Webdesk: Last month, Indian lyricist Javed Akhtar went to the Faiz Festival in Pakistan and made some offensive comments, which caused a lot of trouble. Now, he seems ready to stir up trouble again with his comments about Urdu and where it is spoken.
Akhtar and his wife, the actress Shabana Azmi, just put out an album of Urdu poetry called Shayarana—Sartaj. The screenwriter emphasised the importance of the Urdu language at the launch, according to Indian Express. He said that Urdu doesn’t belong to Pakistan or Egypt, but to Hindustan. “Urdu is not from anywhere else… It is the language we speak. It isn’t spoken outside Hindustan… Pakistan also came into being after India split up. Before that, it was only a part of India. So, no one speaks this language outside of Hindustan,” he said.
He talked about how Punjab helped Urdu grow and become well-known in the past. “Punjab has made a big impact on Urdu, which is the official language of India. But why did you stop speaking it? Because of the split? What about Pakistan? “People should pay attention to Urdu,” he said. “In the past, there was only Hindustan. Later, Pakistan broke away from Hindustan. Pakistan just said that Kashmir belongs to us… Do you think that’s true? I say, “No!” In the same way, Urdu is and will always be a Hindustani language.”
Akhtar thinks that Urdu and Hindi are less important to young people than English. “We have to speak Hindi because it’s our national language,” he said, adding that language is not based on religion but on where you live. “If religion determined language, then everyone in Europe would speak the same language. So, the language doesn’t come from a religion, but from the area.
In February, he was in charge of the Indian group at the Faiz Festival in Lahore. The singer Ali Zafar invited him to a dinner at his house. About a day later, a video clip of his talk at the festival went viral. In it, he said that the terrorists who attacked Mumbai in 2008 were still “roaming freely” in Pakistan.
“The truth is that putting the blame on each other won’t help. We need to calm things down in the area. We are from Mumbai, and we saw the attack on our city. They didn’t come from Norway, did they? also didn’t come from Egypt. They are still moving around in your country. “If a Hindustani feels these things, you shouldn’t take it personally,” he said.
Resham, an actor who was also at Zafar’s dinner party, was upset by what the lyricist said. The actor from Teefa in Trouble said that he didn’t hear Akhtar’s “insensitive remarks” because he wasn’t at the festival.
