Altaf Raja’s Deep Bond with Nagpur and the Song That Defined Him

thenewsdirt
Sep 24
6 min read

In the mid-1990s, a soulful Qawwali-infused ballad took India by storm and turned a little-known singer into a nationwide sensation. Altaf Raja became a household name almost overnight with his breakout song “Tum To Thehre Pardesi,” an anthem of heartbreak that sold millions of cassette tapes across the country.

Yet, behind the meteoric rise of this one-song superstar lies a story anchored far from Mumbai’s film studios. Raja’s journey traces back to Nagpur, a city in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, where he was born and first nurtured his musical dreams.

His connection to Nagpur runs deep, from formative experiences in the city’s musical circles to the very inspiration behind his biggest hit. This is the untold story of Altaf Raja and the enduring bond he shares with his hometown in Nagpur.

Nagpur Roots and Early Journey

Altaf Raja was born on 15 October 1967 in Nagpur, into a family of traditional Qawwali performers. His father, Ibrahim, and mother, Rani, were professional qawwals (devotional singers), which meant that music filled Raja’s life from an early age.

Growing up amid Nagpur’s rich cultural milieu in Vidarbha, the young Altaf absorbed the sounds of harmoniums and tablas at home and at local Sufi gatherings.

By his mid-teens, he had begun formal musical training, indicating an early determination to follow in his parents’ artistic footsteps.

Those early years were not without challenges. His parents valued education and even sent him to Mumbai briefly for schooling, hoping he would secure a conventional career.

At one point, they enrolled him in a tailoring course, aiming to give him a practical skill to fall back on. But Altaf’s heart was never in stitching clothes. It was set on weaving musical melodies. He dropped out after a few years of school, famously telling his mother that he wanted to be a singer, not a tailor.

With his family’s support, Raja dove headlong into music. He began rigorous riyaaz (practice) sessions and even started performing on stage alongside his mother during Qawwali nights and Urs festivals. In Nagpur and the broader Vidarbha region, the teenager’s powerful voice and emotive singing style quickly gained attention in local circles.

These humble performances, often at community events or at the shrine of Hazrat Tajuddin Baba in Nagpur, honed Altaf’s talent and confidence. Little did the young singer know that his journey from these Nagpur stages would soon take him to nationwide fame.

From Nagpur to Nationwide Fame

Altaf Raja’s big break came in the 1990s and carried a distinct trace of his Nagpur origins. After years of grinding away in live shows and small recording gigs, he recorded an album of Hindi Qawwali-style songs.

The lead track, “Tum To Thehre Pardesi” (“You Turned Out to Be an Outsider”), exploded onto the music scene in 1997 and catapulted Raja to instant stardom. The song’s melodramatic lyrics of betrayal and its high-pitched, nasally vocal delivery struck a chord across India.

Remarkably, the signature line of this chartbuster had roots in Nagpur itself. The opening verse, or mukhra, was penned by a Nagpur-based poet, Zahir Alam. In infusing local poetic sentiment into a mass-market album, Raja unwittingly brought a bit of Nagpur’s voice to the entire nation.

The success of “Tum To Thehre Pardesi” was unprecedented for a non-film music album of its time. It is said that within days of release, the album sold up to 7 million cassettes in India, breaking sales records and earning a place in the Guinness World Records for its phenomenal numbers. (Even conservative estimates cite over 4 million copies sold worldwide, underlining its popularity.)

All of a sudden, Altaf Raja, a singer from Vidarbha outside the usual Bollywood circles, was topping music charts and appearing on magazine covers. His plaintive voice became synonymous with heartbreak ballads.

For many in his hometown, Raja’s national breakthrough was a proud moment: a local Nagpur boy had defied the odds and made it big in an industry dominated by Mumbai and North Indian talents.

In the years that followed, Raja tried to capitalise on his fame with follow-up albums and even lent his voice to Bollywood film songs. He made brief appearances on the silver screen and sang playback for a handful of movies (notably an energetic cameo in the 2013 film Ghanchakkar).

However, none of his later work replicated the colossal impact of his debut hit. By the late 2000s, Altaf Raja had faded from the commercial limelight, often recalled as an iconic '90s one-hit wonder. But even as the frenzy around “Pardesi” quieted down, one thing remained constant, Raja’s heartfelt attachment to Nagpur and its influence on his life.

Never a ‘Pardesi’ in Nagpur

Despite shifting his base to Mumbai for his music career, Altaf Raja has consistently maintained strong ties with his hometown. He has never hesitated to acknowledge what Nagpur means to him.

During a visit to the city in 2007 after a few years away, the singer was struck by Nagpur’s rapid development, wider roads, new buildings, but he emphasised that the city’s essence for him was unchanged. “Nagpur is my place of birth,” he told, adding that it will always remain close to his heart.

For Raja, Nagpur isn’t just a hometown; it’s almost a part of his artistic identity. He often recounts how his mother sought blessings for him at the dargah (shrine) of Tajuddin Baba, a revered Sufi saint of Nagpur, before his career took off. “I owe my success to this place,” Raja said emotionally, crediting those divine blessings from Nagpur for his achievements.

It’s no surprise, then, that Altaf Raja bristles at the notion of being an outsider to his own city.

Playing on the word pardesi from his famous song, he quipped, “I am certainly not a pardesi to Nagpur.” This light-hearted declaration underscored a deeper truth, that even after tasting fame elsewhere, he sees himself first and foremost as a Nagpur native. Over the years, Raja has returned to Nagpur many times, whether to pay homage at Tajuddin Baba’s shrine or to keep in touch with extended family and old friends who still live there. Fans in Nagpur and across Vidarbha have welcomed him back warmly, reinforcing that his celebrity never severed the local connection.

In fact, Raja’s devotion to his roots has even been expressed through his music in recent times. In 2022, well into his semi-retirement from Bollywood, he released a special album titled “Nagpur Ke Shahenshah”, a collection of devotional Qawwali songs dedicated to Hazrat Tajuddin Baba.

The album’s very name, which translates to “Emperor of Nagpur,” is a homage to the saint and by extension a love letter to the city itself. This late-career project, released through a local music label, went somewhat under the mainstream radar but did not go unnoticed in Nagpur’s spiritual and musical communities.

It was a clear sign that even decades after his mainstream peak, Altaf Raja’s artistic muse was still intertwined with the city where it all began.

Decades after “Tum To Thehre Pardesi” echoed from virtually every street corner radio, Altaf Raja remains inextricably linked to the city that shaped him. His story is more than just a flash of '90s pop fame. It is also about loyalty to one’s origins and gratitude for the community that nurtured his talent.

Nagpur, with its distinctive cultural heritage in the heart of Vidarbha, continues to be a source of pride and inspiration for Raja.

Today, locals remember him not only as the voice behind an era-defining song but also as the hometown boy who never forgot where he came from. Altaf Raja’s journey, from the bylanes of Nagpur to the national stage and back, stands as a testament to the enduring bond between an artist and his roots.