About Javed Akhtar
Javed Akhtar is an Indian political activist, poet, lyricist and screenwriter. He is originally from the Gwalior area. He is a recipient of the Padma Shri (1999), Padma Bhushan (2007), the Sahitya Akademi Award as well as five National Film Awards. In the early part of his career, he was a screenplay writer, creating films such as Deewar, Zanjeer and Sholay. Later, he left screenplay-writing and became a lyricist and social-political activist . He also remained a member of Rajya Sabha. In 2020, he received the Richard Dawkins Award for his contribution to secularism, free thinking, for critical thinking, holding religious dogma up to scrutiny, advancing human progress and humanist values. Javed Akhtar was chosen as a recipient for the Richard Dawkins Award for being "the bright light for reason, freethought, and atheism in a dark time".
Javed Akhtar was born in Gwalior. His father Jan Nisar Akhtar was a Bollywood film songwriter and Urdu poet. His grandfather Muztar Khairabadi was a poet as was his grandfather's elder brother, Bismil Khairabadi, while his great great grandfather, Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi, was a scholar of Islamic studies and theology and played an important role in the First Independence Movement of India in 1857. He spent most of his childhood and was schooled in Lucknow. He graduated from Saifiya College in Bhopal.Akhtar was greatly inspired by Pakistani author Ibn-e-Safi's Urdu novels, which he grew up reading as a child. Akhtar was particularly influenced by the Jasoosi Dunya and Imran series of detective novels, such as The House of Fear (1955). He was influenced by their fast action, tight plots, economies of expression, fascinating characters with catchy memorable names, and speaking styles. Two of the earliest films he remembered watching both starred Dilip Kumar: Shaheed Latif's Arzoo (1950) and Mehboob Khan's Aan (1952). Other films that influenced him as a child include Bimal Roy's Do Bigha Zameen (1953), Satyen Bose's Jagriti (1954), Shree 420 (1955) directed by Raj Kapoor and written by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Munimji (1955) directed by Subodh Mukherjee and written by Nasir Hussain, and Mehboob Khan's Mother India (1957).
Akhtar was raised an atheist. He has brought up his children Farhan and Zoya Akhtar as atheists.Akhtar was married to Honey Irani, with whom he had two children, Farhan Akhtar, a film actor, producer, director and Zoya Akhtar, a film writer, director and producer. The father-and-son duo have worked together in films such as Dil Chahta Hai, Lakshya, Rock On!! and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara with Zoya. Javed married Shabana Azmi, the daughter of Urdu poet, Kaifi Azmi and later divorced Irani.
Javed was awarded the civilian honour of Padma Shri by the Government of India in 1999, followed by the Padma Bhushan in 2007. In 2013, he received the Sahitya Akademi Award in Urdu, India's second highest literary honour, for his poetry collection Lava. In 2019, he was conferred with an honorary doctorate (Doctor of Letters) by the Jamia Hamdard University. In 2020 he was awarded the Richard Dawkins Award for being a "powerful force for secularism, reason, and human rights, challenging superstition and intolerance through his work in poetry, screenwriting, and political activism".