Why Javed Akhtar Says Secularism Should Feel Like Oxygen | Live at Jashn-e-Rekhta

Javed Akhtar joins Saif Mahmood for a thoughtful and deeply relevant conversation on Urdu, secularism, language politics, and the cultural history of India. In this live session, they unpack how Hindi and Urdu grew from the same soil, sharing the same streets, emotions, and literary traditions long before politics tried to divide them.Javed Akhtar speaks candidly about why languages should never be tied to religion, and why Urdu belongs as much to India’s cultural identity as Hindi does. He reflects on how younger audiences are rediscovering Urdu poetry through Devanagari script, even while traditional Urdu writing slowly declines.One of the most powerful moments of the discussion comes when he explains secularism in the simplest possible way. Not as a slogan, not as performance, but as something natural and essential, “like oxygen.” The conversation moves through literature, identity, public discourse, coexistence, and the emotional connection people still carry with language across generations.