An icon of nationalism
Generations of Hindi film music followers have reason to remember the legendary singer Shamshad Begum. Her impact over a six-decade singing career was such that very few who had heard her hits in six languages were likely to forget the lilting voice with which she rendered the songs.
The grief over her death is also a kind of tribute to the nationalism that a whole range of Hindi film music inspired, particularly in the early days of Independence when a sense of nationhood was just beginning to establish itself in the minds of people.
Long before cricket became such a unifying force, it was Hindi film music that lent a sense of oneness. As a star of those early years of Indian cinema, Shamshad lent an intriguing touch in defying family taboos to take up singing but doing so in a burqa because her father insisted. Her duet with the emerging Nightingale, Lata Mangeshkar, Teri Mehfil Mein Qismat, in the 1960 blockbuster Mughal-e-Azam is still an evergreen number that haunts listeners.
Such was Shamshad’s impact that she could steal the limelight with just one or two numbers in a movie, which was ironic since she shunned the spotlight. She was never to be the workhorse like other singing greats even though she was probably the first to receive a princely sum (`5,000). Her defiance of family traditions in marrying a Hindu made her an early symbol of true nationalism too. Shamshad believed artistes never die. Her songs live on.
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