Javed Akhtar

Javed Akhtar was born on January 17, 1945, in Khairabad, a town in the United Provinces of British India, into a family with deep literary roots. His father, Jan Nisar Akhtar, was a respected Urdu poet who also wrote songs for Hindi films, and his mother, Safia Akhtar, was a writer and teacher ^[1]. Through his father's line he descended from a tradition of Urdu poets stretching back generations, a lineage that included the nineteenth century poet Muztar Khairabadi, his grandfather ^[2].

His childhood was unsettled. Safia Akhtar died when Javed was still a boy, and he spent his school years moving between relatives in Lucknow, Aligarh and Bhopal ^[1]. He completed his education in Bhopal, taking a degree from Saifia College. The name he carries was itself a piece of family poetry: he was originally called Jadu, drawn from a line in one of his father's poems, and Javed was later adopted as the closest formal name to it ^[2].

In 1964 he left for Bombay with little money and no firm prospects. He later described years of sleeping in corridors, verandas and studio compounds while looking for work at the fringes of the film industry, taking small jobs as an assistant and dialogue writer before anything substantial came his way ^[1].

The turning point in the Javed Akhtar biography came through his partnership with Salim Khan, an actor turned writer he met while both worked at Sippy Films. Writing jointly under the credit Salim-Javed, the two men changed the standing of screenwriters in Bombay cinema, demanding, and eventually receiving, prominent billing and fees that had previously been unthinkable for writers ^[3].

Their early success came with Andaz (1971) and Haathi Mere Saathi (1971), but it was Zanjeer in 1973 that established the pair as a commercial force. The film's brooding police officer, played by Amitabh Bachchan, introduced the figure often called the angry young man, a hero shaped by injustice rather than romance, and it made Bachchan a star ^[3].

Over the following decade Salim-Javed wrote some of the most commercially successful Hindi films ever produced, among them Deewaar (1975), Sholay (1975), Trishul (1978), Don (1978) and Shakti (1982) ^[4]. Sholay in particular became a cultural phenomenon, running for years in Bombay cinemas, and its dialogue passed into everyday Indian speech. The partnership dissolved in the early 1980s, and the two writers continued separately ^[3].

After the split with Salim Khan, Akhtar turned increasingly to verse, the family trade he had once resisted. His first major work as a film lyricist came with Silsila (1981), and over the next decades he wrote songs for films such as Saagar, 1942: A Love Story, Border, Refugee, Lagaan and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara ^[5]. His lyrics drew on the Urdu poetic tradition while remaining direct enough for a mass audience, and they made him one of the most sought after songwriters in the industry.

He has won the National Film Award for Best Lyrics five times, a record that reflects both his longevity and his range, with wins for films including Saaz (1997), Border (1997), Godmother (1999), Refugee (2000) and Lagaan (2001) ^[5]. He has also collected numerous Filmfare Awards across writing and lyric categories.

Beyond cinema, Akhtar published collections of Urdu poetry, most notably Tarkash (1995) and Lava (2011). Lava earned him the Sahitya Akademi Award for Urdu in 2013, the honour given by India's national academy of letters ^[6]. In interviews he has often noted the irony that he avoided poetry in his youth precisely because it was expected of him, only to return to it in middle age.

Akhtar has been a persistent public voice on questions of free expression, secularism and writers' rights. A self-described atheist raised in a Muslim family, he has argued frequently against religious orthodoxy of every kind and has faced criticism from conservative quarters for doing so ^[7].

He campaigned for years on copyright reform, pressing for lyricists and composers to receive royalties for the commercial use of their work. That effort contributed to amendments to India's Copyright Act passed in 2012, which strengthened the position of authors of underlying works in films ^[7]. He later served as chairman of the Indian Performing Right Society, the body that collects royalties for music creators.

In 2009 he was nominated to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament, where he served a six year term and spoke on education, communal harmony and the rights of artists ^[1]. In 2020 he received the Richard Dawkins Award, given for public advocacy of rationalism and secularism, becoming its first Indian recipient ^[7].

Akhtar's first marriage was to Honey Irani, a screenwriter, with whom he had two children, both of whom became major figures in Hindi cinema: the director and actor Farhan Akhtar and the director Zoya Akhtar ^[8]. The marriage ended in divorce.

In 1984 he married the actress Shabana Azmi, daughter of the poet Kaifi Azmi, joining two of the most prominent literary families of the Urdu speaking world. The couple have remained among the most visible pairings in Indian public life, frequently sharing platforms on social and political causes ^[8].

Akhtar has spoken openly about his struggle with alcoholism during the 1980s and his decision to give up drinking entirely in 1991, a subject he has addressed in talks and interviews as a caution to younger colleagues ^[1].

Well past the age when many contemporaries retired, Akhtar continued to write lyrics, publish verse and appear at literary festivals across India and abroad. His songs featured in successful films of the 2000s and 2010s, and younger filmmakers, including his own children, continued to commission his work ^[5].

Recognition accumulated steadily. The Indian government awarded him the Padma Shri in 1999 and the Padma Bhushan, the country's third highest civilian honour, in 2007 ^[1]. In 2013 the centenary of Indian cinema brought renewed attention to the Salim-Javed films, and a 2024 documentary series, Angry Young Men, revisited the partnership for a streaming audience ^[4].

He also remained a combative presence in public debate, commenting on censorship, communal politics and the state of Urdu in India, and drawing both applause and organised criticism for remarks on religious extremism ^[7].

Anyone asking who was Javed Akhtar, or rather who he is, since he remains active, finds a career with few parallels: a writer who helped define the grammar of the modern Hindi blockbuster and then reinvented himself as a poet and lyricist of the first rank. Among Javed Akhtar achievements, the Salim-Javed scripts alone would secure a permanent place in film history, since Sholay and Deewaar are routinely listed among the greatest Indian films ever made ^[4].

His second legacy is institutional. The royalty protections Indian songwriters now enjoy owe much to his lobbying, and his insistence on prominent writer credits in the 1970s permanently raised the status of screenwriting in Bombay ^[7]. His third legacy is familial: through Farhan and Zoya Akhtar, and through his marriage to Shabana Azmi, his household sits at the centre of contemporary Indian cinema and letters ^[8].

Among the more striking Javed Akhtar facts is the continuity he represents: a poet descended from nineteenth century Urdu masters who wrote the dialogue shouted in single screen cinemas and the songs streamed on phones half a century later. Few careers in Indian culture have bridged so many audiences for so long ^[2].