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At the peak of his career in the 1970s, singer Mohammed Rafi privately decided to retire from singing. He was perhaps the most respected playback singer in all of Hindi cinema, and had been for quite some time. But when a Muslim cleric called him a sinner, he was struck by a fear. He actually believed the man, and felt that he had committed a grave sin. His son, Shahid Rafi, recalled the story in a new interview, and said that rumours of his father’s career being sidetracked by competition were untrue. He said that his father imposed restrictions upon himself after the interaction with that maulana.
When asked about the rumoured rivalry with Kishore Kumar in an interview with journalist Vickey Lalwani, Rafi’s son said, “People don’t know what really happened at that time. This was in 1971 and 1972; two years. Dad went for Haj with mom; it was the second Haj, the ‘bada Haj, or what we call the ‘Akbari Haj’. Dad was a very god-fearing person, and he was very young, he was around 40 at the time. During the Haj, some maulana told him, ‘Rafi saab, yeh jo aap sangeet mein hain, yeh bahut bada gunaah hai, upar waala aapko maaf nahi karega (God will never forgive you for being a singer, it is a sin)’.”
Shahid said that ‘nobody knows’ this story, and revealed that his father ‘got scared’ after the interaction. “When he returned to Mumbai, in one word, he said, ‘I’m retiring’. He didn’t speak to anybody. He said that he won’t sing again. I hear so many stories about music directors turning their back on him, and him being depressed for years. But the truth is that he felt he had committed a sin. He left Mumbai and went to London, thinking that nobody would bother him there,” Shahid said.
He said that after a while, his brother became concerned. But Rafi said, “Main retire hogaya, Allah ko nahi pasand, yeh gunaah hai (I’ve retired, God doesn’t approve of this; it’s a sin).” Shahid’s elder brother told him that he has no other skills besides singing, and that he wouldn’t be able to run a business or work a job. “God has given you only one thing, and that is your voice,” Rafi’s elder son told him, but Rafi didn’t take him seriously.
Ironically, it was another maulana who convinced him that he wasn’t committing a sin at all. “The maulana was in London, and he told my father that he should waste the gift that God had given him,” Shahid said. The maulana also tried to reason with him, and reminded him that he needs to feed his family. Rafi decided to return to Mumbai, and the music director Naushad said the same thing to him. But the harm had already been done; several producers had moved on from Rafi and had hired other singers for their projects. Despite the setbacks, Shahid said, his father never begged for work.
Often considered one of the greatest playback singers in Hindi cinema history, Rafi was honoured by the Indian government with the Padma Shri in 1967. He died prematurely at the age of 55 in the year 1980. He had been suffering from diabetes and heart ailments. The year 2024 marked his centenary.
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