Partition perspectives in Bhisham Sahni’s TAMAS

Pages:338-340
Sangeeta (Department of English, Manohar Memorial College, Fatehabad, Haryana)

TAMAS (The Darkness) by Bhisham Sahni has been one of the most controversial works in Indian literature, due to the subject matter it deals with; Communal riots! Tamas is a full-fledged novel on partition. It very effectively captures human tragedy of gigantic proportion. There is a very strong reason for Bhisham Sahni to write a novel especially on partition. Bhisham Sahni was born in Rawalpindi in August 1915. He joined the freedom movement of 1942 and served time in jail, went on to become a district secretary of the Congress. Like his elder brother, the legendary actor Balraj Sahni, Bhisham also studied in Lahore and after completing his Masters in English started a life of commitment to teach in Lahore City, the bastion of social radicalism. But partition completely changed all that. The Sahnis had to migrate to the new India from where even Lahore seemed a foreign and.