| National Anthem | |
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National anthem of Pakistan |
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| Lyrics | Hafeez Jullundhri, 1952 |
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| Music | Ahmad G. Chagla, 1950 |
| Adopted | 1954 |
| Relinquished | Present |
| Music sample | |
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Qaumi Tarana (Instrumental)
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The Qaumī Tarāna (Urdu: قومی ترانہ), also known as Pāk Sarzamīn (lit. "The Pure Land"), is the national anthem of Pakistan. The words "Qaumi Tarana" in Urdu literally translate to "National Anthem". The Pakistani national anthem is unique in that its music, composed by Ahmad G. Chagla, preceded its lyrics, which were written by Hafeez Jullundhri. Another feature of the anthem is that no verse in the three stanza lyrics is repeated.
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In early 1948, A. R. Ghani from Transvaal, South Africa, offered two prizes of five thousand rupees each for the poet and composer of a new national anthem for the newly independent state of Pakistan. The prizes were announced through a government press advertisement published in June 1948. In December 1948, the Government of Pakistan establishhed the National Anthem Committee (NAC), which was initially chaired by the Information Secretary, Sheikh Muhammad Ikram. The Committee members included several politicians, poets and musicians such as Abdur Rab Nishtar, Ahmad G. Chagla and Hafeez Jullundhri. The committee had some difficulty at first in finding suitable music and lyrics.
In 1950, the impending state visit of the Shah of Iran resulted in the Pakistani Government asking the NAC to submit an anthem without delay. The committee chairman, the Federal Minister for Education, Fazlur Rahman, asked several poets and composers to write lyrics but none of the submitted works were deemed suitable. The NAC also examined several different tunes and eventually selected the one presented by Chagla and submitted it for formal approval. Chagla produced the musical composition in collaboration with another committee member and assisted by the Pakistan Navy band.[1]
The music of the anthem was composed by Chagla with lyrics written by Jullundhri. The music for the anthem had been composed in 1950 and had been used on several state occasions before being officially adopted in 1954. The three stanza composition is unique in a way that no part of the anthem repeats itself. The lyrics allude to a "Sacred Land" referring to Pakistan and a "Flag of the Crescent and Star" referring to the national flag. Unofficially, the anthem is sometimes referred to by its first line "Pāk sarzamīn shād bād" (Urdu: "Blessed be the sacred land"). The national anthem is played during any event involving the hoisting of the flag, for example Pakistan Day (March 23) and Independence Day (August 14).
The anthem without lyrics was performed for Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan and later for the National Anthem Committee on August 10, 1950.[2] Although it was approved for playing during the visit of the Shah, official recognition was not given until August 1954.[2] The anthem was also played during the Prime Minister's visit to the United States. The NAC distributed records of the composed tune amongst prominent poets, who responded by writing and submitting several hundred songs for evaluation by the NAC. Eventually, the lyrics written by Jullundhri were approved and the new national anthem was first played properly on Radio Pakistan on August 13, 1954.[3] Official approval was announced by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on August 16, 1954. The composer Chagla had however died in 1953, before the new national anthem was officially adopted. In 1955 there was a performance of the national anthem involving eleven major singers of Pakistan including Ahmad Rushdi.[4]
The music composed by Chagla reflects his background in both eastern and western music. Twenty-one musical instruments and thirty-eight different tones are used to play the Qaumi Tarana,[3] the duration of which is 80 seconds.[5]
The lyrics are written in Urdu, with some claiming that it is a Persianized form of Urdu, which is moot since Urdu and Persian share many common words and the Urdu vocabulary derives heavily from Persian vocabulary. Indeed, there are no words in the Qaumi Tarana that are exclusively Persian and not part of Urdu.
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* 1947 - The new state of Pakistan comes into being on 14 August
* 1950 - Musical composition for the Qaumi Tarana is composed by the Pakistani musical composer, Ahmad G. Chagla (running time: 80 seconds)
* 1952 - Verses written by the Pakistani poet, Hafeez Jullundhri, are selected from amongst 723 entries
* 1954 - Broadcast for the first time on Radio Pakistan on 13 August
* 1955 - Sung by 11 famous Pakistani singers including Ahmad Rushdi, Shamim Bano, Kokab Jehan, Rasheeda Begum, Najam Ara, Naseema Shaheen, Zwar Hussain, Akhtar Abbas, Ghulam Dastgir, Anwar Zaheer and Akhtar Wassi
* 1996 - Rendered in electric guitar for the first time by Pakistani rock band Junoon in their album Inquilaab
* 2011 - 5,857 people gathered in a stadium in Karachi at 12:05 a.m. on 14 August to sing the Qaumi Tarana and set a new world record for most people gathered to sing a national anthem[6]
For the first time in 2004, it was claimed by an Indian journalist that the first national anthem of Pakistan was written by Jagannath Azad, a Hindu poet from Lahore, on the personal request of Muhammad Ali Jinnah.[7] It was alleged that Jinnah asked Azad to write the anthem on 11 August 1947 and that it was later approved by Jinnah as the official national anthem for the next year and a half.[8] However, this claim is historically unsubstantiated, disputed and controversial. Many historians, including Dr. Safdar Mahmood and Aqeel Abbas Jafri, reject this claim and believe that Jagannath Azad neither met Jinnah nor wrote Pakistan's first national anthem.[9][10] The fact that there is no historical documentary record of any such claim prior to 2004 also makes this claim dubious and doubtful.
According to this claim, Jagannath Azad is alleged to have said:
However, this claim is unsubstantiated as Radio Pakistan recordings and international broadcasting services of the time, such as the BBC, have no such records in their archives nor is there any evidence that this version of the anthem was ever played on Radio Pakistan. The claim seems dubious as Radio Pakistan, Karachi, was established in 1948 and did not exist in 1947. At independence, Pakistan only had three radio stations at Dhaka (established in 1939), Lahore (1937) and Peshawar (1936).[11] Another argument given against this claim is that Azad's alleged statement was taken at face value on the claim of an Indian journalist in 2004.[12] The claim is also discredited since Azad himself did not make any such claim in any of his published works.[13] If Azad had written Pakistan's first national anthem, he would have mentioned it somewhere in his published works, which he did not. A website created by Azad's son also claims that Azad was given the Presidential Iqbal Award by Pakistan in 1979 but the records from the Pakistan government do not authenticate this claim. Azad's son has also been unable to produce any documentary evidence to substantiate such a claim. Azad himself never claimed to have received any award from Pakistan during his lifetime.[12][14]
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:اے سرزمین پاک
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:اب اپنے عزم کو ہے نیا راستہ پسند
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:اترا ہے امتحان میں وطن آج کامیاب
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:اپنے وطن کا آج بدلنے لگا نظام
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:ذرے تیرے ہیں آج ستاروں سے تابناک
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