The Story of Hariharan's Hanuman Chalisa

A recording apart

Of all the music Hariharan has recorded, none has travelled further than the Hanuman Chalisa. Released in 1992 by Super Cassettes Industries, the label now known as T-Series, his rendition of the devotional song has become the most viewed Indian video on YouTube: It was the first to cross five billion views, and that milestone carried it into the ten most watched videos on the platform worldwide.

The numbers tell only part of the story. As Hariharan observed when the recording passed its first billion views, the Chalisa was already sung across India, north, south, east and west, and played in temples around the world. What follows is the story of how a recording made in 1992 came to carry that devotion into the streaming age.

Gulshan Kumar and the 1992 recording

The recording was released in 1992 by Super Cassettes Industries, with Hariharan as the singer and the label's founder, Gulshan Kumar, credited as the artiste. It made no attempt to reinvent the Chalisa: the rendition was based on traditional melodies, with music composed by Lalit Sen. Streaming credits also name Chander alongside him.

Gulshan Kumar's part in the recording's life did not end at its release. Reflecting on its success many years later, Hariharan remembered him fondly as the man who made the album and promoted it so many years back, and credited T-Series with sustaining that work across the decades. When the recording reached five billion views, Gulshan Kumar's son, T-Series chairman Bhushan Kumar, described the achievement as a reflection of his father's vision.

From album to five billion views

On 10 May 2011, T-Series uploaded the recording to YouTube. The video runs a little over nine minutes, was directed by Shambhu Gopal, and features Gulshan Kumar on screen. It went on to set records no Indian upload had approached before.

At five billion, the gap to the rest of Indian YouTube was itself striking: the country's second most-viewed video, the Punjabi track Lehenga, stood at around 1.8 billion views, more than three billion behind.

The first billion arrived in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Bhushan Kumar connected the two: people turn to the Hanuman Chalisa in their most difficult moments, he noted, and the crisis had sent millions back to it for courage and strength. Hariharan, for his part, said that crossing the billion mark "was something I could not imagine and was humbled by it", and was quick to share the credit with Gulshan Kumar and with T-Series' promotion of the album over the years.

The recording's reach extends beyond YouTube. Hariharan has cited a survey that found four requests per minute for the Hanuman Chalisa on Amazon Alexa, where, as noted in his biography, it is the most requested song on the service.

Why this rendition endures

There is no single explanation, but a few things are clear.

The recording follows the melodies people already knew, so it never asked listeners to learn anything new.

The Chalisa was also everywhere long before streaming. By Hariharan's own account it was popular in every part of India and played in temples around the world, so the recording entered a devotional life that was already vast.

Then the pandemic arrived. Bhushan Kumar tied the surge to it directly: people recite the Chalisa in difficult times, and the crisis sent them back to it in numbers nobody had seen. Alexa still logs four requests a minute.

Hear the original recording

The recording is best heard where its history was made: the official T-Series video on YouTube, uploaded in 2011 and running a little over nine minutes. Shree Hanuman Chalisa is also available on Spotify.