Nostalgic recalling of 'mile sur mera tumhara'

Nostalgia -  that was a time when we took pride in identifying Pt. Bhimsen Joshi, with his unmistakable demeanour in pronounciation and singing – though at that point time I did not understand the meaning or the sentiments behind that.    It was indeed very unique song, the lyrics of which was just ‘One phrase, repeated in fourteen Indian languages’  a spirit of National integration spread through those magical words “Mile sur mera tumhara, to sur Bane hamara", meaning "When my musical note and your musical note merge, it becomes our musical note".

Mile Sur Mera Tumhara  - "Mile Sur Mera Tumhara"  swept through the Nation those days identified as video promoting national integration and unity in diversity.  Those were the days when we did not have so many channels the DD 2 available in Cities was a luxury.

The video promotion and the song was concept developed in 1988 by Lok Seva Sanchar Parishad, and promoted by Doordarshan (then India's sole TV broadcaster) and India's Ministry of Information. The song was composed by Ashok Patki, co-composed& arranged by Louis Banks, written by Piyush Pandey (Ogilvy and Mather, India). The project was conceived and directed by Suresh Mullick and recorded by a group of people from all walks of life, including a supergroup of popular Indians - musicians, sports persons, movie stars, etc.

The national integration video was intended to instill a sense of pride and promote unity amongst Indians, highlighting the different linguistic communities and societies that live in India - India's unity in diversity,  and it proved a success to the hilt. 

The song was telecast for the first time on Independence Day 1988, after the telecast of the Prime Minister’s speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort and repeated many a times thereafter in Television. It quickly captivated India, gaining and maintaining near-anthem status ever since.  It had verses sung in - Hindi, Kashmiri, Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Bangla, Assamese, Oriya, Gujarati and Marathi.

smart Venkat and Arunlal alighting metro

It also featured many famous people some of whom are : Amitabh Bachchan, Mithun Chakraborty, Kamal Hassan, Pratap Pothan, AV Ramanan,  K. R. Vijaya, Revathi, Jeetendra, Hema Malini, Tanuja, Sharmila Tagore, Om Puri, Dina Pathak,Meenakshi Seshadri, Mallika Sarabhai, Bhimsen Joshi, M Balamuralikrishna, Lata Mangeshkar,  Cricketers -  Narendra Hirwani, S Venkataraghavan, Arunlal, Kirmani,  Sportspersons such as  Prakash Padukone, Ramanathan Krishnan,  P. K. Banerjee, Chuni Goswami,  & ………………..

Downloaded and heard the song recently and found it to be as captivating as it was at that time !!  Read that 20 years later, the song was re-recorded with an updated cast for telecast on January 26, 2010 by Zoom TV.   This time it was titled ‘Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara’ and was a longer version and could not captivate the audience even in a small % as compared to the original version. 

With regards – S. Sampathkumar