Javed Akhtar slams Yash Chopra's Jab Tak Hai Jaan: 'The heroine says she wants to sleep with different men, this is...'

Yash Chopra’s swansong Jab Tak Hai Jaan that came out in 2012 saw Anushka Sharma as a feisty and blabbering war reporter Akira who wishes to sleep with men of different accents before getting married. Veteran writer and lyricist Javed Akhtar was critical of this portrayal recently when he was speaking with ABP Majha. He said, “When today’s filmmakers try to make an image of an empowered woman, they get ridiculous because they don’t know what is an empowered woman. A director like Yash Chopra, who made decent, maybe not great but competent films throughout his career, his film Jab Tak Hai Jaan shows the heroine saying, ‘I will sleep with men of all nationalities before getting married.’ To be empowered you don’t have to put in so much work. So, this is because its a debris and they are finding who is the modern woman in this.” Akhtar added, “Who is the new woman? We are not clear about it. There are two reasons for it. Those who are liberal, if they define this as a modern woman, other liberals will question them. Those who are conservative, if they define it, they feel that they will lose a lot of their territory. So, they don’t want to do it. There were so many talented women -Sridevi and  Madhuri Dixit – they weren’t any less talented than any of the actors, but they didn’t get a big role in their whole career. For instance, they didn’t get roles like Mother India, Bandini and Sujata. It is because people don’t know what is an ideal woman.” On Animal The veteran writer and lyricist was invited to be a part of the Ajanta Ellora International Film Festival (AIFF) where he spoke about Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s film. He said, “It’s very dangerous when a movie, in which a man tells a woman to lick his shoe, and believes that slapping a girl is normal, works at the box office.”