At a grand function held on 24th February at Rashtrapati Bhawan in Delhi, President Droupadi Murmu declared a song — Dhumal Dhumal — penned by Javed Akhtar and composed by Mannan Shah as the national anthem for the differently abled people in India.
In Sanskrit, the word Dhumal means purple which is the symbolic colour of the differently abled.
It may be mentioned here that the Indian Military Academy’s (Dehradun) song, the anthem of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and the anthem of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) have all been written by Javed Akhtar.