Mumbai: After Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur constituted a panel to decide whether legendary poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz's poem Hum Dekhenge is offensive to Hindu sentiments, senior lyricist Javed Akhtar on Thursday termed the incident absurd and funny.
Speaking to ANI about Faiz and the recent controversy, the writer told ANI, "Calling Faiz Ahmed Faiz 'anti-Hindu' is so absurd and funny that it's difficult to seriously talk about it."
The writer further said that Faiz wrote the poem Hum Dekhenge against the then Pakistan government run by the former president of the country Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.
"He lived half his life outside Pakistan, he was called anti-Pakistan there. Hum Dekhenge he wrote against Zia ul Haq's government which was a communal regressive and fundamentalist government," Akhtar told ANI.
Further rejecting the claim of the poem being 'anti-Hindu', Akhtar explained a phrase from the poem and said, "He has mentioned a phrase - 'Goonjega an-al-haq ka naara' which means 'aham brahma', which means that the creator and creation is one, it is not an Islamic thought."