like Chiranjeevi, Nagarjuna, Venkatesh and Revathi featuring in remakes such as Pratibandh, Aaj Ka Goondaraj, Love, Shiva, Taqdeerwala, Pratikaar, Abhimanyu, Pratighaat, 100 Days, Chachi 420, Gopi Kishan, Viraasat, Muskurahat, Judaai, Police Public, Beta, Biwi No. 1, Bol Radha Bol, Sailaab, Sajan Chale Sasural, Judwaa, Coolie No.1, Raja Babu, Andaz, Aankhen, Gardish, Sooryavansham and more.
In the new millennium, Rehna Hai Tere Dil Mein, Tere Naam, Nayak, Hera Pheri, Kyon Ki…., kept the tradition alive till social networks came in and films like Ghajini and Wanted became the center of attraction as remakes of their South originals. Unfortunately since then, it has become one of the most (blindly) followed pattern by Hindi filmmakers to go for a remake that gives them ready material to work upon and adapt as per the tastes of Hindi film viewers taking much less time in comparison to an original project.”
Film Chandirani-1953 was an ordinary costume film, having a routine story of king, Queen, evil vazir, twin children etc. The story of this film was….
King Veerasimha was attracted to a court dancer during his birthday celebrations. She delivers twin girls after their union. The Senani, (major) Prachandudu, who also likes her, kills the dancer and imprisons the King. The minister saves one of the twins and sends her to the forest. Knowing this, Prachandudu kills him and takes charge of the kingdom. The other twin stays in the kingdom. Champarani in the kingdom, and Chandirani in the forest, grow up as two different personalities.
The son of the minister Kishore and Champarani love each other. Mukund is the son of Prachandudu. Kishore goes to the forest and learns about Chandirani, and that she loves him. With the help of Mukund, Chandirani enters the fort and meets her father. She learns about the love between Champarani and Kishore. Meanwhile, Prachandudu arrests Kishore. Chandirani attacks the kingdom with the help of the people. During the conflict, Chandirani sacrifices her life to eliminate Prachandudu, before dying she unites Champarani and Kishore.
There were 9 songs in the film. However, 1953 was the “Golden Era” of Hindi film music and the films offered very melodious songs, so there was no chance for songs sounding southern style to be popular, though these songs were good ones. Enjoy this 72 year old song by P. Bhanumathi, from today’s film….
Song- Maan Jaa O maan jaa (Chandi Rani)(1953) Singer- P. Bhanumathi, Lyricist- Vishwamitra Adil, MD- C.R.Subbaraman and Vishwanathan
Lyrics
maan jaa
o jaan jaa
dilwaale
matwaale saajnaa
maan jaa
o jaan jaa
dilwaale
matwaale saajnaa
dilwaale saajnaa
matwaale saajnaa
dilwaale saajnaa aa
matwaale saajnaa
dil le liya
ye kya kiya
dilwaale
matwaale saajnaa
dil le liya
ye kya kiya
dilwaale
matwaale saajnaa
maan jaa
o jaan jaa
dilwaale
matwaale saajnaa
rut albeli hoon oon oon
o main hu akeli honn hoon hoon
chala aa chala aa
mere man mein sama
mujhe apna bana jaa o o o
rut albeli hoon hoon hoon
o main hoon akeli hoon hoon hoon hoon
chala aa chala aa
mere man mein sama
mujhe apna bana jaa o o o
Share this:
- Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
- Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
- Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
- Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
- Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
- Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
- Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
Leave a comment