Shamshad Begum
| Shamshad Begum शमशाद बेगम |
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| Background information | |
| Born |
14 April 1919 Lahore, Punjab, British India |
| Died | 23 April 2013 (aged 94) Mumbai, Maharashtra, India |
| Genres | Playback singing |
| Occupation(s) | Playback singer |
| Years active | 1933–1976 |
Shamshad Begum (Śamśād Bēgam; 14 April 1919 – 23 April 2013) was an Indian singer who was one of the first playback singers in the Hindi film industry. She had a distinctive voice and was a versatile artist, singing over 6,000 songs in Hindi and Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil and Punjabi languages and of them 1287 songs were Hindi film songs. She worked with maestros including Naushad Ali, S. D. Burman, C. Ramchandra and O. P. Nayyar. Her songs from the 1940s to the early 1970s remain popular and continue to be remixed.
Begum was born in Lahore of modernday Pakistan on 14 April 1919, the day after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre took place in nearby Amritsar city. She was one of eight children, five sons and three daughters, born to a conservative Muslim family of limited means. Her father, Mian Hussain Baksh Maan, worked as a mechanic, and her mother, Ghulam Fatima, was a pious lady of conservative disposition, a devoted wife and mother who raised her children with traditional family values.
In 1932, the teenage Shamshad came in contact with Ganpat Lal Batto, a Hindu law student who lived in the same neighbourhood and who was several years older than her. In those days, marriages were performed while the bride and groom were very young, and Shamshad's parents were already looking out for a suitable alliance for her. Their efforts were on the verge of bearing fruit in 1934 when Ganpat Lal Batto and Shamshad made the decision to marry each other. In 1934, despite strenuous opposition from both their families due to religious differences, 15-year-old Shamshad got married to Ganpat Lal Batto. The couple were blessed with only a single child, a daughter named Usha, who in due course married a Hindu gentleman, Lieutenant Colonel Yogesh Ratra, an officer in the Indian Army.
In 1955, Ganpal Lal Batto died suddenly in a road accident. His death left Shamshad very distraught, because her husband had been the focus of her life and they had both been extremely devoted to each other. He had handled many aspects of her career and contracts and had been a major positive energy behind her career progression. After his death, Shamshad became listless and lost the fighting spirit to pursue her career, which registered a sharp decline thereafter. Indeed, while Shamshad Begum was both an outstanding singer and a successful famous one, she was at some deeper level always a wife and mother first, someone who instinctively prioritised her family over her career. By nature, she preferred to keep away from the public glare and from business dealings, taking the view that it was rather unseemly for a lady to be involved in such things. After her husband's death, Shamshad Begum began living with her daughter and son-in-law in Mumbai, first in south Mumbai and later at Hiranandani Gardens in the Powai neighbourhood. She gradually became a recluse and devoted herself entirely to her grandchildren, to the point that the general public was unaware of whether she was alive or dead. In 2004, a controversy erupted in the media, when several publications wrongly reported that Shamshad Begum had died a few years previously. Shamshad's family clarified in a press release that this was not so; and it later emerged that the Shamshad Begum who had died in 1998 was Saira Banu's maternal grandmother. Her self-imposed seclusion is remarkable, because during all those decades away from the public eye, her old songs remained popular with the public and not a day passed without at least a couple of songs being played on Vividh Bharati and All India Radio.
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