Lata Mangeshkar Sang Ae Mere Watan Ke Logon at Delhi's National Stadium on 27 January 1963 and Received the Bharat Ratna in 2001

On the evening of 27 January 1963, Lata Mangeshkar sang “Ae Mere Watan Ke Logon” in public for the first time, at the National Stadium in Delhi. President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru were in the audience. Kavi Pradeep wrote the words, C. Ramchandra composed the tune, and the news agency IANS reported in 2013 that the song moved Nehru to tears.

The Government of India made her a Padma Vibhushan in 1999 and a Bharat Ratna in 2001. When she died on 6 February 2022, it declared two days of national mourning. Accounts of how the song came to be sung differ, so this piece attributes each claim to the person or outlet that makes it.

A fund-raiser after the 1962 war

The producer Mehboob Khan organised a fund-raising programme at the stadium for the National Defence Fund, according to the journalist Ajay Mankotia, writing in DailyO in 2016. Songs by Naushad, Shankar Jaikishan and Madan Mohan were on the bill, and C. Ramchandra was to close it. Mankotia says Ramchandra arrived with no song and asked Pradeep to write one.

The war with China had been fought the year before. For one of its battles, the tuput account of Rezang La on 18 November 1962 follows the Defence Ministry’s official history.

IANS says the first lines came to Pradeep while he was walking on Mahim beach in Mumbai. He borrowed a pen from a fellow walker and wrote the opening stanza on the foil from a cigarette packet. Mankotia adds that Pradeep wrote about a hundred stanzas and Ramchandra chose five or six. Mankotia writes that the other items that night were fast-paced songs about valour, while Pradeep’s was about the sacrifices soldiers had made.

Four accounts of who would sing it

The singer was not settled until days before the event, and the sources disagree about how it was settled.

Pradeep’s daughter Mitul told IANS that a misunderstanding between Ramchandra and Lata led Ramchandra to choose Asha Bhosle. Her father thought only Lata could do it justice, persuaded her, and she agreed on the condition that he attend the rehearsals.

Mankotia’s version has Ramchandra and Lata not on speaking terms. Asha Bhosle began rehearsing, Pradeep phoned Ramchandra six days before the event to say Lata was willing, and the two agreed on a duet. Mankotia writes that Asha then said she was unwell and withdrew.

Mankotia also reports the music historian Raju Bharatan’s account, in which Lata agreed only if she could record it as a solo and Asha was dropped for that reason. Lata’s own account, as Mankotia relays it, is that she first refused because there was no time to rehearse, then wanted to sing it with her sister, and that Asha opted out.

All of these accounts end in the same place. Lata learned the tune from a tape and flew to Delhi on 26 January 1963, and Ramchandra, who was already there, could not rehearse with her.

The night at the National Stadium

Most accounts, including IANS and the India TV news desk, give 27 January 1963 for the performance. A Google Arts & Culture page built on the LIFE photo archive gives 26 January, Republic Day itself.

Mankotia describes a flute prelude by Basu Manohari and a chorus that Ramchandra hid behind a curtain to give an echo, so that it sounded as if the whole country was singing. He writes that the stadium went silent while she sang and then broke into applause. By Lata’s account, as he reports it, she was nervous and relieved to be done. Mehboob Khan then fetched her backstage because Nehru wanted to see her, and she said Nehru liked the song very much.

Pradeep was not invited, his daughter told IANS. When Nehru visited Mumbai on 21 March 1963, Pradeep sang it for him at a function at R. M. High School and handed him the original handwritten poem. Mankotia recalls that HMV issued the song on a 78 rpm disc in 1963.

A career that started at 13

PIB’s biographical note says Lata Mangeshkar was born on 28 September 1929, originally named Hema, the eldest of five siblings, and that her father Deenanath Mangeshkar was a classical singer and theatre actor. The Associated Press obituary gives Indore as her birthplace. She recorded her first playback song, for the Marathi film Kiti Hasaal, at 13, and her first Hindi film playback song, for Aap Ki Seva Mein, in 1946.

The Associated Press names the 1960 film Mughal-e-Azam as her career-defining moment. In 1972 she won the first National Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer, for Parichay, and PIB counts three National Film Awards and four Filmfare awards for female playback in all. Guinness World Records lists 12 February 1994 as the date she became the first woman and the first singer to receive the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award.

In the 2006 film Rang De Basanti, A. R. Rahman gave her the song “Luka Chuppi”, which Outlook describes as a lullaby with Lata as the mother and Rahman as the son. The tuput piece on Rang De Basanti at twenty covers the film. The Associated Press notes that she was called the Melody Queen and the Nightingale of India. Tuput’s profile of Sarojini Naidu records two accounts of how that second title first came to Naidu.

The honours, as the Gazette lists them

The President’s notification of 26 January 1999 lists “Kumari Lata Dinanath Mangeshkar (Art-Music-Cine Art), Mumbai” among the Padma Vibhushan awards. The notification of 26 January 2001 lists “Ms. Lata Dinanath Mangeshkar (Art-Music), Mumbai” for the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian honour. The Tribune reported from New Delhi on 21 March 2001 that President K. R. Narayanan decorated her and the shehnai player Bismillah Khan at a ceremony that day.

Guinness World Records dates her Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the government’s lifetime award for cinema, to 1989. The AP says France made her an Officier of the Legion of Honour in 2007. PIB adds that the Madhya Pradesh government instituted a Lata Mangeshkar Award in 1984 and the Maharashtra government another in 1992, to promote singing talent.

The Guinness count and why it is not settled

In 1974, according to a PTI report, Guinness listed her as the most recorded artist in history, crediting her with at least 25,000 songs in 20 Indian languages from 1948 to 1974. Mohammed Rafi disputed the entry and argued that he had recorded more. PTI says a later listing raised her total to at least 30,000 songs for 1948 to 1987, and that Guinness removed the category in 1991 without explanation.

Guinness today lists her sister Asha Bhosle for most studio recordings (singles), with up to 11,000 songs since 1947, according to the same report. The Associated Press uses a smaller figure: more than 5,000 songs in more than a thousand films. Lata told PTI in 2021 that she had no record of her unreleased songs, and PTI wrote that she never cared much about the figures.

6 and 7 February 2022

Lata Mangeshkar died at Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai on 6 February 2022, aged 92, PIB said, after she was admitted on 8 January having tested positive for Covid-19. The government announced two days of national mourning, with the national flag at half-mast. Eastern Mirror, reporting the Home Ministry’s communication to chief secretaries, says the flag flew at half-mast on 6 and 7 February and that there was to be no official entertainment.

She was cremated that evening at Shivaji Park in Mumbai with state honours. Prime Minister Narendra Modi flew from Delhi to pay his respects. PIB lists Maharashtra’s Governor Bhagat Singh Koshiyari, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, Sharad Pawar, Sachin Tendulkar, Shankar Mahadevan and Shah Rukh Khan among those who attended. PIB says the last rites were performed by her brother, Hridaynath Mangeshkar.