I grew up in a country that was still learning how to speak to itself.
Not loudly, not with the certainty that comes from power, but with the hesitancy of something still forming—like a child trying to understand the weight of its own voice. The India of the 70s and 80s was imperfect, uneven, often chaotic, but there was an undercurrent that held it together—a belief, fragile yet persistent, that we were building not just a nation, but a moral imagination.
We were being taught, in ways both subtle and sustained, that to belong to India was to belong to plurality. That difference was not danger. That contradiction was not collapse. That somewhere between the many languages we spoke and the many gods we prayed to—or chose not to—we could still find a shared grammar of being.
Vasudhaiva kutumbakam was not something we debated. It was something we inherited, almost unconsciously, like a rhythm in the body.
And sometimes, that rhythm found its way into song.
“Hum ko man ki shakti dena, man vijay kare…”
Give us the strength of mind, that the mind may triumph…
I remember standing in assembly lines, the sun still soft on our faces, uniforms slightly rumpled, voices not always in tune but somehow in unison. We sang without performance. Without irony. Without the burden of interpretation.
“Doosron ki jai se pehle, khud ko jai kare…”
Before seeking victory over others, may we first conquer ourselves…
At that age, I did not know that these words were written by Gulzar. I did not know about cinema, context, or authorship. I only knew that something in those lines lingered.
They did not inflame.
They did not incite.
They instructed—quietly, almost tenderly.
Years later, I would understand that what we were being offered was not a patriotic anthem, but an ethical framework. A way of being that resisted the easy seduction of superiority. A discipline that asked us to look inward before looking outward.
But long before I understood the philosophy, I encountered the language.
It came to me through a teacher—Toquir Ahmad—who treated Urdu not as a subject to be memorised, but as a sensibility to be inhabited. Where others gave me alphabets, he gave me access. Where others taught me correctness, he taught me courage.
Through him, the world opened—not in straight lines, but in spirals.
Mirza Ghalib arrived first, irreverent and intimate, teaching me that doubt could be devotional.
Allama Iqbal followed, urging me to imagine a self not bound by fear.
Mir Taqi Mir made sorrow feel infinite, while Faiz Ahmed Faiz made resistance feel like love whispered in exile.
And then there were those whose very presence complicated the narratives we were quietly being fed about language and belonging:
Firaq Gorakhpuri, whose name carried the cadence of Sanskrit and the soul of Urdu.
Chakbast, who wrote in a language some would later try to claim was not his.
They stood there, undeniable, unbothered, unfragmented—proof that Urdu was not owned, but shared. That it was not a marker of division, but a meeting place. That language, like love, refuses to stay within the lines drawn for it.
“Bhed-bhav apne dil se saaf kar sake…”
May we cleanse our hearts of all prejudice…
“Doston se bhool ho to maaf kar sake…”
If friends falter, may we find the grace to forgive…
These lines, which we sang so easily, carried within them a radical insistence. Not on agreement, but on introspection. Not on sameness, but on self-scrutiny.
To remove prejudice from the heart is not an act of convenience. It is labour. It requires unlearning, undoing, unsettling. It asks us to question the stories we have been told about ourselves and others.
To forgive is even harder.
It demands that we relinquish the small, seductive power of resentment. That we choose repair over righteousness. That we accept that being human is to err—and to err again.
“Jhooth se bache rahe, sach ka dam bhare…”
May we stay protected from falsehood, may we have the courage to uphold truth…
Truth, in those years, was not presented to us as a weapon.
It was presented as a responsibility.
Something to be held carefully, not hurled recklessly. Something that required courage, not because it made us powerful, but because it made us accountable.
Today, we live in a world that often confuses noise for truth and certainty for strength. We are encouraged to declare before we understand, to react before we reflect, to align before we inquire.
Populism thrives on this urgency. It feeds on the comfort of sameness—the illusion that if we all sound alike, we must all be right. It flattens complexity into slogans and turns nuance into suspicion.
But the song we grew up with asked something entirely different of us.
It asked for pause.
For patience.
For a kind of inner rigour that is neither glamorous nor easily visible.
“Mushkilein padein to hum pe, itna karam kar…”
When difficulties arise, grant us this grace…
“Saath dein to dharm ka, chalein to dharm par…”
May we stand by what is just, may we walk the path of righteousness…
Here, dharm was not doctrine.
It was not identity.
It was not exclusion.
It was principle.
An ethical alignment that transcended labels. A commitment to what is right, even when it is not rewarded. Even when it isolates. Even when it costs.
And perhaps this is where the idea of neutrality must be reclaimed.
Not as indifference.
Not as disengagement.
But as strength.
To be neutral, in the deepest sense, is not to have a position. It is to refuse the easy seduction of blind allegiance. It is to remain anchored in conscience rather than carried away by consensus.
A person guided by conscience does not dissolve into the crowd.
They stand within it, but not of it.
They listen, but they do not echo blindly.
They feel, but they do not surrender their discernment.
They belong, but they do not disappear.
“Khud pe hausla rahe, badi se na dare…”
May we remain courageous within ourselves, may we not fear adversity…
There is a quiet defiance in this line.
Not the defiance of rebellion for its own sake, but the defiance of steadiness. Of holding one’s ground when the ground itself feels uncertain. Of choosing integrity over immediacy, depth over display.
This is not an easy inheritance.
The writers who shaped this ethos knew that.
Saadat Hasan Manto bore witness to a humanity that refused to be sanitised.
Sahir Ludhianvi dismantled illusions that comforted the powerful.
Faiz Ahmed Faiz wrote of hope not as certainty, but as resistance.
They did not offer answers.
They offered inquiry.
And in doing so, they expanded the boundaries of what it meant to belong—to a language, to a nation, to a shared human condition.
What I realise now, looking back, is that we were being prepared—not for a world of agreement, but for a world of difference.
We were being given tools, not templates.
Songs like Hum Ko Man Ki Shakti Dena were not meant to make us comfortable.
They were meant to make us accountable.
To remind us that before we demand justice, we must practice it. Before we ask for tolerance, we must embody it.
Before we seek to change the world, we must confront the quieter, more difficult work of changing ourselves.
“Doosron ki jai se pehle, khud ko jai kare…”
Before victory over others, victory over the self.
It is a line that returns to me often now, in a time when victory is measured loudly and frequently, when success is displayed more than it is examined.
What would it mean, I wonder, to return to that quieter metric?
To ask not how many we have defeated, but how deeply we have understood.
Not how strongly we have asserted, but how honestly we have reflected.
Not how quickly we have responded, but how thoughtfully we have listened.
The compendium of humanity is not a chorus of identical voices.
It is a complex, often-dissonant, always-evolving symphony.
To participate in it requires more than agreement.
It requires grace.
It requires restraint.
It requires the willingness to sit with discomfort, to hold contradiction without rushing to resolve it, to see the other not as a threat, but as a possibility.
This is not weakness.
It is a rarer, more demanding strength.
The strength to remain open without becoming unmoored.
The strength to remain rooted without becoming rigid.
The strength to remain human in the face of everything that asks us to be otherwise.
I did not know, as a child standing in those assembly lines, that I was being given such a gift.
A song that did not end when the music stopped.
A prayer that did not belong to any one faith, but to a shared aspiration.
A language that refused to be divided, even when the world around it tried.
And perhaps that is what stays with me most.
Not the nostalgia of a different time, but the recognition of a different discipline.
One that we can still choose.
One that asks of us—not loudly, not insistently, but persistently—
“Hum ko man ki shakti dena…”
Give us the strength of mind.
So that, in a world increasingly drawn to sameness, we may still have the courage to remain expansive.
"I remember standing in assembly lines, the sun still soft on our faces, uniforms slightly rumpled, voices not always in tune but somehow in unison" (Illsutration by Suvir Saran) 
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