Indian · 1915–2003
Bhisham Sahni was born in Rawalpindi, took a doctorate in literature, worked in the freedom movement and then in the Indian People's Theatre Association, and spent seven years in Moscow translating Russian fiction into Hindi. He wrote plays, stories, and novels in Hindi, and he was also an actor—audiences who never read him know his face from Govind Nihalani's films. His major novel, Tamas, came out of what he had seen in Rawalpindi in 1947 and from reading the official reports on the 1946 riots afterwards; it reconstructs a communal massacre as a piece of administration, organised by politicians and executed by ordinary neighbours. The 1988 television adaptation caused riots and a Supreme Court case, which upheld its broadcast. He served as general secretary of the Progressive Writers' Association, won the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Padma Bhushan, and was the brother of the film star Balraj Sahni.