The recent pronouncements of Javed Akhtar, a celebrated lyricist and writer, on housing discrimination against Muslims in Mumbai, during an interview with Lallantop’s Saurabh Dwivedi, strikes one not merely as flawed, but as a performance of intellectual insouciance and a trivialisation bordering on the irresponsible. His articulation is so wanting in depth and sensitivity that it might cause one to question the insidious nature of “celebrity” intellectualism, particularly from a gentleman whose renown stems from his facility with words.Akhtar, presented with the complaint of discrimination, embarks on a curious journey of explanation. He begins with a seemingly candid admission of the problem – yes, even the illustrious Shabana Azmi faced such prejudice – only to then execute a nimble, if intellectually dubious, leap into the abyss of historical grievance. According to Akhtar, the grand, all-encompassing explanation for a Muslim being denied a house in Mumbai today is that it is the unhealed wound of Partition, the lingering bitterness of the Sindhi Hindu refugee, dispossessed and traumatised decades ago.One must pause here, if only to admire the sheer audacity of such a tightly circumscribed etiology. The implication, delivered with the gravity of a revealed truth, is that the Sindhi landlord – for it is this landlord, apparently, who typifies all such discriminatory acts – is merely reacting, his present prejudice a mere echo of past suffering inflicted by those whom the current Muslim house-seeker somehow represents. Several layers of problematic reasoningThe responsibility for the present injustice, therefore, is not his; it is “yours,” he thunders, pointing an accusatory finger across time, space, and individual agency, presumably at the Pakistani actor, and by extension, at a rather undifferentiated mass.This remarkable thesis contains within its folds several layers of, shall we say, problematic reasoning.Firstly, there is the grand simplification. To attribute the complex, multi-layered phenomenon of communal discrimination in a sprawling, diverse metropolis like Mumbai solely to the trauma of Sindhi refugees from 1947, is an exercise in such breathtaking reductionism that one scarcely knows whether to marvel at its simplicity or lament its superficiality. Are we then to understand that non-Sindhi landlords who discriminate do so out of sympathetic resonance? Or perhaps they do not discriminate at all? What of caste prejudice, regional chauvinism, or indeed, the garden-variety bigotry that requires no grand historical trauma for its sustenance? Akhtar, it seems, has found his philosopher’s stone, and it explains all.Next, we encounter the absolution by history, or the past as a perpetual alibi. By locating the “root cause” so firmly in the past, and specifically in the actions of “the other side” of that historical divide, the present is conveniently absolved of its own active role in perpetuating discrimination.The landlord today is not an agent exercising prejudice; he is a victim reacting to an old script. This is a comforting narrative, no doubt, for those who would prefer not to examine the contemporary political and social machinery that manufactures and maintains communal fault lines.Then there is the trivialisation by anecdote. The sarcastic dismissal of the Pakistani actor’s claim with the image of himself and Azmi as homeless vagrants “sleeping on the streets” is a rhetorical flourish that, while perhaps earning a chuckle in certain quarters, does little to advance understanding.Belittling the lived experience of countless less privileged individualsIt serves, rather, to belittle the lived experience of countless less privileged individuals who face precisely this kind of systemic exclusion, without the recourse to public platforms or celebrated victimhood that Akhtar, by his own admission (of once being denied a flat), seems to simultaneously acknowledge and then deflate. His singular experience becomes not a point of solidarity, but a benchmark against which others’ grievances are implicitly measured and found wanting in dramatic urgency.One also notes the nationalist deflection. The declaration, “I am first and foremost an Indian,” when confronted by an “outsider,” is a time-honoured tactic for shutting down uncomfortable conversations about internal failings. While patriotism is a sentiment few would disparage, its utility as a shield against legitimate critique of domestic injustice is, at best, questionable. Does the truth of discrimination become less true, its sting less sharp, if articulated by someone holding a different passport? One would hope that the pursuit of social justice possesses a somewhat more universal compass.Perhaps the crowning glory of this edifice of flawed logic is the direct inversion of responsibility, or blaming the victim with historical panache. The statement, “If he didn’t give up that house, it was because of you, because you threw him out,” is a direct, unadorned accusation, laying the blame for a contemporary act of discrimination squarely at the feet of the victim (or her symbolic representative). This is not merely a flawed argument; it is an irresponsible one, for it legitimises present-day prejudice by framing it as an almost justifiable repercussion of past events, for which the current seeker of shelter bears an inherited, inescapable guilt.Most glaringly, what is entirely absent from Mr. Akhtar’s “historical lesson” is any acknowledgement of structural discrimination. There is no mention of the pervasive communal ideologies, the political mobilisation around religious identities, the socio-economic anxieties that often find expression in communal antagonism, the role of state inaction or complicity, or the normalisation of prejudice in everyday life. Instead, we are offered a simplistic, almost sentimental, narrative of individual bitterness rooted in a singular historical event.One expects a greater degree of intellectual rigour from those shaping popular narrativesFor a man whose craft ostensibly involves the nuanced portrayal of human emotion and social dynamics, however melodramatically, this public foray into social analysis comes across as remarkably flat-footed. The articulation is not merely pathetic; it is, more worryingly, a disservice to the very serious issue it purports to address. It is the kind of reasoning that provides solace to the complacent and ammunition to the prejudiced, all under the guise of worldly wisdom and historical empathy. One expects, perhaps naively, a greater degree of intellectual rigour, a deeper sensitivity, and a more responsible use of the public microphone from those who shape popular narratives. This, alas, appears to be a case where the muse of lyrical facility seems to have entirely abandoned the faculty of critical thought. The result is not an illumination, but a rather unfortunate obfuscation, delivered with an air of unearned authority that does little to advance either understanding or justice.