Quick Answer: Javed Akhtar argues that science and technology drive human progress, but awareness of the liberal arts, including history, literature, poetry, and painting, is what separates a human being from a computer or robot. He says the "watertight compartments" between scientific and humanities education are wrong. Scientists should learn the arts, and arts students should understand basic science.
Most debates about education pit engineers against poets. Javed Akhtar, the screenwriter and lyricist behind Sholay and Deewaar, refuses that split. Speaking to IANS from Mumbai on October 25, 2026, he made a case for liberal arts and science as two halves of one education. His point is simple, but it runs against how most students are taught, and it deserves a closer look.
What Akhtar Actually Said
Akhtar's core claim has three parts. First, science and technology matter enormously for human progress, and he doesn't argue otherwise. Second, a person who only knows one field is missing something essential. Third, that missing piece is the arts, which he links to what makes people human.
He pushed the idea in both directions. Students of literature, he said, should have a basic grasp of science. Students of science should know history, literature, poetry, painting, and folk arts. "These watertight compartments are not right," he told IANS.
Notice what he didn't say. He didn't call science shallow or argue that poetry should replace lab work. His target is the wall between the two, not either side of it.
The Two Cultures Problem Is Older Than You Think
Akhtar's complaint isn't new. In 1959, the British physicist and novelist C.P. Snow delivered the Rede Lecture at Cambridge, later published as The Two Cultures. Snow argued that scientists and literary intellectuals had stopped understanding each other, and that this gap made it harder for societies to solve their problems.
Snow made the gap concrete with a test. He suggested that many well-read people couldn't explain the second law of thermodynamics, while few scientists could name a Shakespeare play they'd read. Snow thought the first failure was a bigger embarrassment than the second. Whether you agree with that ranking, the underlying diagnosis still holds up.
Here's what most people miss: the divide is partly self-inflicted by specialization. Universities reward depth, so students narrow early. Depth is valuable, but narrow training means a physicist may never practice weighing evidence about human motives, and a historian may never test an assumption against data. Both lose something real.
That said, there's a real counterargument. Specialization exists because modern fields are too complex for one person to master broadly. Asking every engineer to become a polymath can produce people who are shallow in both areas. Akhtar's position works best as a call for literacy across fields, not equal mastery.
The Machine Comparison: What Akhtar Means by "Human"
Akhtar's line about robots deserves a careful reading. Alan Turing's 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" proposed the "imitation game," later called the Turing test, as a way to judge machine intelligence by conversation rather than definition. Seventy-five years later, language models produce fluent prose, poetry-like verse, and competent summaries of history.
So what separates a person from a machine? Akhtar's implicit answer is judgment: knowing which question matters, what a line of verse is doing emotionally, or why a historical event still shapes people's fears. Information retrieval is easy for machines. Meaning and context are harder.
This is where the argument gets interesting, and where a counter-intuitive point applies. Many people assume that as technology gets more capable, technical skills become the only thing that matters. The opposite may be true. When machines can produce answers instantly, the scarce skill is knowing whether an answer is worth trusting and what it leaves out. Those are humanities skills: reading sources critically, understanding bias, and recognizing when a clean explanation hides a messy reality.
Akhtar's claim is an opinion from a practitioner, not an empirical finding. You can accept it as a serious view without treating it as settled science.
Where Policy Is Moving
India's National Education Policy 2020 pushes in Akhtar's direction. It calls for removing rigid separation between arts, commerce, and science streams, and it allows students to combine subjects more flexibly. The policy frames this as holistic, multidisciplinary education, though implementation depends heavily on state boards, colleges, and resources.
The trade-offs are real. Here's how the main approaches compare:
| Approach | Main strength | Main risk | Typical example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strict stream separation | Deep subject mastery early | Narrow perspective, weak cross-field judgment | Science-only or arts-only tracks |
| Elective mixing (NEP-style) | Flexibility, broader exposure | Superficial coverage if poorly designed | Science students taking a history or literature course |
| Integrated core curriculum | Shared reasoning skills across fields | Demands strong faculty and time | Common writing, ethics, and quantitative reasoning courses |
No single model wins everywhere. A student heading toward surgery needs deep biology early. A student heading toward data journalism may gain more from quantitative and historical reasoning together.
How to Build Both Sides Without Burning Out
Akhtar's view is easy to agree with and hard to act on. Here's a practical approach that works for working adults as well as students:
- Pick one humanities anchor. Choose a single area, such as history or poetry, and read one book per month. Consistency beats volume.
- Learn one science concept deeply. Thermodynamics, probability, or evolution are good choices. Aim to explain the idea to someone without jargon.
- Connect them deliberately. Ask how a scientific concept has been used or misused in culture, or how a historical narrative would look under scientific scrutiny.
- Use primary sources. Read the original study or the original poem, not only the summary.
The point isn't to become a generalist expert. It's to notice when your field's assumptions are being imported unexamined.
- Common mistake: trying to master everything at once. Most people quit within weeks. Pick one anchor.
- Common mistake: treating the arts as decoration. The better move is to ask what a poem or film reveals about human behavior that a dataset cannot.
The Limits of the "Well-Rounded" Ideal
Here's the honest caveat. "Well-rounded" can become a vague compliment that justifies never choosing. A person who reads widely but cannot debug code, run an experiment, or read a clinical trial isn't better equipped for a technical job. Breadth without any depth can be a liability.
There's also a question of who gets access. Multidisciplinary education needs time, qualified teachers, and institutions willing to fund electives that don't fit existing timetables. Akhtar's message is a principle, and principles are cheap until someone builds the infrastructure to deliver them.
Still, the core instinct holds. The people who handle complex problems well, from engineers designing AI systems to filmmakers writing stories about technology, tend to understand both the mechanism and the meaning.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did Javed Akhtar say about science and liberal arts?
Javed Akhtar said science and technology are crucial to human progress, but people also need awareness of the liberal arts, such as history, literature, poetry, and painting. He told IANS that this understanding is part of what distinguishes human beings from computers and robots. He also said that scientists and arts students should each learn basic knowledge of the other field.
Why should science students study liberal arts?
Science students who study liberal arts build skills in critical reading, weighing evidence about human behavior, and understanding how ideas shape society. These skills matter in research communication, ethics, and policy. Narrow technical training can leave people unable to question assumptions in their own field.
How can I combine science and humanities learning on my own?
Pick one humanities area and read one substantial book per month. Learn one science concept well enough to explain it simply. Then connect the two, for example by examining how a scientific idea has been portrayed in literature or film. Consistency matters more than covering many subjects at once.
Is the divide between science and the humanities real?
The divide is partly real and partly a product of how universities organize knowledge. C.P. Snow described the gap in his 1959 Rede Lecture, and it still shapes how students choose their paths. Specialization is necessary for deep expertise, so the goal is cross-field literacy, not equal mastery of both.
Start With One Cross-Field Habit This Week
Akhtar's core message is that science and the arts answer different questions, and a capable person needs both. The most practical step is to pick one humanities anchor and one scientific concept, then deliberately connect them. Try reading one short work of history or poetry this week and note one question it raises about your own field. Pass this article to a friend or colleague who sees science and the arts as separate worlds, and start a conversation about liberal arts and science together.