सुंदर है संसार साधु सुंदर है संसार

A song addressed to the ascetic (sadhu) that affirms the beauty of the world, from Chitralekha (1941), with lyrics by Kedar Sharma. The sentiment sits at the philosophical heart of the film, which pits the ascetic Kumargiri's renunciation against the worldly embrace of love and pleasure. The score was begun by Ustad Jhande Khan and completed by A. S. Gyani. Singer credit for this track is not documented in available listings.

Kidar Sharma wrote all ten songs himself, and his verse for Chitralekha carries the weight of a poet-director working at the convergence of philosophy and film. 'Sundar Hai Sansar Sadhu Sundar Hai Sansar' uses repetition as mantra: the line circles back on itself, asserting the world's beauty with the insistence of a devotional refrain rather than a rational argument. Addressing the 'sadhu' (ascetic) directly creates a dialogic tension — the world's beauty is not proclaimed to the already-converted but to the very one who has rejected it. In Bhairavi, traditionally associated with morning, parting, and emotional dissolution, this affirmation of worldly beauty takes on a particular poignancy: the raga chosen to express Chitralekha's world is one classically associated with the bittersweet, making the 'beautiful world' itself tinged with the awareness of transience.

Chitralekha (1941) was Kidar Sharma's adaptation of Bhagwati Charan Verma's 1934 novel of the same name and became the second highest-grossing Indian film of 1941. The film poses a philosophical contest between Kumargiri, an ascetic who believes the world is sin, and Chitralekha, a court dancer whose beauty and desire he sees as his test. Sharma commissioned Ustad Jhande Khan to set all ten songs in a single raga — Bhairavi — an unusual artistic constraint that gave the entire score a unified melancholic-devotional colour. The score was continued by A.S. Gyani after Jhande Khan's ill health. 'Sundar Hai Sansar Sadhu' (The world is beautiful, O ascetic) is a worldly counter-argument to Kumargiri's renunciation, voiced at what the narrative frames as the ascetic's greatest test. The film marked Bharat Bhushan's screen debut in a minor role. Its singers included Ramdulari and Rajendra Singh; per-song attribution for this specific track has not been individually documented.

Kidar Sharma remade Chitralekha in 1964 with Meena Kumari, Ashok Kumar, and Pradeep Kumar, and that version — with its Roshan score and celebrated songs including 'Man Re Tu Kahe Na Dheer Dhare' — became the version more widely remembered by later generations. The 1941 original is now discussed primarily in the context of classical music integration in early Hindi cinema: its Bhairavi-only score is cited in histories of how ragas were systematically embedded in film music. The 1941 film also marks the beginning of Kidar Sharma's reputation as one of the rare poet-director figures in Hindi cinema — a status confirmed by later works like Neel Kamal (1947) and Jogan (1950).