Inayat Hussain Bhatti
()(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.
In a career spanning some 50 years, he acted in more than 300 movies, produced 30 as well and also directed some, while as a musician he has provided approximately 350 songs for some 200 movies.
Early and personal life
Bhatti was born in Gujrat, Punjab, on 12 January 1928 in a Punjabi Muslim family.
His father Fazal Ellahi Bhatti, a Muslim Rajput of the Bhatti clan, was a well-known social worker in the locality, while Inayat's early interest in the arts was due to Syed Ijaz Hussain Gilani, a lawyer who showed him the world of music and drama, and also Asghar Hayat Jaura, a local Kabbadi player, with whom he took an interest in Sufi poetry.
In 1953, Inayat married Mohtarma Shahida Bano, the daughter of Ahmed Din Butt, a retired superintendent of the Indian Railways. Mohtarma Shahida Banoo died on 12 March 1997.
Bhatti's children include two sons, three daughters, eleven grandsons and five grand daughters. His youngest son Waseem Abbas is a film, TV and stage artist. The actors Agha Ali and Ali Abbas are his grandsons.
Bhatti's younger brother, known by the stage name Kaifee, was a well-known actor and director from the mid-1960s until the late 1990s.
Early career
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 playwriter, asked him to be the lead role in his play Akhian (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) opposing Swaran Lata.
Career
Folk theatre
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.
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, Punjabi, 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.