Bhisham Sahni
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Bhisham Sahni (born August 8, 1915, Rawalpindi; died July 11, 2003) was a Hindi writer, playwright, filmmaker, and actor, most famous for his novel and television screenplay "Tamas" ("Darkness"), a powerful and passionate account of the Partition of India. He was the brother of the noted actor Balraj Sahni.
Bhisham Sahni earned a master's degree in English at Government College in Lahore, and also attended Khalsa College, Amritsar. He joined the struggle for Indian independence, and was jailed for his participation in the Quit India Movement of 1942. Upon Partition, he and his Punjabi Hindu family were forced to move to Amritsar. In the late 1940s, he worked with his brother as a stage performer in Mumbai with the Indian People's Theatre Association. In 1950, he became a lecturer in English at Delhi College. From 1957 to 1963, he lived in Moscow and worked as a translator from Russian to Hindi. In addition to those languages, Sahni was fluent in English, Urdu, Sanskrit, and Punjabi.
Bhisham Sahni's prolific career as a writer included not only "Tamas", which won the Sahitya Akademi award for literature in 1975, but also five other Hindi novels, nine collections of short stories, children's short stories, six plays, the autobiography "Aaj ke Ateet" (Pasts of the Present), and "Balraj My Brother," an English biography of Balraj Sahni. He was general secretary of the Progressive Writers Association, and was the founder and chairman of SAHMAT, an organization promoting cross-cultural understanding, founded in memory of the murdered theatre artist and activist Safdar Hashmi.
Late in life, he appeared in several films, including Little Buddha (1993) and Aparna Sen's Mr. and Mrs. Iyer (2002).
Sahni won numerous honors and awards including the Padma Bhushan for literature in 1998.
[edit] Quote
"If people knew each other, they would find it hard to hate."
[edit] Sources
- Sharma, Rajendra. "A life of commitment: Bhisham Sahni, 1915 - 2003", Frontline magazine, 2003-07-19. Retrieved on August 22, 2006.
- Bhatnagar, Ashwini. "Commoners' chronicler", The Tribune (Chandigarh), 2003-07-27. Retrieved on August 31, 2006.
