At the recent protests demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar , student leader Neha Bora invoked a century-old patriotic ghazal: Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamare dil mein hai/ Dekhna hai zor kitna baazu-e-qatil mein hai” (The desire to sacrifice our heads for a noble cause is now in our hearts; let us see how much strength exists in the arms of our executioner).

The iconic 11-verse ghazal was penned in 1920 by Bismil Azimabadi, an Urdu poet from Patna. Patna has also been known as Azimabad, thus the surname.

Born Syed Shah Mohammad Hasan in a zamindar family, Azimabadi chose Bismil (meaning wounded) as his pen name and was a disciple of the poet Shad Azimabadi, once the magistrate and municipal Commissioner of Patna.

Azimabadi spent his formative years amid a culturally vibrant atmosphere, with many eminent poets in the family, including his two grandfathers, Mubarak Azimabadi and Shah Mubarak Kakvi Azimabadi and his maternal uncle, Kamaal Azimabadi.…