Kahaan jaaoon man ye boley kahaan jaaoon
Posted on: August 6, 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.
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Today’s song is from the dubbed film Sitamgar-1958. The film was directed by T.Prakash Rao. Music was by a pair….G.Ramanathan and B.N.Bali. The cast included Padmini, Sivaji Ganeshan, Ragini, Kannamba,Helen, Nambiyar, M.K.Radha, Thangavelu and many others.
Films titled “Sitamgar” were made in 1934, 1954, 1958 and 1985. The 1954 film “Sitamgar” was a C grade stunt film. I do not know about the films made in 1934 and 1985.
The film Sitamgar (1958) was made by Roopwani films, Bombay, but before its release the rights and ownership was transferred to Venus Pictures, Madras, possibly for Income Tax purposes. Sitamgar-58 is a Tamil film dubbed into Hindi.
Till 1947, Hindi films were made mostly in Bombay, Lahore, Calcutta, Kolhapur and Poona. Most studios were located in these cities. South Indian language films were made mainly in Madras and Bangla films were made in Calcutta and Dhaka. The Partition in 1947 changed the picture completely. Wholesale polarisation took place. Producers of Hindi films had to flee from Lahore, leaving everything behind them and some artistes from Bombay left for Pakistan. Thus, after Partition, the exclusive centre for production of Hindi films was only Bombay. By 1950 things settled in India and Pakistan Film Industry.
Telugu film producers shifted to Hyderabad, Kannada films to Bangalore and Malayalam to Kerala. Madras, however,still made films other than Tamil, like Telugu Hindi etc. But now it was only Remakes of successful Tamil films or dubbed films. The 50s saw many Hindi films dubbed from southern languages(Read Tamil/Telugu). Initially, they were Mythological, Fantasy or costume films. In the 60s, however, even social films were remade.
Film production in Madras is very methodical and professional. They make films as per plans and in planned time. For this reason,in the 60s to 80s many Hindi film actors volunteered to make films in south. The producers in south too had their favourites. In the Music area, there were, Ravi, C.Ramchandra or Madan Mohan, for lyrics and story, Rajinder krishna and Pradeep, and preferred actors were Jeetendra, Rajendra Kumar, Sunil Dutt and Mehmood.
Though Polarisation took place in film production, the attraction to come to Bombay and work here continued. Artistes from various centres still came to Bombay.
The biggest contribution came from Bengal, in music, direction and acting areas. Artistes from South tried their hand with Hindi films, either by Remade or dubbed films. Thus the greatest south actors like Sivaji Ganeshan, M G Ramchandran , N T Rama Rao, A.Nageshwar Rao, Jailalita, Janaki, Susheela, Bhanumathi, Prem Nazir of the older generation and Rajanikanth, Kamal Hasan and Chiranjeevi from the next Generation were seen in Hindi films. Only Dr.Rajkumar, the Kannada Superstar never worked in Hindi films. In fact, except for just 1 Telugu film, Sri Kalahasti Mahatmyam-1954, Dr.Rajkumar never worked in any other language film than Kannada.
In the music department also, many composers like K.Narayan Rao, S.Rajeshwar Rao, C R Subramanyam, E Shankar, R Sudershanam, Ramesh Naidu, Adi Narayanrao, Vishwanath-Rammurthy, Lingappa etc worked in Hindi films.
There was one name from South, which was very famous, but it is surprising that he too gave music to Hindi Films. is name was GHANTASALA.
The major difficulty for southern artists was speaking in Hindi. Due to this, they hesitated to work in Hindi films and instead, preferred dubbing their hit films in Hindi, released them on All India basis and hoped for becoming famous. Initially, in the period of the 50’s and 60’s decades, there was a spate of dubbed films, as well as some remade films in Hindi. Later on and now of course only hit films are remade in Hindi. The count of dubbed films has gone down considerably. These days, I find that even hit films of Hindi are also remade in southern languages.
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.
The south Indian names in full are usually very long, (especially Tamil names)- 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. In those days, most popular actors of the south were known by their initials like MGR, NTR etc. The female actors fortunately kept simpler names like P.Bhanumathy or Vasundhara etc.
In Bombay Industry 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. ( not only this but even on the social media like Fb and WA, I find that some people are accustomed to use only alphabets for even normal sentences making it difficult for the readers. They are either gusessed or left unread). 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.
Nowa 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.
SITAMGAR-58 was a dubbed film. Originally it was a Tamil film “Uthama Putran”, which was also dubbed in Telugu as “Veer Pratap”. The cast of the film was Sivaji Ganesan, Padmini, Ragini, Kannamba,M K Radha, K A Thangavelu, Somu, Helen etc. MD was a pair of G.Ramanathan and B N Bali. It seems both composed all songs together and there is no individual credit to any song. The film was directed by T. Prakash Rao. The story, dialogues and screenplay was by Sreedhar, who later became a famous Director…even in Hindi.
This is a popular story of twins. One good and one bad. But it was not an original Tamil story. Also, it was not the first film made on this story. A film of the same name was made in the 40s too, in Tamil. Few centuries ago Alexander Dumas wrote a novel ‘ The man in the Iron mask’, as a 3-part sequel to his famous “Three Musketeers’. It was rumoured in that period that the novel was based on a true story of Emperor Louis XIV, who had a look alike twin brother , kept in dungeons for life. many films were made in Hollywood and Europe, on this story, the last was in 1998.But in Hindi it is a favourite theme of the filmmakers as well as the audience. So any number of films made on this theme draw a huge audience.
In the film Sitamgar-58, Sivaji Ganesan plays the Twin roles of a Tyrant and a “Do-Good Prince in exile”. In Hindi, the first such film was Awara Shehzada-1933. A Rock and Roll song- dance was included in a Tamil movie for the first time in this movie and Helen, the famous dancer from Bombay- was specially brought in to do this number ( along with local dancers Rita and Gemini Chandra). This Tamil film was a Box office biggie and draws crowds even today for its Re-runs.
Films, Film stars and actors play an important role in the social life of Tamil Nadu and Andhra, or the entire south, for that matter.. Top class film stars are adored by their fans and Fan clubs are established, their statues erected and even Temples are built. ( Nowadays, all this frenzy seems to be less, in my opinion.). Due to their influence on the people, it comes as no surprise that Political parties tried to rope them in. So every big star in cinema has a political connection. Tamilnadu and Andhra had Cine stars as Chief Ministers and it continues to be so in Tamilnadu. Surprisingly, the situation is not like this in Karnataka. It may be because Karnataka is the youngest state among all Southern states.
As for Kerala, Marxist influence in the state of Kerala ensured that no individual is idolised there and so Malayalam movies of Kerala too have not thrown up a major politician of film world connection. However Dr. Raj kumar in Karnataka and Satyan and Prem Nazir in Kerala were Cult figures in their respective times.
The people of Tamilnadu are so much influenced by Cinema that Popular stars get special names from the public. Sivaji Ganesan ( 1-10-1928 to 21-7-2001 ) was very popular and competed with MGR. His original name was Vettaithidal Chinniah Pillai Ganesan. He was called Sivaji Ganesan, after his famous role of Shivaji in stage play, ” Sivaji kanda Hindu Rajyam ” , written by DMK leader C.N.Annadurai. Sivaji Ganesan had more than 30,000 Fan clubs all over the world. He acted in more than 300 films in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi.
I have seen both versions, namely ‘ Sitamgar’-58 and its Telugu copy ‘ Veer Pratap ‘ while I was in Hyderabad. It is simply a dubbed film and both were the same, but the fun was in watching Tamil actors speaking in Hindi and Telugu. The story of the film Sitamgar-1958 was….
In the kingdom of Malarpuri, the queen (P.Kannamba) delivers a male child. Her brother Naganathan (M N Nambiar) replaces it with a dead child with help from a maidservant, and informs king Varaguna Pandiyan (Sadasiva Rao) that the newborn is dead. To Naganathan’s surprise, the queen gives birth to another boy soon after delivering the first. Minister Gunaseelar arrives by then and the king is informed of the birth of two children, one dead and one alive. Everyone is happy that at least one is alive. Naganathan decides to kill the first infant and hands it over to his servant Somappa (Stunt Somu). However, Somappa and his wife raise the prince in a forest.
The crown prince is Vikraman and his identical twin in the forest is Parthiban (both played by Sivaji Ganesan). On his deathbed, the king (M K Radha) appoints Naganathan as the guardian of crown prince Vikraman, and gives the order that Naganathan would be solely responsible for Vikraman’s safety. To achieve his objective of ruling the country, Naganathan brings up Vikraman with all vices and does not allow him to bond with his mother. On the other hand, Parthiban grows up to become a valiant warrior under the guidance of Somappa and fights for the public.
After the king’s death, Vikraman ascends the throne and hands over administrative controls to Naganathan, who indulges in all kinds of looting by levying more taxes. Parthiban comes out of the forest and saves the minister’s daughter Amudhavalli (Padmini) when her chariot goes out of control. They fall in love, and he starts visiting her palace late in the night. Amudha encounters Vikraman, who looks similar to Parthiban, but does not disclose this to anyone. Vikraman likes her and tells Naganathan to fix his marriage with her. Amudha does not accept when Vikraman’s mother comes with the proposal. One night, the soldiers notice Parthiban getting into the palace and they reach Amudha’s room. She makes him escape by making him wear Vikraman’s costume. While leaving, he meets his mother, but pretends to be Vikraman. When he is talking to her, Vikraman arrives and they scuffle. Parthiban escapes, but when he comes again to meet Amudha, he is thrown into prison.
Through the maidservant, the queen learns that Parthiban is also her son. She goes to the prison and orders his release. By then, Vikraman arrives with Naganathan, who confirms they are brothers, but states that the kingdom cannot afford to have two brothers fighting for power. Vikraman does not wish to share the kingdom and to avoid anyone recognising him, orders that Parthiban be masked and imprisoned. Parthiban has an iron mask locked on his face; its key is with Vikraman. Amudha and Parthiban’s friend (K L Tangavelu) hatch a plan to rescue Parthiban. Amudha makes Vikraman insensibly drunk after a dance and takes the key. Parthiban’s associates reach the prison, set him free, put the same on Vikraman’s face and dump him in prison. Parthiban assumes charge of the kingdom and introduces citizen friendly policies which are welcomed by the people.
Naganathan suspects foul play. By then, Vikraman sends a message to Naganathan by writing on his dinner plate about Parthiban impersonating him. Naganathan rushes to jail, releases Vikraman, brings him to the Assembly and stops the coronation of Parthiban as king. In the fight that ensues between Naganathan’s army and Parthiban’s people, Naganathan dies. Parthiban and Vikraman fight despite a plea from their mother. When Vikraman loses, he escapes in a chariot wearing his mask. Parthiban tries to stop him, but he rushes away. Vikraman dies when his chariot falls off a cliff. Parthiban rules Malarpuri as a virtuous son along with Amudha and his mother. ( This is the Tamil film story as I found in The Hindu. In the Hindi edition of the film the names were different, naturally).
Here is the 67 year old song sung by a 28 year old Geeta Dutt. Enjoy…..
Song- Kahaan jaaoon man ye boley kahaan jaaoon (Sitamgar)(1958) Singer- Geeta Dutt, Lyricist- Sajan Bihari, MD- G.Ramanathan and B. N.Bali
Lyrics
kahaan jaaoon man ye boley
kahaan jaaoon
dil ne jahaan pyaar kiya
wahaan jaaoon
kahaan jaaoon
man ye boley
kahaan jaaoon
man mein uthhey chingaaree
mil gaya koi pujaaree
phool waalee haay akelee
dar ke bolee bechaaree
phool waalee haay akelee
dar ke bolee bechaaree
kahaaan jaaoon man ye boley
kahaan jaaoon
dil ne jahaan pyaar kiya
wahaan jaaoon
kahaan jaaoon
man ye boley
kahaan jaaoon
ek roz shaam dhaley phool lene gayee wo
dekh roop aaya koi marne lagee haay ree wo
dekh roop aaya koi marne lagee haay ree wo
usne kahaa aa ke pyaas man kee bujha lo
ek baar dil ko mere dil se milaa lo
usne kahaa aa ke pyaas man kee bujha lo
ek baar dil ko mere dil se milaa lo
beech raat kab na poochho bhed chhupaa lo
beech raat kab na poochho bhed chhupaa lo
pyaara miley aise heera miley
wahee pyaara miley aise heera miley
ab sun ke mera jiya jaaye donon huye juda haay
sunke mera jiya jaaye donon huye juda haay
kahaaan jaaoon man ye boley
kahaan jaaoon
dil ne jahaan pyaar kiya
wahaan jaaoon
kahaan jaaoon
man ye boley
kahaan jaaoon
baat kya hai sun tumhaaree
main bhee karoon ishaara
baat kya hai sun tumhaaree
main bhee karoon ishaara
ban sanwar ke baan chhodo
aaya samay tumhaara
ban sanwar ke baan chhodo
aaya samay tumhaara
mera kaam hai ke tujhe unse milaanaa
?? ped taley raat ko jaanaa
mera kaam hai ke tujhe unse milaanaa
?? ped taley raat ko jaanaa
phir to wo le jaaayenge jee tujhko uthhaa kar
phir to wo le jaaayenge jee tujhko uthhaa kar
udhar khushiyaan tamaam
idhar roney se kaam
udhar khushiyaan tamaam
idhar roney se kaam
haay chamke tera sitaaraa
paayaa toone sahaaraa
chamke tera sitaaraa
paayaa toone sahaaraa
kahaaan jaaoon man ye boley
kahaan jaaoon
dil ne jahaan pyaar kiya
wahaan jaaoon
kahaan jaaoon
man ye boley
kahaan jaaoon
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
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