Every evening, somewhere in India, a lamp is lifted, a bell rings, and millions of voices begin the same six words. Few of them know the name of the man who wrote them.
In temples in Varanasi, in living rooms in Mumbai, in community halls in Toronto and Durban, the aarti Om Jai Jagdish Hare closes the puja like a gentle full stop. It feels ancient, as if handed down by the rishis. Yet it was written around 1870 by a scholar from a small Punjab town on the banks of the Sutlej: Pandit Shraddha Ram Phillauri (also spelt Shardha Ram Phillauri).
He was born on 30 September 1837. Today is his 189th birth anniversary, and this is our ode to him.
Who Was Pandit Shraddha Ram Phillauri?
Pandit Shraddha Ram Phillauri was a 19th-century Punjabi Brahmin scholar, poet, writer and social reformer, best known as the author of the aarti Om Jai Jagdish Hare. He was born in Phillaur, then part of Maharaja Ranjit Singh's Sikh Empire, and died in Lahore on 24 June 1881, aged just 43.
His father, Jai Dyalu, was an astrologer. The boy never sat in a formal classroom, yet by the age of ten he had learnt Hindi, Sanskrit, Persian, astrology and music. He later married Mehtab Kaur, a Sikh woman, a quiet reminder of how naturally Punjab's faiths once shared a hearth.
He became a travelling preacher of Sanatana Dharma. His stirring discourses on the Mahabharata are said to have alarmed the British, who in 1865 accused him of propaganda against the government and briefly exiled him from his own hometown. The colonial state saw a threat; the people saw a storyteller who made their dharma feel alive.
How Om Jai Jagdish Hare Was Born, and How It Travelled
Around 1870, Pandit Shraddha Ram set down a hymn to Lord Vishnu as Jagdish, the Lord of the Universe. He chose not the heavy Sanskrit of the scholars but the simple, singable Hindi of the household. That choice was his genius. Anyone could sing it: a child, a grandmother, a farmer at dusk.
It spread from courtyard to courtyard, and a century later cinema carried it further. Its use in Manoj Kumar's film Purab Aur Paschim (1970) made it hugely popular across the country. Today its tune is so familiar that other aartis, such as Om Jai Shiv Omkara and Om Jai Lakshmi Mata, are sung to the very same melody.
Om Jai Jagdish Hare Meaning and Significance
Om Jai Jagdish Hare means "Glory to you, O Lord of the Universe, Hari." The aarti praises Vishnu as the preserver who removes the troubles of his devotees in an instant. It then moves, verse by verse, from praise to surrender: tum puran paramatma, you are the complete Supreme Soul; mata pita tum mere, you are my mother and my father; tum karuna ke sagar, you are an ocean of compassion.
It is a prayer of humility that asks only for grace.
Then comes the most tender detail of all. In the closing verse the devotee asks, Shraddha bhakti badhao, santan ki seva, "increase my faith and devotion, and my service to the saints." Hidden in that line is the poet's own name, Shraddha. In the old Indian tradition of signing a poem inside its final verse, the Pandit left his signature not in ink but in faith. Every time we sing it, we speak his name without knowing it.
More Than One Hymn: His Contributions to India and Sanatana Dharma
To remember Pandit Shraddha Ram only for the aarti is to see one lamp and miss the whole diya-lit path.
- Father of modern Punjabi prose. His Sikhan De Raj Di Vithia (1866) chronicled Sikh rule and preserved Punjabi customs and folk songs.
- A pioneer of the Hindi novel. Bhagyawati, written in 1877 and published in 1888, is among the earliest Hindi novels. It championed widow remarriage, women's education and the equal worth of daughters.
- A builder of dharma. He founded a Hindu school in Ludhiana, wrote tracts such as Dharma Raksha, and in 1880 built the Hari Jnana Mandir in Phillaur with a school for the Vedas.
He was, in short, a reformer who kept one hand on tradition and the other reaching towards a fairer society.
Why We Still Sing It in 2026
More than 150 years on, Om Jai Jagdish Hare has outlived empires, Partition and the gramophone. It echoes at Diwali, Satyanarayan pujas and weddings, from Punjab to the Pacific. It remains the most commonly sung bhajan across North India.
It stays fresh because it asks nothing of us but sincerity. A lamp, a few voices and a willing heart are enough. In Phillaur, his statue near the bus stand is still garlanded on his birth anniversary.
Luv My India Celebrates Unsung Heroes Like Him
At Luv My India, we believe India's story is not written only by its famous names. It is written just as deeply by people like Pandit Shraddha Ram Phillauri, whose words we sing every day while their faces fade from memory. These quiet torchbearers shaped our faith, our languages and our conscience, often without asking to be remembered.
Our mission is to bring such unsung heroes of India back into the light, so that the next time a lamp is lifted and the first notes of Om Jai Jagdish Hare fill the room, we sing with gratitude as well as devotion. For a man who hid his name inside a prayer, that is the truest tribute we can offer.
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