दुनिया में ग़रीबों को

Among Zamindar's songs, 'Duniya Mein Gareebon Ko' is the one most often singled out as the film's best-received number, sung by Shamshad Begum to Ghulam Haider's tune. Its authorship became a small point of contention in lyricist lore: the film booklet credited Behzad Lakhnavi, but Qamar Jalalabadi maintained the song was largely his, with Behzad adding only the closing lines. The theme — that the world offers no rest or comfort to the poor — fits the film's social-drama frame.

Ghulam Haider frames the lament in a measured medium tempo, with Shamshad Begum's full-bodied voice carrying the song's social ache over a restrained harmonium-and-tabla arrangement. Unlike his celebratory folk numbers, this is a composition built for gravity, the melody bending toward complaint and resignation.

The opening line — 'Duniya Mein Gareebon Ko Aaraam Nahin Milta' (In this world, the poor find no rest) — deploys the directness of a political statement within a musical frame. The lyric uses plain Hindustani diction, eschewing the ornate Persianisms of ghazal-mode in favor of a more accessible register — a strategy associated with social-protest song writing in 1940s popular culture. Co-written by Behzad Lakhnavi (rooted in the classical Lucknow Urdu poetic tradition) and Qamar Jalalabadi (a newcomer from Jalalabad, UP), the song navigates the tension between literary elegance and populist accessibility. The result is a lament that reads almost as a rhetorical question — why does comfort elude the very people who produce the world's goods? Ghulam Haider's spare, medium-tempo composition keeps the music from becoming overwrought, trusting Shamshad Begum's full, direct voice to carry the moral weight without melodrama.

Zamindar (1943) was produced by Dalsukh Pancholi under the Pancholi Arts banner, which operated out of Lahore and was the most commercially successful studio in pre-Partition Punjab cinema. The film's story concerns a blind girl who is the only witness to the murder of a landlord — a mystery drama set in a feudal social milieu. Ghulam Haider, who would later be called the 'Father of Film Music' in Pakistan for his role in shaping the Lahore industry, composed the music, and this was one of his significant Pancholi productions in the early 1940s (alongside Khandaan and Khazanchi). The social-protest song 'Duniya Mein Gareebon Ko' was a deliberate inclusion — Pancholi productions regularly mixed populist entertainment with moments of social commentary. Qamar Jalalabadi later recalled that this song was his very first film lyric, written when he was brought to the project by Pancholi.

The song's significance extends beyond the film it came from: it represents Qamar Jalalabadi's entry into Hindi film lyrics — a lyricist who went on to write over 3,000 film songs across a career spanning decades, contributing to classics including films of Guru Dutt, Raj Kapoor, and Yash Chopra. The Ghulam Haider — Shamshad Begum creative partnership that Zamindar (1943) exemplifies became foundational: Haider regarded Begum as his most important artistic discovery and mentored her through the Lahore studio era. After Partition, Haider moved to Pakistan and Begum remained in India, but the body of music they made together in the early 1940s under Pancholi Arts — including this film — is documented as a seminal chapter in North Indian popular music. The social-lament register of this song echoes through decades of Hindi film protest music.