• Naushad’s very special niche in Hindustani cinesangeet was first officially acknowledged when HMV (His Master’s Voice) and Columbia presented him with a gold medal for the ‘highest sales of records accomplished in India and abroad’ in the wake of the diamond jubilee success of Rattan (1944).
• Recognition for his Urdu-oriented classicality, as exemplified by A. R. Kardar’s Shahjehan (1946) and Dard (1947), first came, oddly, not from North India, but from South India – from the Indian Film Journalists’ Association, Mysore City, in the form of a Special Award in 1948. The Hyder Ali–Tipu Sultan influence?1
• The Film Sansar League of Bombay voted him as the Best Music Director of 1950-51 for his jubilee scores in A. R. Kardar’s Dastan (1950) and Jadoo (1951) plus Nitin Bose’s Deedar (1951).
• His first major award was his being voted the 1953 Filmfare Best Music Director for the theme-setting Baiju Bawra song, Tuu Ganga ki mauj main Jamuna ka dhaara, rendered by Mohammed Rafi (with Lata Mangeshkar joining in at the very end). There were only four Filmfare Award winners in the inaugural year of 1953: Bimal Roy for Best Picture and Best Director (Do Bigha Zamin); Dilip Kumar for Best Actor (Daag); Meena Kumari for Best Actress (Baiju Bawra); and Naushad for Best Music Director. That made Naushad’s first (oddly also his last) Filmfare Award all the more cherished.
• The Indian Film Journalists’ Association adjudged him as the Best Music Director for the score of Mehboob’s Amar (1954).
• In 1961, he was picked by both the Bengal Film Journalists’ Association and the Bombay Youth Circle as the Best Music Director for Gunga Jumna.
• In 1963 – rather late for one of his stature by that stage – Naushad became the president of the Indian Cine Music Directors’ Association. This only by 1 March 1963, upon Anil Biswas (by that date) leaving Bombay to join All India Radio, Delhi. Anil Biswas had held the post for long years as the seniormost music director in the industry.
• For 1966, his duet from Dil Diya Dard Liya, put over by Asha Bhosle and Mohammed Rafi as Saawan aaye ya na aaye in Raag Brindabani Sarang, was named as the Best Classical Song of the Year by the Sur-Singar Samsad, Bombay. This was a prestige award.
• For 1967, his Palki clinched, in its inaugural year, the Dr Brihaspati Award (later called the Saraswati Award). This was a special award created by Bombay’s highly esteemed Sur-Singar Samsad – ‘for a film embodying more than 80 per cent classical content in its music score’.
• The Dar es Salaam Cultural Society (in Tanzania, Africa) conferred upon him, in 1969, the title of ‘Phoenix Musicae of the Indian Screen’.
• After being at the helm for 30 years and more, as one symbolizing the finest in film music, Naushad fittingly presided over Sangeet Manjari’s Yaadein show, presented by Roshanlal Wadhera at the Tejpal Auditorium in South Bombay. Privileged to be thus remembered felt a litany of yesteryear singing greats. Present and performing (that mid-March 1971 evening) were Wazir Muhammad Khan, Master Nissar, Surendra, Kalyanibai, Rajkumari, G. M. Durrani, Jagmohan ‘Sursagar’, Khan Mastana, Uma Devi (Tun Tun) and C. H. Atma. Talat Mahmood and Shamshad Begum politely turned down invitations to appear, suggesting that they felt they did not belong to the vintage era by March 1971.
• At the turn of the 1970s, he was invited by the Union Public Service Commission, New Delhi, to sit upon its panel to select the director of music for the Films Division of the Government of India. It was upon Naushad’s initiative that the supremely versatile Vijay Raghava Rao was selected for this post that he was to hold with distinction for years.
• The Bihar Review of Gaya conferred on him the S. D. Burman Award (1976). Naushad – viewing Sachin Dev Burman (who passed away on 31 October 1975) as a well-wisher whom he often met during his morning walk – was happy to accept the award. (Naushad had then observed: ‘It came at a time when my friend S. D. Burman’s memory was still green.’)
• The year 1977 saw the Government of Maharashtra according him rare recognition by specially honouring him ‘For His Achievement in the Field of Film Music’.
• A very special bestowal by Ciba Geigy of India Ltd: the Binaca Geetmala Award (if as late as 1977) for enriching the programme with the sustained quality of his tunes.
• Was decorated with the title of ‘Sangeet Ratna’ twice – first in 1979 by the City of Hyderabad (in Andhra Pradesh) and then in 1981 by the City of Mangalore (in Karnataka).
• In 1981, the people of the Indian subcontinent in Southern California, USA, presented him with a Special Trophy ‘In Recognition of His Contribution to Musical Arts’. There were hardly any honours forthcoming from the West, those days, to music makers from Hindustani cinema.
• In 1981 eventuated something that is considered to be the most prestigious citation in the field of cinema in India – the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for Lifetime Achievement. Before Naushad got to win such envied recognition, those chosen for this highly coveted award, from the field of cinesangeet, were Pankaj Mullick (1972); singing-star Kanan Devi (1976); and Rai Chand Boral (1978). Naushad viewed Pankaj Mullick and Rai Chand Boral as influencing him greatly in his evolution as a music composer.
• The Sahitya Award Committee of Uttar Pradesh honoured him (late in 1981) with a Special Trophy ‘For His Contribution to Promoting Hindi and Urdu through His Music in Films’.
• Selected for the 1984 Lata Mangeshkar Puraskar by the Government of Madhya Pradesh – an award carrying with it a cheque for Rs 100,000 ‘for excellence in singing or music direction’.
• In 1987, Naushad was decorated with the Uttar Pradesh Urdu Academy’s prized Amir Khusro Award.
• The highest honour of them all arrived as late as 1992. After his looking like never making it in his lifetime, Naushad was named in the 1992 Republic Day Honours List as one decorated with the Padma Bhushan. This is the third highest civilian award in the Republic of India – after the Bharat Ratna and the Padma Vibhushan.
• In 1993, Naushad was the recipient of the Avadh Ratna Award, in Lucknow, from the governor of Uttar Pradesh. This is a state award truly treasured. A proud moment it was for Naushad as one tracing his roots to Uttar Pradesh’s capital Lucknow, ‘the city of Ganga–Jamuni tehzeeb (culture)’.
• In 1993 arrived the keenly sought Sangeet Natak Akademi Award from India’s National Academy of Music, Dance and Drama, New Delhi. This is the highest Indian recognition accorded to practising artistes. The award consisted of Rs 50,000; a citation; an angavastram (shawl); and a tamrapatra (brass plaque).
• In 1994, the much looked-forward-to Maharashtra Gaurav Puraskar was conferred upon Naushad. His life’s work was done in the state of Maharashtra – in Bombay. He came to the city in 1937 and never went back or looked back in his near-69 years there.
• In 1994, he was honoured with a Special Award of Rs 100,000 by the Cultural Ministry of the Government of Madhya Pradesh ‘for popularizing Indian music outside India’.
• The Naushad Academy for Hindustani Music was inaugurated at the Nehru Centre in Worli, Bombay, on 24 March 1998 by Pramod Navalkar as Maharashtra’s minister for cultural affairs. ‘Padma Bhushan’ Naushad Ali, as the academy’s managing trustee and president, explained, on the occasion, the institution’s aims and objects. He underlined that the idea was to foster classical music on a national scale through the presentation of quality programmes in which the most accomplished artistes would participate.
• Naushad was decorated with its Lifetime Achievement Award by the industry’s top film weekly, SCREEN, in the milestone year of 2000.
• In 2001, he set to music Atal Behari Vajpayee’s poem, Unki yaad kare, and recorded it in the voice of A. Hariharan. That singer was accompanied by a 40-piece orchestra compositely integrated by Naushad. Executed under the aegis of Keshav Communications, Unki yaad kare emerged as a hymn dedicated by littérateur Vajpayee to those who had lost their lives defending the nation’s border.
• As chairman of the Indian Performing Rights Society (IPRS), Naushad did a signal service to the music community in India by ensuring that fellow composers – who never enjoyed the benefit of HMV royalty – got paid a sizeable sum, each, for a lifetime of dedicated achievement. As the otherwise acerbic O. P. Nayyar put it: ‘This is a windfall. Least expected Naushad to be the driving force behind getting us our due.’ The IPRS is an association of creators of musical works (authors, composers, poets and publishers) engaged in collecting revenues from radio stations, TV centres and other commercial establishments in India and abroad. Retaining 15 per cent as overhead costs, revenues came to be distributed in the ratio of 50:30:20, respectively, to producers, music directors and songwriters.
• Naushad was president of the Maharashtra State Angling Association too. This after he had been the target of co-music directors’ jibes for his so-called skills in angling. They never could match him in subtly fishing for compliments though. Whoever else did not take him seriously as an angler, Shakeel Badayuni and Majrooh Sultanpuri looked up to him here. Those two poets even accompanied Naushad to the Powai Lake on his mission, offering him game angling competition. Naushad would say in jest that, if Shakeel excelled him in kite-flying, his pet songwriter never could touch him as an angler. Naushad’s largest Powai Lake haul came by 1962 in the form of a 52-lb catla (Indian carp) – the man always did go for big fish. In later years, our maestro was joined by sons Raju Naushad and Iqbal Naushad on his trips to the Powai Lake. It was while engaging in angling that he got composing his thoughts for a tune – said Naushad.
• A Naushad Music Club, in his early years as a composer, came to be formed in virtually every other city of India and Pakistan; and even as far away as Africa – in Kenya, to be precise. Yet, for one so amazingly successful in his field, Indians abroad were slow, very slow, to honour Naushad during his most successful years (1947–57) as the topmost music director in Hindustani cinema.
• As still the topmost-regarded name in our film music through the 1970s, Naushad raised a conscientious objection to something involving a point of principle. This as Lata Mangeshkar – singing the compositions of Naushad and a litany of our top-flight composers – attained a new career high with her early-1974 performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Her programme then had been billed as follows: ‘Royal Albert Hall 11th, 12th and 14th March (1974): LATA MANGESHKAR introduced by Dilip Kumar; producer: S. N. Gourasia; Music director: Hridaynath Mangeshkar; Conductor: Anil Mohile’. In this context, Naushad demanded stridently to know how Lata’s younger brother Hridaynath Mangeshkar could be announced as the music director of tunes composed by him and other top names of our cinesangeet.
______________________
1 Hyder Ali (1721–82) and his son Tipu Sultan (1750–99) were the rulers of what was then known as ‘the kingdom of Mysore’.