Kamal Dasgupta

Kamal Dasgupta (later Kamal Uddin Ahmed) (28 July 1911 – 20 July 1974), was a Bengali (later Bangladeshi) music director, lyricist, composer and folk artist active in Hindi and Bengali cinema especially in pre-partition British India. Rāga and thumri were the main elements of his music. An ardent lover of Nazrulgeeti (the music of Kazi Nazrul Islam, National Poet of Bangladesh), he was immensely successful professionally, and in the early forties, was anecdotally reputed to have paid 35,000 to 40,000 rupees as income tax. On the other hand, a true humanitarian, during the Great Bengal Famine, when ten lakh starving and dispossessed people descended upon Calcutta, he opened langarkhanas (mass kitchens) and nearly spent the vast majority of his fortune to feed the needy and destitute. While in Calcutta, he lived near Hedua (the anecdotal evidence states that he lived near Scottish Church College).