Bhisham Sahni

Bhisham Sahni (8 August 1915 – 11 July 2003) was an Indian writer, playwright in Hindi and an actor, most famous for his novel and television screenplay Tamas ("Darkness, Ignorance"), a powerful and passionate account of the Partition of India.

Bhisham Sahni was born on 8 August 1915 in Rawalpindi, in undivided Punjab.

At the time of Partition, he was an active member of the Indian National Congress and organized relief work for the refugees when riots broke out in Rawalpindi in March 1947.

In 1948 Bhisham Sahni started working with the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA), an organization with which his brother, Balraj Sahni was already closely associated.

He worked both as an actor and a director.

At a later stage, he directed a drama ‘Bhoot Gari’.

This was adapted for the stage by film director, screenwriter, novelist, and journalist Khwaja Ahmed Abbas.

As an actor, he appeared in several films, including Saeed Mirza's Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho!

In 1952 he moved to Delhi and was appointed Lecturer in English at Delhi College (now Zakir Husain College), University of Delhi.

From 1956 to 1963 he worked as a translator at the Foreign Languages Publishing House in Moscow, and translated some important works into Hindi, including Lev Tolstoy’s short stories and his novel Resurrection.

Although Sahni had been writing stories for a long time, he received recognition as a story writer only after the publication of his story ‘Chief Ki Daawat’(The Chief’s Party) in the Kahani magazine in 1956.

He earned a master's degree in English literature from Government College in Lahore, and a Ph.D. from Punjab University, Chandigarh in 1958.

He joined the struggle for Indian independence.

On his return to India, Bhisham Sahni resumed teaching at Delhi College, and also edited the reputed literary magazine Nai Kahaniyan from 1965 to 1967.

Sahni's prolific career as a writer also included six other Hindi novels: Jharokhe (1967), Kadian (1971), Basanti (1979), Mayyadas Ki Madi (1987), Kunto (1993) and Neeloo, Nilima, Nilofar (2000)., over hundred short stories spread over ten collections of short stories, (including Bhagya Rekha (1953), Pahla patha (1956), Bhatakti Raakh (1966), Patrian (1973), Wang Chu (1978), Shobha Yatra (1981), Nishachar (1983), Pali (1989), and Daayan (1996) ; five plays including Hanoosh, Kabira Khada Bazar Mein, Madhavi, Muavze, Alamgeer, a collection of children's short stories Gulal ka keel'. But his novel named Mayyadas Ki Mari (Mayyadas's Castle) was one of his finest literary creation, the backdrop of this narrative is historical and depicts the age when the Khalsa Raj was vanquished in Punjab and the British were taking over.

This novel is a saga of changing social order and decadent set of values.

Bhisham Sahni's epic work Tamas (Darkness, Ignorance 1974) is a novel based on the riots of 1947 Partition of India which he witnessed at Rawalpindi.

Tamas portrays the horrors of senseless communal politics of violence and hatred; and the tragic aftermath – death, destruction, forced migration and the partition of a country.

It has been translated to English, French, German, Japanese and many Indian languages including Tamil,Gujarati, Malayalam, Kashmiri, Marathi and Manipuri.

He was General Secretary of the All India Progressive Writers Association (1975–85) and Acting General Secretary of the Afro-Asian Writer’ Association and was also associated with the editing of their journal Lotus.

He 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.

Tamas won the 1975 Sahitya Akademi Award for literature and was later made into a television film in 1987 by Govind Nihalani.

Two of his masterpiece stories, Pali and Amritsar Aa Gaya Hai, are also based on the Partition.

He retired from service in 1980.

Sahni was fluent in Punjabi, English, Urdu, Sanskrit, and Hindi.

Bhisham Sahni was associated with several literary and cultural organizations.

(1984), Tamas (1986), Kumar Shahani's Kasba (1991), Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha (1993), and Aparna Sen's Mr. and Mrs. Iyer (2002).

As a result of his association with IPTA, he left the Congress and joined the Communist Party of India.

Thereafter, he left Bombay for Punjab where he worked briefly as a lecturer, first in a college at Ambala and then at Khalsa College, Amritsar.

At this time he was involved in organizing the Punjab College Teachers’ Union and also continued with IPTA work.

He wrote the screenplay for Kumar Shahani's film, Kasba (1991), which is based on Anton Chekhov's story,In the Gully.

He was awarded the Padma Bhushan for literature in 1998, and Sahitya Akademi Fellowship in 2002.

He was the younger brother of the noted Hindi film actor, Balraj Sahni.

Bhisham Sahni wrote his autobiography Aaj Ke Ateet (Today's Pasts, Penguin 2016) and the biography of his brother Balraj Sahni, Balraj My Brother (English).

Bhisham Sahni was one of the most prolific writers of Hindi literature.

Krishan Baldev Vaid said, "His voice, both as a writer and a man, was serene and pure and resonant with humane reassurances. His immense popularity was not a result of any pandering to vulgar tastes but a reward for his literary merits—his sharp wit, his gentle irony, his all-pervasive humor, his penetrating insight into character, his mastery as a raconteur, and his profound grasp of the yearnings of the human heart.

Noted Writer, Nirmal Verma, stated, "If we see a long gallery of unmatched characters in his stories and novels, where each person is present with his class and family; pleasures and pains of his town and district; the whole world of perversions and contradictions; it is because the reservoir of his (Bhisham Sahni's) experience was vast and abundant. At the request of his father – would anyone believe? – he dabbled in business, in which he was a miserable failure. With his high-spirits and passion for life of the common people, he traveled through villages and towns of Punjab with the IPTA theatre group; then began to teach to earn a living; and then lived in the USSR for seven years as a Hindi translator. This sprawling reservoir of experience collected in the hustle-bustle of various occupations ultimately filtered down into his stories and novels, without which, as we realize today, the world of Hindi prose would have been deprived and desolate.

The 'simplicity of his work comes from hard layers of experience, which distinguish and separate it from other works of 'simplified realism.

... "Bhisham Sahni is able to express the terrifying tragedy of Partition with an extraordinary compassion in his stories. Amritsar Aa Gaya Hai ('We have reached Amritsar') is one such exceptional work where Bhisham gets away from the external reality and points to the bloody fissures etched on people's psyche. This is possible only for a writer who, in the darkness of historic events has seen the sudden 'accidents' that happen inside human hearts from up close."

... "After reading his last collection of stories Daayan (Witch), I was amazed that even after so many years there seemed no repetition or staleness in his writing. Each of his stories seemed to bring something sudden from newer directions, which was as new for him as it was unexpected for us. That Bhisham never paused, never halted in such a long creative journey is a big achievement; but what is bigger perhaps is that his life nurtured his work and his work nurtured his life, both nurtured each other continuously.