हिल मिल कर ख़ुशियाँ मनाएँ

“Hil Mil Kar Khushiyan Manaye” is one of the seventeen songs of Taj Mahal (1941), the historical drama about Shah Jahan and Mumtaz directed by Nanubhai Vakil. The score was composed by Madhavlal Damodar Master to lyrics shared by Behzad Lakhnavi, S. Khalil and Pandit Anuj. The film is historically notable as an early credit for Suraiya and as the Hindi-cinema debut of S.D. Burman, who sang on its soundtrack.

A song of collective festivity, 'Hil Mil Kar Khushiyan Manaye' belongs to the celebratory court-music tradition that historical Mughal dramas of the 1930s-40s relied on to fill out their soundtracks. The lyric's central plea — 'together let us celebrate joys' — places solidarity and shared pleasure above individual longing, a notable counterweight to the film's dominant themes of imperial ambition and romantic tragedy. Behzad Lakhnavi, one of the film's three credited lyricists, was a poet of the Lucknow Urdu tradition, and the celebratory song form here draws on the mushaira-and-mehfil culture of collective verse-making in which joy was always an act performed in company. The song serves as one of the lighter, more festive interludes within a narrative ultimately weighted toward loss.

Taj Mahal (1941) was directed by Nanubhai Vakil and produced by Sri Meenakshi Pictures. It was a Mughal historical tracing Shah Jahan's rise to the throne — including the Mughal conquest of Mewar and the war of succession — through to Mumtaz Mahal's death and the building of the Taj. Nazir played Shah Jahan while a twelve-year-old Suraiya appeared in her earliest screen role as the young Mumtaz. The film attracted censorship protests before release for perceived ahistorical portrayals and for hurting religious sentiments, but was cleared with minor cuts by the Bombay Board of Film Censors. Its music was composed by Madhavlal Damodar Master to lyrics shared among three poets: Behzad Lakhnavi, S. Khalil, and Pandit Anuj. Most significantly for music history, S.D. Burman sang 'Prem Ki Pyari Nishani Jaag Rahi' on the soundtrack — his debut as a Hindi film singer. The specific singer for 'Hil Mil Kar Khushiyan Manaye' is not credited in surviving records.

Taj Mahal (1941) holds a durable place in Hindi film history primarily through two debuts. S.D. Burman's appearance as a playback singer on the soundtrack — his only Hindi film singing credit before he shifted entirely to composing — is documented in biographies of the composer, who went on to score some of Hindi cinema's most beloved films including Guide (1965) and Aradhana (1969). Suraiya's earliest screen appearance in this film also gains retrospective interest: she became one of the most celebrated singing-actresses of the 1940s and early 1950s, and her career's starting point in a Mughal historical is often noted by film historians. The film's seventeen-song soundtrack, dense even by the standards of its era, reflects the practice of Mughal-court dramatizations where music was expected to carry much of the narrative and spectacle.