Hum Dekhenge

The nazm was composed as a medium of protest against Zia Ul Haq's oppressive regime.^[3] It gained a rapid cult-following as a leftist^[4][5] song of resistance and defiance,^[6] after a public rendition by Iqbal Bano at Alhamra Arts Council^[7][8] on 13 February 1986,^[9] ignoring the ban on Faiz's poetry.^{[10] [11][12][13][14][15][16]}

Faiz employs the metaphor of traditional Islamic imagery to subvert and challenge Zia's fundamentalist interpretation of them; Qayamat, the Day of Reckoning is transformed into the Day of Revolution, wherein Zia's military government will be ousted by the people and democracy will be re-installed.^[15][17]

The song was recreated in Coke Studio Season 11 on 22 July 2018, under the aegis of Zohaib Kazi and Ali Hamza.^[18][A] In the movie The Kashmir Files (2022), it was depicted as being sung by students of a left-leaning Indian university to as a song of protest ^[20]

The poem gained importance in protests against Pervez Musharraf in the early 2000s.^[21][22]

During the Citizenship Amendment Act protests in India,^[23] faculty members of IIT Kanpur took issue with Hum Dekhenge being sung by protesting students in the campus, and alleged it to be "anti-Hindu".^[24][B] The IIT instituted a commission to look into the issue.^[25] The student media body rejected the charges as being misinformed and communal, which divorced the poem from its societal context.^[26][27]

• For a translation and more on the IIT protest: Naeem, Raza. "Calling Faiz's Hum Dekhenge 'Anti-Hindu' Is Both Laughable and Insulting". The Wire.