Javed Akhtar was born in Gwalior. There is hardly any other Urdu poet connected to such eminent and epoch-making personalities on either side of his birth—maternal and paternal—where the legacy of poetry and knowledge is continuous and uninterrupted. Who wouldn’t know Allama Fazle Haq Khairabadi? He was a talented man and a great scholar of his time. Ghalib appreciated him and was fond of him. He said he assisted in the selection of ghazals for Ghalib’s Divan. Fazle Haq signed the fatwa for the 1857 rebellion and was exiled to a life sentence in the Andamans for rising against the British. Unfortunately, before the letter of release could reach Port Blair, he was released both from the British jail as well as the prison of his body. His mausoleum in the Andamans beside the ocean's blue waters, covered with green trees on a high mound, is where the world pays obeisance even today. Maulana was the grandfather of Javed Akhtar’s grandfather, Muztar Khairabadi, who was a master poet of his time. He is the son of progressive poet Jan Nisar Akhtar and Safia Akhtar of Zere Lab fame and nephew of the poet Majaz Lakhnavi, who died young. It is a house full of enlightened people and a tradition of letters where words of literary merit flow uninterrupted. Javed Akhtar was awarded Padma Shri in 1999 and Padma Bhushan in 2007, followed by the Sahitya Akademi Award and multiple National Film Awards and Filmfare Awards. Along with his wife, Shabana Azmi, daughter of poet Kaifi Azmi and renowned artist in her own right, he has participated in live-stage presentations that have helped create widespread interest in the Urdu language. He has been a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha for six years, where he did sustained work and enacted a bill to protect the rights of writers, poets, singers, and composers of the film world.
For more about Urdu Ghazal Poetry, please refer to:
Gopi Chand Narang, Translation by Surinder Deol. The Urdu Ghazal: A Gift of Composite Culture. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2020.
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