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Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar were a hit pair in the 70s as they gave Indian cinema a long list of hits. They wrote the kind of films which are still iconic today and one has never seen such writing post that. While Salim-Javed is a legendary duo, they left everyone heartbroken when they spilt. The actual reason for them separating is not yet known, it was also not revealed in their documentary series ‘Angry Young Men’. However, in a recent interview, Akhtar said that people thought Amitabh Bachchan was the reason behind their split.

Akhtar said in an interview that just before they parted ways, they had conceptualised a film called ‘Invisible Man’ which later became ‘Mr India’. This film was conceptualised for Amitabh Bachchan but just before things could go further, Salim-Javed split. Thus, later, Javed Akhtar himself wrote the entire script, screenplay, dialogues of ‘Mr India’ and eventually, it was made with Anil Kapoor . Akhtar said, during a chat with Mid-day, “We parted ways in 1982, the date was June 21. Salim saheb had come to my house. We had our conversation there. It was before the split, that we thought of this idea of ‘Mr India’.”

Rumours suggested that time that it was Javed’s closeness with Bachchan which led to his split with Salim Khan. Clarifying on it, Akhtar said, “When we parted, situation changed. Due to my closeness to Amitabh Bachchan, a lot of people thought I have parted ways with Salim Khan because of my closeness with Amitabh. Due to these rumours, I didn’t do any films with Amitabh Bachchan for about 10 years. I had many offers, but I didn’t take up any because I didn’t want this tag on me that I broke this partnership because of some support. The first film I made with him after parting with Salim was Azaad.”

Akhtar also revealed that he always maintained respect for Salim as he was the elder one and thus, he always had the final say. However, they were always equals during the writing process as a duo. “When we were sitting to write screenplays, we were equals. But, both of us come from a culture where we have inherited this ‘chote bade ka khayal’. He was elder than me, more experienced than me, so we did have that ‘chote bade ka rishta’. But, when we were working, we were working. We didn’t consider age gap when it came to work. Outside work, we followed what we inherited,” he said.