His lyrics in songs like Thahar zara o jaane wale in Boot Polish (1954) always had strong socialist undertones.Īlso read: Jagjit Singh, the humble prodigy who made ghazals accessibleīorn to a Dalit family at Dhuspur village in Bihar’s Arrah district, Shailendra had never really been very open about his Dalit identity, despite having been part of a union, an integral part of IPTA and the Progressive Writers’ Association.īut in 2016 while launching a compilation of Shailendra’s poems titled Andar Ki Aag (The Fire Within), his son Dinesh Shankar Shailendra revealed that his father had belonged to the Dhursia caste, a cobbler community from Bihar.
In 2016, a street was named after Shailendra - Geetkar-Jankavi Shailendra Marg in Dhauli Pyau locality of Mathura, the place where he spent most of his early life before moving to Mumbai.īut regardless of his fame, Shailendra fundamentally remained a “people’s poet”. His success went beyond Kapoor, as he went on to work with other superstars like Dev Anand, Kishore Kumar, Dilip Kumar, Waheeda Rahman and Nargis, and composers such as S.D. Shailendra went on to be an integral part of Kapoor’s team. Much later, Shailendra did reconsider, and a long and fruitful collaboration then happened between Kapoor and Shailendra, whom he fondly called Kaviraj and Pushkin. It was one such poem on Partition, Jalta hai Punjab, that not only earned him literary acclaim but became his ticket to success in the world of cinema.Īctor, producer and director Raj Kapoor happened to hear Shailendra recite the poem at an IPTA function when Kapoor was preparing for his directorial debut Aag, and promptly offered to buy the rights of the poem for a then-handsome sum of Rs 500, but Shailendra refused. He created the famous slogan - “ Har zor-zulm kee takkar mein, hartal hamara nara hai ” (Strike is our weapon against every atrocity, every excess), this is used by protesters even today. It was during this time that he got involved with the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA), the cultural wing of the Communist Party of India (CPI), and began writing socialist-themed poems and songs set in post-Independence India.
Shailendra, who is considered to be the first to combine Hindi and Urdu poetry traditions, first started attending mushairas and kavi sammelans (poetry conferences) while he was working at Matunga Railway Workshop in what was then Bombay. Many might not know his complex life story - his tryst with communism or his battles of navigating the world as a Dalit man - the way his evergreen lyrics are known. New Delhi: From being a welding apprentice in the Central Railways to being part of a theatre group and then becoming one of the most well-known lyricists of Indian cinema, Shailendra led a rich colourful life peppered with both both struggle and success.
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