‘Saare Jahan se Achha’ plays at Beating Retreat: The story of Allama Iqbal who wrote the song

Flanked by the North and South blocks and the Rashtrapati Bhavan towards the end of Rajpath, the combined bands of the Indian armed forces and the Central Armed Police Forces march back to this tune. With puffed-up chests and meticulous strides, this year too, the troops, for over an hour, showcased martial tunes and colourful pageantry, until the national flag was lowered and the President gave permission to retreat. They then marched back to Iqbal’s poem.

The Indian armed forces march to the song at military events outside India too.

What is the history of the poem ‘Saare Jahan se Achha’?

Muhammad Iqbal, also known as Allama Iqbal (a title given to Islamic scholars) wrote Tarana-e-Hindi, or the Anthem of the People of Hindustan, as an Urdu poem for children in 1904. A eulogy for Hindustan, comprising India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the lines of the poem were “Saare jahan se achha, Hindustan hamara/ Hum bulbule hain iski, yeh gulsita hamara” (Better than the entire world is our Hindustan/ We are its nightingales, and it is our garden abode).

The poem was first published on August 16, 1904, in Lucknow-based historian and author Abdul Haleem Sharar’s weekly journal, Ittehad. A version of this poem appeared a month later in Zamana, a monthly magazine published by Urdu poet and journalist Munshi Daya Narayen Nigam. A few months after this, Iqbal, then a 27-year-old lecturer at the Government College, Lahore, was invited by his student Lala Hardayal (who established the Gadar Party later) to address the Young Men’s India Association. Instead of a speech, he sang Tarana-e-Hindi.

The song soon became a passionate anthem to denounce British rule and was a rallying cry for the freedom fighters. The lines “mazhab nahi sikhata, aapas mein bair rakhna” spoke of propagating a collective identity. Mahatma Gandhi sang it often in his cell in Yerwada Jail in Pune.

While the initial tune belonged to Iqbal, the version we know today was composed by Pandit Ravi Shankar during his association with IPTA (Indian People’s Theatre Association). He found the existing tune to be slow and long drawn out. He reworked it to add pace and composed the song in the cheerful Hindustani raga, Pilu, amalgamating it with other ragas as the song progressed. While Shankar’s version is still sung today, it was also adapted for the armed forces by Mumbai-based musician professor Antsher Lobo.

Over the years, the song has become entwined with India’s consciousness. And for generations, it has been sung in schools and colleges with much gusto.

Who was Muhammad Iqbal?

Born in Sialkot, Iqbal traced his lineage to the Sapru clan (Kashmiri Pandits) that later converted to Islam. He studied at Government College, Lahore and later taught Arabic at Oriental College, Lahore. Around this time, he wrote many poems for children including ‘Saare jahan se achha’ and ‘Lab pe aati hai dua’.

He later moved to Europe and studied in England and Germany. After returning to India, he wrote prolifically on politics, religion and philosophy. He was also honoured with a knighthood for his notable works ‘Bang-e-Dara’ and ‘Rumuz-e-Bekhudi’. He was deeply influenced by Rumi, the noted 13th-century poet.

How is his work regarded today?

Over the years, India’s understanding of Iqbal has acquired a negative connotation.

In 1930, he addressed the All India Muslim League in Allahabad and made the case for the two-nation theory, speaking of a Muslim province for northwestern Muslims within the Indian Federation. He believed in the integrity of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and saw him as a person who could guide the Muslim community.  Interestingly, Lala Lajpat Rai, before Iqbal’s address, had also written articles about a separate Muslim state and “a clear partition of India into a Muslim India and a non-Muslim India”.

In Pakistan today, Iqbal is regarded as the ideological father of the nation, which is why perhaps some people in India tend to dislike him.

Iqbal’s poetry reached the politicians as well as the masses. While Sarojini Naidu had called Iqbal the ‘poet laureate of Asia’, Jawahar Lal Nehru in his book, Discovery of India, had written about his meeting with Iqbal months before the poet’s death in 1938. “Jinnah is a politician and you are a patriot,” he told Nehru. Iqbal later wrote ‘Tarana-e-Mili’ on the same metre as Saare jahan se achha. Taraana-e-Mili spoke of Muslim pride and safeguarding of the Muslim faith.

In recent years, his work has attracted controversy.

In 2019, following a complaint by Vishwa Hindu Parishad workers, the headmaster of a government school in Pilibhit, Uttar Pradesh, was suspended after his students recited Iqbal’s poem ‘Lab pe aati hai dua.’ The poem has been a prayer sung in schools and colleges in the subcontinent for generations for its sentiment of banishing darkness and bringing light to the world. In their complaint, the VHP claimed that the poem was sung in madrassas and that reciting it in a government school was ‘anti-national’.

In 2022 too, the poem was a bone of contention when a school principal and a shiksha mitra (teaching assistant) in UP’s Bareilly were suspended by the state education department and booked for “hurting religious sentiments”. In 2023, Delhi University dropped a chapter on Iqbal from their political science syllabus for undergraduate students.