History In Minutes: Javed Akhtar's Freedom Fighter Family

Syed Firdaus Ashraf offers a ready reckoner on Javed Akhtar's great great grandfather Fazl e Haq Khairabadi who fought the British empire during the 1857 Mutiny and was imprisoned in the Cellular Jail in Port Blair.

It was an exchange that had more snap than Sunday's India-Pakistan Champions Trophy game.

When India defeated Pakistan, lyricist Javed Akhtar posted his kudos on X, 'Virat Kohli Zindabad. We all are so proud of you.'

To which an X user replied, 'Aaj suraj kahan se nikla. Andar so dukh hoga aapko.'

The X handle, Professor Sahab, thought he had got the better of the sharp-witted Javed Akhtar with his taunt, but hadn't bargained for the response.

'Beta jab tumhare baap dada angrez ke jootay chaat rahe thay tab mere aazadi ke liye jai aur kala paani mein thay. Meri ragon mein desh premion ka khoon hai aur tumhari ragon mein angrez ke naukaron ka khoon hai. Iss anter ko bhoolo nahin,' Javed Akhtar replied.

(Son, when your ancestors were licking Britisher's boots my ancestors were fighting for Indian Independence and went to Andaman jail. The blood running in my veins is that of a freedom fighter's unlike yours that has the blood of British slaves.)

Here's a ready reckoner on Javed Akhtar's great great grandfather Fazl e Haq Khairabadi who fought the British empire during the 1857 Mutiny and was imprisoned in the dreaded Cellular Jail in Port Blair.

Fazl e Haq Khairabadi was born in 1797 into an affluent family in Khairabad, present day Uttar Pradesh.

He was employed with the East India Company till 1831 as a judicial officer but his temperament didn't allow him to continue so he quit.

After this he moved to Delhi where he edited the first Diwan by the legendary Urdu poet, Mirza Ghalib.

He was very educated and therefore hailed as Allama (the learned) by his contemporaries.

When he heard that the 1857 Mutiny, which Vinayak Damodar 'Veer' Savarkar called the First War of Independence, had broken out, Khairabadi and rebel soldiers took on and ousted the British army in Delhi.

The rebels appointed Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, who was till then a titular ruler, as their king.

Khairabadi wrote and drafted the first constitution of Independent India based on the principles of democracy.

In September 1857, within four months. the British re-captured Delhi.

Khairabadi and the rebel general Bakht Khan asked Bahadur Shah Zafar not to surrender but accompany them to Lucknow to continue the fight against the British, but the emperor, who was 82, refused.

After the British captured Delhi, they exiled Bahadur Shah to Rangoon in Burma.

Bakht Khan finds no mention in history after his disappearance from Delhi, but Khairabadi does.

He and other rebels continued the battle against the British in Lucknow.

After a year of fighting, the rebels lost Lucknow after which Khairabadi became a most wanted man for the British.

They captured him in January 1859 at Khairabad, 80 km from Lucknow.

He was lucky not to be blown off a cannon like many rebels were after the Mutiny was quelled and instead banished to the Cellular Jail, manacled and shackled in chains, on the the ship Fire Queen.

Sixteen months after he was imprisoned in the brutal Cellular Jail, Fazl e Haq Khairabadi died and is buried on its grounds.