Saquib Salim

Have you ever wondered who our grandfathers or great-grandfathers were and who their idols were? I have tried to cobble a list of five influential popular Indian youth icons from the 1930s. The list could include more names, but we chose to feature those who made a huge impact on a generation.

Bhagat Singh

Bhagat Singh became an idol of the entire nation in his boyhood. The man who inspired the Indians for almost a century was hanged at the age of 23. Filmmaker, K. A. Abbas, recalled the news of his execution, “Then the day arrived — 25 March 1931. I had been studying till late at night, preparing for my impending intermediate examination, and therefore had not seen the morning paper. When I arrived in college and went to the library, I found Zahir Babar Kureishi sitting with a bowed head in a distant corner of the library. I went up to him to find out what had happened. I put my hand on his back when I saw he was crying, and this gesture of affection made him cry all the more.

“What’s the matter, Zahir?” I said, and he gave me the morning paper to read. There, splashed across the front page, was the headline: Bhagat Singh and Other Terrorists Hanged… I walked out of the library, walked out of the college and the campus, crossed the railway line, went to the exhibition grounds which lay desolate and deserted, and only then I sat and cried my heart out.”

Bhagat Singh's martyrdom inspired many Indians to take his path. Indian youth had found a hero to look upon. After his death, the British government faced a new challenge - how to stop the celebrations of his martyrdom as Bhagat Singh Day every year. The police arrested nationalists from across the country for celebrating the day, but could never stop till 1947.

Dhyan Chand

If the USA has Mohammad Ali and Australia Donald Bradman, then India certainly had Major Dhyan Chand. Dhyan Chand led India to successive Olympic Golds in Hockey at a time when India was a colony. He brought national pride to a colonised nation. In Berlin, in 1936, the Indian Hockey team saluted the Tricolour (then Indian National Congress Flag) in front of 40,000 people, including Adolf Hitler. Dhyan Chand led the Indian team and turned hockey into the national game. Indian youth followed Hockey and idolised him.

The youth idolized him because he scored goals at will. Also, he rejected a post offered by Hitler. His hockey stick was subjected to checks for the rumoured magical glue. Above all, he was seen as someone who ensured that the Indian National Flag got recognition at Olympics even before his country was independent.

In India, during the 1930s, very few inspired the Indian youth like Dhyan Chand did.

Kundan Lal Saigal

K.L. Saigal outdid Tansen in popularity. Mian Tansen was, of course, the beloved of his times, but his voice was in a way imprisoned in the palace walls - there only for the select upper class. Saigal, on the other hand, had a whole nation behind him, as he was a music man for the millions. He was their Tansen.” These were the words of the famous Music Composer Naushad.

K. L. Saigal took a whole nation by storm in the 1930s by selling more than five lakh records of Jhulana jhulavo, and later on immortalising the iconic lover Devdas through his playback singing and acting on the silver screen. Interestingly, Saigal, who is credited with popularising film music and ghazals and inspiring singers like Mohammad Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Mukesh, Talat Mahmood, etc., was rejected in the auditions for not being a trained singer. 

Saigal was an unmatched phenomenon in Indian cinema and music. He died at the age of 42 in January 1947. At that time, India was engulfed in riots. The Filmindia in its obituary noted, “For a week, after the daily papers flashed the news of Saigal's death, riots, politics and Pakistan went out of news and the Hindus, the Muslims, the Christians, the Jews, the touchables and the untouchables-one and all reverently discussed the sad and sudden death of Kundan Lal Saigal, the greatest singer the Indian screen had ever produced in its long history of misadventure.”

Rashid Jahan

In 1932, a 27-year-old female gynecologist practising at Lady Dufferin Hospital, Lucknow, started dominating all the news reports and debates after publishing a collection of short stories in Urdu with three of his male friends viz. Sajjad Zaheer, Mahmud-uz-Zafar, and Ahmed Ali. Rashid Jahan's two stories in the collection Angarey were a direct attack on purdah, early marriage, and unplanned pregnancies. The orthodox sections of the society, especially Muslims, forced the government to ban the book.

The ban not only enhanced the book's popularity but also led to the formation of the All India Progressive Writers’ Association. Munshi Premchand, Rabindranath Tagore, Mulk Raj Anand, and many others supported this movement. Rashid Jahan inspired a whole generation of young girls to take up the cause of women's empowerment. Ismat Chughtai, Qurratulain Haider, and many other writers followed in her footsteps. 

J. R. D. Tata

The young Indian entrepreneurs, living in a nation that was under imperial control of the European powers for almost two centuries, found a role model in J. R. D. Tata during the 1930s. A young man forayed into the modern industrial sectors, which were the monopoly of the Europeans till then. Unlike the traditional rich of the country, Tata studied, obtained a license to fly an aircraft, started the first Indian aviation company in 1932, and himself flew the first passenger aircraft.

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It was not an unethical hunger to make money. Institutions like TISS and later TIFR stand as testimony to the fact that the Indian entrepreneur wanted an overall prosperity for his country. Tata showed a way which was followed by several Indian youth, like K. A. Hamied, founder of CIPLA, in the 1930s.