Jhoom jhoom lehraaye tirangaa
Posted by: Atul on: October 23, 2026
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: | 6671 | Post No. : | 20643 |
Today’s song is from a very obscure film Aakhri Paigham aka The Last message-1949. Earlier to the release of the film, the film’s title was ‘Message of Mahatma Gandhi’, which was changed on government’s warning.
Produced by Filmland Ltd., Bombay, the film was directed by Muzammil, who also did the leading actor’s role in this film. The Music Directors were Abid Hussain Khan and Sushant Banerjee. For the film’s 12 songs, 6 Lyricists and 9 singers were used. The lyricists were Josh Malihabadi, Sharin Bhopali,Mahmood Sarosh, Behzad lucknowi, Ehsan Rizvi and J.K.Chugtai. The singers were Shamshad, Vinod, Uma Devi, Sailesh, Sudha Malhotra, Abid Hussain, Sushant Banerjee, Zohra Jaan and Rafi.
The cast included Leela Chitnis, Muzammil, Shashikala, Jillobai, Niranjan Sharma and others. The film was a typical propaganda film for Gandhi.
After the killing of Gandhi in 1948, there was a wave all over India To deify him. The film industry and the musical fraternity was not behind. There were many documentaries on Gandhi shown in theatres. There are 3 glaring examples of his musical glorification.
The first example is that of the film Sona Chandi-1946. The M.D. was Tufail Faruqui, who migrated to Utopian Pakistan, after the Partition. Sona Chandi was censored on 19-7-1946 with Censor Certificate 34253 and released. After Gandhi’s death, 2 additional new songs – ‘Pyare Bapu ki kahani” sung by Lata Mangeshkar and ” Jai Jai Ghanashyam” sung by Saroj Borkar were recorded hurriedly by Music Director D.C.Dutt and included in this film. The film was re- censored on 9-4-1948 with Censor Certificate No.39154 and the film was re-released.
The second example is today’s film. As per information available from The Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema, this film was a story of 2 lovers among Gandhi’s entourage. Gandhi’s speeches and songs about him were stuffed in this film.
The third example was a Biographical song on Gandhi – “Suno suno aye duniya walo”, sung by Mohd. Rafi was recorded by Music Director Husnlal-Bhagatram. This song was a long one and was in 4 parts. Thousands of these records were sold in a short time. The song was written by Rajinder krishna.
Besides this, there were two unnoticed facts about this film. The famous comedian Johnny Walker (Badruddin Kazi) made his debut in this film without getting a credit. However, this fact was always hidden. Secondly, singer Sudha Malhotra used to declare Arzoo-50 as her first film, under Anil Biswas,but she never said that earlier she had sung 3 songs in film Aakhri paigham-49, under the baton of Abid Hussein Khan, a less known composer.
It is very unfortunate that once the artist becomes famous, he tends to forget his humble beginning with a less known film or a composer. This is because they are ashamed of it. Shri Girdharilal Vishwakarma ji,famous collector and a film Historian,rues that they do so. He feels the blame also goes to people who take their interview,because the interview takers do not do proper homework. Many times they do not know anything and simply listen to whatever is told by the artist.
What an year 1949 was ! It not only gave superlative quality musical films but also was an eventful year for the industry setting Benchmarks for various activities. Aptly,1949 can be called a “True First year of the ‘GOLDEN ERA’ ” of Hindi film music.
Andaz and Barsat were the 2 films which set standards for such films in the future. Andaz was Mehboob’s 3 rd film after Anmol Ghadi-46 and Anokhi Ada-48 where films were based on Love triangles. The only film of Raj and Dilip together,Andaz had songs which create the same magic even today..
Barsat established RK Banner,gave it a Monogram (DP in today’s Lingo) in the pose by Raj and Nargis from the film,and launched several artistes for a successful career like, Shankar-jaikishen,Shailendra,hasrat jaipuri,Ramanand Sagar and Nimmi for whom all this was a debut film. Andaz gave introduction to Platonic love and Barsat gave prestige to Love stories in films.
Mahal-First film of Kamaal Amrohi as a Director,established Madhubala as a Star,started a trend for Mystery based films and made Lata an All India Phenomenon !
In 1949, South and East productions also contributed substantially. After the stunning success of Chandralekha, S S Vasan of Gemini Films, Madras brought his second Blockbuster in Hindi,Telugu and Tamil ( Chandralekha was made in Hindi,Tamil,Telugu and Simhali,all 4 were superhits). NISHAN-49 had Ranjan and P. Bhanumathy in the lead,even in Hindi edition. Ranjan (Ramanarayana Venkataramana Sarma) a multi-talented internationally known artiste was a popular Hero. Vasan used him in his 3 rd Hindi/Tamil/Telugu film ‘Mangala-50’.
From Calcutta came Shanta Apte’s ‘Swayamsidha’-49- a story of a strong woman. Many films were made on this story almost every decade later on. Chhota Bhai-also from Calcutta in the same year represented India in a Canada Film Festival.
Ek thi Ladki-49 made “Lara Lappa” a National song. Meena Shorey was known as the “Lara Lappa Girl ” till she died in poverty unsung and unknown in Pakistan. Badi Behen (Husnlal-Bhagatram), Dillagi and Dulari (Naushad Ali), Baazaar( Shyamsunder) and Patanga (C Ramchandra) were the other hit musicals in 1949.
In 1949, the Censor Board started the “A ” category,Films division was established, India’s First luxury Theatre ‘Liberty “was opened in Bombay, Navketan Productions of Dev Anand was established and ‘Movie Times ‘ magazine started publishing film news.
By 1949,Naushad Ali and C Ramchandra were competing with each other for the No. 1 slot. Both respected each other. Next few years,their competition gave superlative music to Indian music lovers. This was everybody’s gain. The Playback singers’ group was coming to a final shape with Lata,Asha,Geeta,Shamshad and all others in that order,for female singers. For males, it was Mohd. Rafi,Mukesh,Kishore,Talat and Manna Dey and all others in that order. Very shortly,the first 3 in each group were the survivors for a longer run, the rest remaining on the scene without any consequence !
Out of the Music Directors, those who debuted or excelled in the late 40s only survived and prospered. Naushad,Shankar-Jaikishen,S D Burman,Roshan, C.Ramchandra,Husnlal- Bhagatram and all others in that order. In due course, the first few proved to be long distance runners. By late 70s this generation of composers was slowly getting replaced by the next generation composers.
One of the singers in today’s song is Uma Devi. Uma Devi, who became a singing sensation overnight with her ” Dard “-47 song ” Afsana likh rahi hoon “, left singing and became a Comedy actress. What a turn of events to her Career ! There are a few other cases like Amirbai Karnataki, who left acting to concentrate on singing, Singer Shyam who was forced to do only acting in later life as there were no song assignment for him and Sailesh Mukherjee, who became a hero in films-with a New name, Shrikant Gaurav- after leaving singing/composing.
Tun Tun. The name conjures up the image of a roly-poly, funny woman. She was christened thus by none other than Dilip Kumar. She was working with the thespian in her first film Babul which had Nargis in the romantic lead. And the impact that she made with her debut was so “heavy” that Tun Tun emerged an overnight star. She was indeed Hindi cinema’s first-ever comedienne and roles were specially written for her. She did not make a special pair with any one comedian but she was paired with everyone from Bhagwan Dada, Agha, Sunder, Mukri, Dhumal, Johnny Walker to Keshto Mukherji.
The funny thing was that while all other heroines were on a constant diet, watching what they ate, Tun Tun made it a point to carry a dabba with her all the time, nibbling at junk food and mithai every minute she was on the sets. “I had to maintain myself,” she often joked.
But Tun Tun, whose real name was Uma Devi, did not join the film industry to become an actress. She was born on 24-12-1923 in a poor Khatri family, in the village Alipur,near Mathura,in U.P. She wanted to be a singer. In fact, even as a child she only dreamt of becoming a singer. And not just that, she, at the age of eight, had some great, almost impossible dreams. If and when she would sing, it had to be for Naushad only! She would not sing for any lesser music-director. Naturally, she had to struggle very hard to realise her dream.
Orphaned as an infant, Uma was raised by her chacha in an obscure village near Mathura. Girls were not sent to school as a matter of course. Consequently, as a child Uma would climb on imli trees, play on farm yards and listen to film songs on the radio. She would listen to the names of the singers and music directors being announced on the radio and dream of hearing her name on the air waves.
However, a major hurdle stood in the way. Singing was taboo in her orthodox North Indian household. She began practising singing on the sly. Ramlila and film songs were her source of inspiration. She taught herself to read and write Hindi and later picked up a smattering of Urdu and English to get by in showbiz.
Luckily for Uma, her friend from Delhi came to her village. She was educated and had connections in the Bombay film industry. She wrote to her director friend in the tinsel-town to help Uma. In 1946, at the age of 23, Uma boarded the train to Bombay without informing her chacha. In Bombay she struck up an instant friendship with actor-director Arun Ahuja and his singer-wife Nirmala Devi (Govinda’s parents). They introduced her to various music directors.
One of them was Allah Rakha who agreed to give her one song in the film Wamiq Azra, the others being sung by Mallika Pukhraj. Thus, Uma Devi sang “Hai do dil milte milte reh gaye…” and got paid Rs 200, a princely sum those days.
The quest for Naushad continued. Finally, A.R. Kardar, who was looking for a fresh female voice for his heroine, viz Munawwar Sultana, introduced her to Naushad. She told him if he did not give her a chance, she would jump into the sea, which happened to be right across the bungalow where they were. The great music director asked the chubby Uma what was the “sur” she sang in. Uma was blank. She asked him to listen to her and decide. After listening to her for 10 minutes, Naushad gave the nod. A contract was signed and Uma was enrolled at Kardar Productions. She was paid Rs 500 as advance and arrangements were also made for her stay at the official guest house where the staff stayed.
Uma sang “Afsana likh rahi hoon, dil-e-baqarar ka, aankhon mein rang bhar ke tere intezar ka”… for Munawwar Sultana. The song floored the nation and established her as a front-ranker in the era of Noor Jahan Shamshad Begum and Mallika Pukhraj (Lata Mangeshkar had not yet arrived on the scene). She became Naushad’s favourite singer and he would reserve at least two songs for her in each of his films.
Uma Devi’s “Kahin jiya dole…” and “Dil ko lagaya humne…” from Anokhi Ada cemented her popularity. She was offered Chandralekha by director S.S. Vasan of Madras. She had to sing seven classical songs for music director S.S. Rajeshwar Rao. Uma realised these were beyond her capabilities. However, Rajeshwarrao worked hard on her and helped her sing the compositions.
Uma’s career as a singer was short-lived. New singers entered the industry. It was impossible to keep pace with Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle. “Rakhi”-brother Naushad used to compose songs to suit her range. But that could not have continued for long.
Her luck changed when she went to Madras in 1948,to sing in S.S.Vasan’s ” Chandralekha”-48. In doing so,she broke the contract conditions laid down by the Kardar studios,for whom she was singing in Bombay. Director A.R.Kardar was so furious that he ensured that no singing assignments came her way. Still she sang in almost 12 films in 1949,before work stopped. There was a gap in her career.
When she resumed in 1950,the singing scenario had changed drastically with new singers and she was forced to take up acting,to survive. As a comedy actress she was extremely successful. As a singer she sang about 120 songs in 42 films. Even after becoming an actress,she did sing in some films,but except in Deepak-52,all were duets,trios or chorus songs. her last song was in ‘Premi Gangaram’-1978
It was time to change tracks. Naushad advised her to switch to acting. He felt she would make an excellent comedienne for she had a natural flair for the funny stuff.
Once again, Uma wanted the best. She said she wanted a role opposite Dilip Kumar. Naushad couldn’t stop laughing, but he talked to Dilip. A role was created for Uma and she got her first film Babul in 1950. A scene required her to chase Dilip around a charpai (cot), but she ran so fast that she would leave the hero behind. Ultimately, after repeated takes, she pulled him in front of her. But in the process she fell on the charpai and Dilip fell on her. The shot was canned and they retained the shot. The credits announced her name as Uma Devi, but they decided to give her a screen name. It was Dilip Kumar’s idea to call her Tun Tun.
Tun Tun did many films later. She had a fan in Guru Dutt and acted in almost all his films. Her favourite role too was from Guru Dutt’s “Mr and Mrs 55” in which she played a Christian lady. Having more or less left films, Tun Tun, alias Uma Devi, led a retired life in a middle-class residence at Andheri, Mumbai. She spent her time playing with her grandchildren or listening to her favourite songs on All-India Radio. It was, after all, listening to the radio that got her attracted to the film industry in the first place.
Uma Devi aka Tun Tun died on 24-11-2003, after a long illness.
Here is today’s song, sung by the two Music Directors of the film-Abid Hussain Khan, Sushant Banerjee alongwith Uma Devi and chorus. Enjoy…..
Song- Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye Tiranga (Last Message) aka (Aakhiri Paighaam)(1949) Singers- Abid Hussain Khan, Sushant Banerjee, Uma Devi, Lyricist- Mehmood Sarosh, MD- Abid Hussain Khan and Sushant Banerjee
Lyrics :
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye TirangaJhoom Jhoom lehraaye Tiranga
lehraaye tiranga aa aa
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye Tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye Tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye Tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye Tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye Tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye
Bharat maa kee aazaadee ke
geet suhaane gaaye tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye Tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye
Bharat maa kee aazaadee ke
geet suhaane gaaye tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye Tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye
jitnee balandee per hai jhanda aa aa
utna hee ooncha naam ho apna
utna hee ooncha naam
jitnee balandee per hai jhanda aa aa
utna hee ooncha naam ho apna
utna hee ooncha naam
apne naam se pyaara tiranga
apne naam se pyaara tiranga
itni balandee par ye ek din ??
??
?? mein jhuk jaaye tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye Tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye
Bharat maa kee aazaadee ke
geet suhaane jaaye tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye Tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye
maata(?) sa lehraata
o o o o
maata(?) sa lehraata
o o o
maata(?) sa lehraata
??
iska saaya jahaan bhee pahunche
man kee umang badhhaaye ae ae
iska saaya jahaan bhee pahunche
man kee umang badhhaaye
maata see tu ?? chhalke neeche
?? kya uthhaaye
tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye Tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye Tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye
Bharat maa kee aazaadee ke
geet suhaane gaaye tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye Tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye
yudhh mein apne dharam ke ??
?? veeron kee ?? kahaanee
yudhh mein apne dharam ke ??
?? veeron kee kahaanee
behtee hai ismein doodhh kee dhaaren
ujla rang jataaye
behtee hai ismein doodhh kee dhaaren
ujla rang jataaye
Hindustani hare bhare hain
hara rang batlaaye
Tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye Tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye
hai ye hamaaree aankh ka taara
hai ye hamaaree aankh ka taara
hai ye hum ko jaan se pyaara
hai ye hum ko jaan se pyaara
iska maan rakhenge chaahe
denee pad jaaaye jaan
Baapu ke haathhon mein rehkar
chala hai ye farmaan
dekho jiske man mein kapat hai
haathh na isko lagaaye
jiske man mein prem basa ho
isko wahee uthhaaye
dekho jiske man mein kapat hai
haathh na isko lagaaye
jiske man mein prem basa ho
isko wahee uthhaaye
prem ka jhanda
prem ka jhanda premee hee ke
haathhon mein lehraaye
sada yoonhee lehraaye tiranga
sada yoonhee lehraaye
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye Tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye Tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye Tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye Tiranga
Jhoom Jhoom lehraaye Tiranga
Share this:
- Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
- Share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
- Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
- Share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
- Print (Opens in new window) Print
- Share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
- Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
- Share on X (Opens in new window) X
Leave a Reply