Wajahat Mirza

Wajahat Mirza Biography

Wajahat Mirza was a very famous and talented screenwriter and dialogue writer associated with the golden era of Bollywood movies. He was one of the most successful writers of Bollywood’s 1950s and 1960s. As legendary filmmaker Mehboob Khan’s right hand man, he wrote the dialogues of the celebrated movie – Aurat, which was later remade in 1957 as Mother India. When the movie became a legend, along with numerous awards including nomination at Academy awards for best movie in foreign film category, Mirza’s name was also placed among those golden names of history of Bollywood. It was the first Indian movie to win a nomination at Oscars and lost the award by just one vote! He was the dialogue writer behind the revival of same script as well. He has also written the scripts of a few movies.

He was also the dialogue writer of the biggest movie of Indian Screen – Mughal E Azam (1960). Watan (1938), Hum Tum Aur Who (1939), Ek Hi Raasta (1939) and Behen (1941) are his other movies in association with Mehboob Khan while his best among the other projects include - Ganga Jamuna (1961), Leader (1964), Shatranj (1969), Ganga Ki Saugandh (1978) and Love and God (1986).

He was born in Sitapur near Lucknow in 1908. He joined cinematographer Krishan Gopal of Kolkata as an assistant while studying at Jubilee College. He later served as the co-producer of Bollywood movie - Anokhi Mohabbat. Later he established as a dialogue writer and screenwriter of Hindi cinema and one of the earliest established names in both these categories. He received Filmfare Best Dialogue Award for best dialogue writer twice, in successive years – 1961 and 1962 for the movies Mughal-E-Azam and Ganga Jamuna respectively.

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Updated: July 21, 2014