झंडे ख़ान

Ustad Jhande Khan was a pioneering music director of early Hindi cinema's talkie era. Born in Jammu, he trained in harmonium in Lahore under Syed Mir Qudrat Ali Hyderabadi, a music director for Parsi theatre, before moving to Bombay, where he studied under Nazir Khan, Chhajju Khan, and Khadim Hussain Khan, the founding brothers of the Bhendi Bazaar gharana. An accomplished sarangi player, he worked as a music director for theatre companies before moving into films.

Jhande Khan composed the music for all of Ranjit Movietone's earliest talkie productions between 1931 and 1933, making him one of Hindi cinema's first film composers. He is especially remembered for scoring Kidar Sharma's Chitralekha (1941). Naushad and Ghulam Mohammad, who both went on to become celebrated music directors, worked as his assistants early in their careers, with Naushad reportedly joining his unit as a pianist at a monthly salary of Rs 40. The classical vocalist Begum Akhtar also trained under him for a period after moving to Calcutta.

Following the Partition of India in 1947, Jhande Khan migrated to Gujranwala in Pakistani Punjab, where he died on 7 January 1952.