Rajinder Krishan was born in a Duggal family at Jalalpur Jattan on 6 June 1919, in Gujrat District (in present-day Pakistan).

He expresses his indebtedness to the Urdu poetry of Firaq Gorakhpuri and Ahsan Danish, as well as to the Hindi poems of Pant and Nirala.

In those days, the newspapers in the Delhi-Punjab brought out special supplements and held poetry contests to mark Krishna Janmashtami, in which he participated regularly.

He worked with several other music directors including Shankar–Jaikishan, Ravi, Rajesh Roshan, Madan Mohan, Hemant Kumar, Sajjad Hussain, Sachin Dev Burman, Rahul Dev Burman, S. Mohinder, Chitragupta, Salil Chowdhury, and Laxmikant–Pyarelal.

That's why many people that liked his penned songs, didn't know what he looked like due to a small number of available professional pictures of him.