[4] Shyamlal Gupta was born on 9 September 1896 as the youngest son of Visheshwar Prasad and Kaushalya Devi,[2] in Dosar Vaishya community in Narwal, Kanpur.

[1] Refusing to join the family business, he took up teaching as a career and worked at various government schools in Kanpur, while also participating in the Indian Independence Movement.

His chance of meeting Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi at one of the conventions of the Indian National Congress brought him the charge of the freedom campaigns of Fatehpur town.

[1] In 1938, Sarojini Naidu presented the song at the Haripura Session of the Indian National Congress in the presence of freedom leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Dr Rajendra Prasad, Govind Vallabh Pant, Jamnalal Bajaj, Mahadev Desai, and Purushottam Das Tandon.

[11] The song, composed by Shekhar Kalyan and sung by Sarojini Naidu,[12] is reported to have instilled a sense of patriotism among Indians during the pre-independence period.