Few singers of Om Jai Jagdish Hare could name its author, which is itself the measure of the hymn's success. It was composed in the 1870s by Shardha Ram Phillauri, a Punjabi writer, preacher and reformer remembered otherwise as an early figure of modern Punjabi and Hindi prose, and within a few generations his aarti had shed his name and become simply what one sings when the lamp is lit. The text is a chain of petitions to Jagdish, the Lord of the universe, each verse closing into the refrain of victory, jai Jagdish hare. It asks that the sufferings of devotees be removed in an instant, confesses that the worshipper comes filled with desire for refuge, names God as mother and father, friend of the friendless and remover of sorrow, and ends by asking that faith be increased and the mind be turned to service.
The theology is deliberately broad. Though Jagdish and Hari are names of Vishnu, the hymn names no sectarian marks, no avatar stories, no specific shrine, and that generality is why it travels, sung to Vishnu, to Krishna, to Shiva and to the Goddess with the necessary substitutions, in temples of nearly every North Indian tradition. It is the closest thing modern Hinduism has to a universal congregational hymn, and it is barely a century and a half old.