बिस्मिल अज़ीमाबादी

Bismil Azimabadi (1901 – 1978) — born Syed Shah Mohammad Hasan — was an Urdu poet of Patna (old name Azimabad) whose one ghazal became the anthem of India's freedom struggle: 'Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai'. Born into a landowning family, Bismil began composing in his teens and was tempered in Azimabad's rich literary culture. Between the wound of Jallianwala Bagh and the surge of Non-Cooperation, around 1921, this twenty-year-old poet wrote the ghazal that travelled from mushairas into processions, prisons and execution yards. The revolutionaries Ram Prasad 'Bismil' and Ashfaqulla Khan made it their voice during the Kakori case — and the shared pen-name led the world, for decades, to credit Ram Prasad Bismil as its author. Literary historians, and documents that reached the courts, later established Bismil Azimabadi's authorship; the ghazal survives in his handwritten bayaz (notebook). He remained a Congress-stream nationalist, a respected mushaira poet and a representative of the Azimabad school all his life. He died in 1978 — but one ghazal of his still lives on every generation's tongue.

Born in 1901 in Patna into a zamindar family with literary leanings, he took the takhallus 'Bismil' (the wounded one) and was mentored within the Azimabad school of Urdu poetry, tracing its refinement to Shad Azimabadi's circle.

Bismil Azimabadi wrote ghazals and nazms for six decades, but his name is fixed in history by 'Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna' (c. 1921), composed in the atmosphere of Jallianwala Bagh and Non-Cooperation and first recited at mushairas in Patna. The poem's adoption by the Kakori revolutionaries (1925–27) made it immortal and obscured its authorship; later scholarship restored the credit. His collected work remained less published than his fame; he stayed active in Bihar's literary and nationalist circles until his death in 1978.

One ghazal made him the uncredited soundtrack of the revolution: sung by Bhagat Singh's generation, set in countless films and albums, recited at every patriotic occasion in India. The restoration of his authorship is itself a famous episode in Urdu literary history — a lesson in how songs outrun their makers.

Classical ghazal craft of the Azimabad school put to revolutionary purpose: the traditional metaphors of the lover's sacrifice (sarfaroshi, qatil, maqtal) re-aimed at the colonial state, in metres made for collective recitation.