Filmmaker Shekhar Kapur has addressed his past public disagreement with lyricist and screenwriter Javed Akhtar, saying that a remark he made during their widely discussed social media exchange was misunderstood.
The two had earlier found themselves at the centre of an online debate on X (formerly Twitter) when a sequel to their 1987 film Mr. India was announced. At the time, Kapur had expressed disappointment that he was not consulted about the project, stating that as the director of the original film, he should have been involved. Akhtar, who wrote the film, responded sharply, arguing that the project was not Kapur’s to claim.
The exchange escalated further when Akhtar criticised Kapur in a series of posts, suggesting that the filmmaker “needed help” and adding that there was “no shame in meeting a good psychiatrist.” Speaking about the episode now in an interview with The Lallantop, Kapur said the disagreement stemmed from a misunderstanding of his earlier comments about “intellectuals.”
“He completely misunderstood what I meant by intellectuals. I still say that I never considered myself intellectual. When I started making films, they embraced me, so I never knew when the intellectuals, the people who look at cinema intellectually, liked my films or didn’t like them. I’m always a little concerned about that. But he took it in a completely different context,” Kapur said.
The filmmaker clarified that his remarks were not directed at intellectuals in general but at film critics. “I wasn’t referring to those intellectuals; I was talking about critics of cinema. I just let it go because he misunderstood what I was saying,” he added.
At the height of the controversy, Akhtar had responded strongly to Kapur’s statement. In one of his posts, he wrote, “Who are these intellectuals who embraced you and you found that embrace like a snake’s bite? Shyam Benegal, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Ramachandra Guha? Really? Shekhar saab, you are not well. You need help. Come on, there is no shame in meeting a good psychiatrist.”
The online exchange had drawn significant attention at the time, as both Kapur and Akhtar were key contributors to the legacy of Mr. India.
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