Mumtaz Shanti

Mumtaz was born in 1926 in Dinga, in the Gujrat District of the Punjab Province of British India into a Punjabi Muslim family. Mumtaz's mother died when she was very young and her aunt took care of her.^[1] Mumtaz's uncle encouraged her to learn singing and dancing when she was visiting Lahore. Wali Sahab spotted her and then she went to Calcutta and worked in Sohni Kumharan in 1937.^[1]

Mumtaz's uncle Barkat Nizami was briefly married to actress Geeta Nizami in the 1940s.^[3][4]

Mumtaz Shanti's career peaked in the 1940s and early 1950s with hit movies like Basant (1942), Kismet (1943) with Ashok Kumar, Badalti Duniya and Dharti with Trilok Kapoor, and Ghar Ki Izzat (1948) with a young Dilip Kumar.^[5][2][6][7]

Kismet was the biggest hit of her career.^[8][9][10] The film starring her and Ashok Kumar broke all previous records when it came to box office revenues.^[2][1] It ran for a record three years at Kolkata’s Roxy cinema. This record was broken 32 years later by Sholay.^[11]

Mumtaz Shanti was married to Wali Sahab, a film director and writer in pre-partition Bollywood then after partition they both moved to Pakistan in the early 1950s and they had two sons together. Sahab died of heart failure in 1977.^[1]

Mumtaz Shanti died in Pakistan on 19 October 1994.^{[citation needed]}