Celebrate Independence Day with these 15 moving patriotic songs

Mumbai: Very few emotions invoke as much poignancy in someone as much as patriotism does. The overwhelming feeling of pride that one experiences when the national anthem plays in the theatre, or when you're reading up on the Indian freedom struggle or when you're just chilling on your couch like normal people do and the television set decides to throw Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's 'Rang De Basanti' at you.

Nevertheless, we all love having that dense lump in our throats every time a singer croons patriotic lyrics to deeply moving tunes. And, why not? We really have struggled our way into being the free country that we are today.

So, we thought we'll collate 15 such songs to commemorate this very important day.

This emotional number from the 1961 reel adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore's 'Kabuliwala' has outlived the trial of time for all the right reasons.

Many people consider 'Swades' to be better than most of Ashutosh Gowarikar's magnum opuses. We connected with the movie on multiple levels and a lot of that had to do with AR Rahman's original soundtrack which also had this gem of a composition.

This is one song that most Indians can sing in their sleeps and never once get it wrong. Memories galore from school to be brought back.

'Lagaan' was a gargantuan hit, making and elevating careers. We still love to watch Aamir Khan do what he does in the climax (#SayNoToSpoilers) and we still love to lip-sync those beautiful songs that run through the course of the film.

The patriotic potboiler that Subhash Ghai's 1986 feature directorial 'Karma' was called for songs as these and Laxmikant-Pyarelal didn't disappoint.

Very few musicians comprehend the pulse of patriotism as much as AR Rahman does and very few soundtracks have had as many cult patriotic songs as much as Rajkumar Santoshi's 'The Legend Of Bhagat Singh' did.

And when we speak of patriotism, how can we ever miss this?

Like we said, 'The Legend of Bhagat Singh' had songs too good to be ignored. Like this soulful beauty, sung by AR Rahman and Sukhwinder Singh.

No Independence Day can pass by without this song having been played. This evergreen song has Lata Mangeshkar herself moving us to tears, every single time.

Mani Ratnam's 'Roja' did too many things right, one of which was introducing AR Rahman to the world. This classic had Hariharan maneuvering his silken voice to the tunes of a very young Rahman. 

The 1957 Dilip Kumar starrer 'Naya Daur' had a colourised re-release in  2007 but the songs, including this very peppy one composed by O.P. Nayyar had survived, irrespectively.

This song sung by legendary singer Mukesh from 'Hum Hindustani' symbolised a lot many things back when it had released and still makes one sit back and think.

This song galvanised an entire nation into embracing a sporting culture and became synonymous with all victorious things Indian. It was from the magnificently successful Shah Rukh Khan starrer 'Chak De India' and was composed by Salim -Suleiman. Can we ever get over Sukhwinder Singh owning this one?

'Sarfarosh' is amongst Aamir Khan's most acclaimed films, till date. Most of the songs composed by Jatin-Lalit for the film were widely appreciated, but this one took the cake mainly owing to Sonu Nigam and Roop Kumar Rathod's passionate singing.

Last but not the least, this absolute beauty by AR Rahman revolutionised the way patriotism was perceived in the 90's. The song was everywhere, and no one would complain.