Inayat Hussain Bhatti

Inayat Hussain Bhatti
( ur, ),
(12 January 1928 – 31 May 1999) was a Pakistani film playback singer, film actor, producer, director, script writer, social worker, columnist, religious scholar and a promoter of the development of the Punjabi language and literature.

Early life history

Bhatti was born in Gujrat on 12 January 1928 in a Punjabi family.

In December 1948, he moved to Lahore to study law and initially stayed at MAO College Lahore hostel in Lahore. A few months after his arrival in Lahore, he did his first performance on stage in the YMCA Hall, Lahore. After his YMCA auditorium performance, Bhatti accompanied Ijaz Gilani to Radio Pakistan, Lahore, where he met and became a formal pupil of ''Master Niaz Hussain Shami'', a composer then working for Radio Pakistan in Lahore. It was his association with and training under Master Niaz Hussain Shami, which facilitated Bhatti's participation in regular radio programs as a singer. He sometimes used to accept character roles in plays broadcast by the Lahore station of Radio Pakistan. ''Rafi Peer'', a play- writer, asked him to be the 'hero' in his play ''Akhhian'' (Eyes).

Bhatti was introduced to composer Ghulam Ahmed Chishti by Master Shami in 1949, who offered him an opportunity to record a few songs in producer-director Nazir Ahmed Khan's film Pheray (1949). After this film's popularity, Bhatti became an almost overnight celebrity. Producer-director Nazir offered Bhatti Sahib the leading role in his Punjabi film Heer (1955 film) against Swaran Lata.

Death

In 1997, he suffered an attack of paralysis, which impaired his speech and kept him bed-ridden for most of the time thereafter. A few days before his death, the 71-year-old artiste was taken to his native home Gujrat, where on 31 May 1999, he died and was buried next to his parents.

Career in folk theater

During the 1960s, Bhatti also took to folk theatre acting and singing, and toured the rural hinterland of the Punjab along with his theatre group, where he performed his songs and recitation of the works of the great Sufi poets such as 'Waris Shah, Bulleh Shah, Mian Muhammad Bakhsh, Sultan Bahoo and Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai'.

During the 1960s and early 1970s, both Bhatti and Alam Lohar dominated the folk theatre genre in Punjab.

In 1996 Bhatti was invited to attend a Cultural Mela in Mohali, India, by the then Minister of East Punjab, Mr. Harnek Singh Gharun, the Indian National Congress leader.

Career in films

Bhatti was the only male artist in Pakistan film industry who achieved super stardom both as an actor and a singer simultaneously.
His first venture, as a film producer was the film Waris Shah (1962), based upon the life and works of the great Sufi poet of Punjab. His second film as a producer Moonh Zor (1965) was also not successful, but then in 1967 his third film Chann Makhna (1968) in which he played the lead role, proved to be a block buster at the box office and received the Nigar Award as the best picture of 1968. This was followed by a string of hit movies such as Sajjan Pyara (1968), Jind Jan (1969), Duniya Matlab Di (1970), Ishq Diwana (1971), and Zulam Da Badla (1972) which transformed Bhatti into a superstar actor of the Punjabi movies. He also produced, directed and acted in three Saraiki language films simultaneously. The themes of all movies produced by him, were based on some social malady of the Punjabi culture.

During his film career, spanning almost five decades, he produced 30 films under the banner of ''Bhatti Pictures'' and acted in more than three hundred films. He rendered his voice for approximately 500 films, recording more than 2500 film and non-film songs in Urdu, Sindhi and Saraiki languages. One of his naat in Arabic is regularly broadcast on Radio Pakistan Lahore, during the holy month of Ramadan since the last four decades.
Bhatti's patriotic song 'Allah-O-Akbar' from the film Genghis Khan (1958) has become a signature tune for the Pakistan Army. The music for this song was composed by veteran music director Rasheed Attre